You will almost always need "the" for grammatical reasons. There's no difference in meaning between the two. Here are some examples, as you can see they all use "the": https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/same If there's no "the", it's usually when talking about the word itself: - "same" is a word that indicated things are very similar Or when "the" is omitted as an abbreviation, usually in spoken English - same to you!

"The same" is a pronoun in English and would be used in the following example. "Henry has just ordered a fruit cake and I would like to order the same." In other words "the same" is a pronoun, which a substitute expression for the noun "fruit cake" The word "same" is an adjective, which is used to describe a noun. An example would be Maria and Margaret have bought the same handbag. In this example same is used with the noun. I hope this explanation is helpful to you