What this test can and cannot tell you
It measures your speaking pitch — how fast your vocal folds vibrate, in hertz — and shows what share of your voice falls in each of three ranges: below 155 Hz (typically male), 155–185 Hz (gender-ambiguous) and above 185 Hz (typically female). If you are asking “do I sound like a girl?” or “do I sound like a guy?”, this is the half of the answer you can measure.
It does not label your voice male or female. Pitch is one cue listeners use, not the only one, and the typical ranges of men and women overlap. A tool that gives a one-word verdict from a recording is estimating from the same few cues, without knowing your microphone, your room or how you usually speak. A number you can track is more useful than a guess you cannot check.
How to take the test
- Use your everyday voice, the one you would use ordering coffee — not your phone voice and not your practice voice. You want to know how you usually sound.
- Press Start recording and read the text under the tool. Press Another text once or twice so you get 20–30 seconds; one sentence is too little to judge.
- Press Stop and look at the band shares first, then the median.
- Test again on another day. Pitch is lower in the morning and when you are tired or ill, so a single test can be off.
What makes a voice sound male or female
Studies of how listeners judge a voice (Hillenbrand & Clark, 2009) find that two measurable things both matter, and that pitch alone is not enough:
- Pitch (fundamental frequency). Adult men typically speak at about 85–180 Hz and adult women at about 165–255 Hz (Baken, 1987). This test measures it.
- Resonance (formant frequencies) — how the throat and mouth shape the sound. A brighter, “smaller” resonance is heard as more female, a darker, “bigger” one as more male, at the same pitch. The experimental resonance test tracks changes in yours.
Listeners also hear intonation (how much the pitch moves across a sentence — shown here as pitch movement), vocal weight (a light or buzzy quality), loudness and articulation. That is why two people with the same median pitch can be heard differently.
Reading your result
- Mostly below 155 Hz Your pitch alone points listeners toward hearing a male voice. Resonance and intonation can still soften or strengthen that.
- Mostly 155–185 Hz This is the overlap zone, a convention from voice training rather than a measured boundary. Here the other cues usually decide how you are heard.
- Mostly above 185 Hz Your pitch points listeners toward hearing a female voice. A dark resonance can still be heard as male at this pitch.
- Split across bands Your pitch swings a lot — common when reading expressively. The median is the better single summary; the graph shows where you rise and drop.
Want to move your voice? The voice training pitch test lets you set a target — higher or lower — and keeps a history of your sessions on this device.
Frequently asked questions
How do I know if my voice sounds male or female?
Measure the part you can: your median speaking pitch and how much of your voice is below 155 Hz, between 155 and 185 Hz, or above 185 Hz. For the rest — resonance, intonation, vocal weight — record yourself and listen back, or ask someone you trust. A speech-language pathologist can give an informed opinion.
What Hz is a gender-neutral voice?
Voice-training resources commonly describe about 155–185 Hz as gender-ambiguous: it is where the typical male and female speaking ranges overlap. It is a convention, not a measured line, and voices there are heard as either depending on other cues.
Can a voice gender detector tell my gender?
No tool can tell your gender from your voice. Detectors that give a label are estimating how a listener might perceive one recording, mostly from pitch and spectrum, and they are thrown off by microphones, rooms and how you spoke that day. This test shows the measurable pitch part instead and leaves the judgement to you.
Can I use this as a trans voice test?
Yes, as one part of it. Many trans people use pitch to check where their voice sits and how it changes with training or hormones. It measures pitch only, so pair it with the resonance test and your own recordings, and use the voice training or FTM voice training pages to follow the change over time.
Why is my voice read as male even though my pitch is high?
Usually resonance. A raised pitch with an unchanged, dark resonance is often still heard as male (Hillenbrand & Clark, 2009). Resonance can be trained separately from pitch; the resonance test shows whether yours moved between two readings.
Is my recording uploaded or stored?
No. The analysis runs in your browser and the audio never leaves your device, and nothing is kept after you close the page. Save image and Copy link only run when you press them: the image is a picture of your summary numbers saved to your own device, and the link carries the same numbers after the #, which browsers never send to a server.
Sources
- R. J. Baken, Clinical Measurement of Speech and Voice (College-Hill Press, 1987) — the adult speaking-pitch ranges as commonly cited from this textbook.
- J. M. Hillenbrand & M. J. Clark, “The role of f0 and formant frequencies in distinguishing the voices of men and women”, Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 71(5), 2009. doi:10.3758/APP.71.5.1150
- The 155–185 Hz gender-ambiguous band is a convention from voice-training practice, not a measured boundary.
- A. de Cheveigné & H. Kawahara, “YIN, a fundamental frequency estimator for speech and music”, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 111(4), 2002. doi:10.1121/1.1458024 — the pitch detector this tool uses.
By Soluto, independent developer, not a clinician · Published · How this tool works and where the numbers come from