Free tool
Passive voice checker
Paste your writing below and every passive construction is highlighted as you go. No signup, no word limit, and nothing leaves your browser — the check runs on your own machine.
How to spot it without a tool
Passive voice is a form of to be plus a past participle. The subject of the sentence receives the action rather than doing it:
| Passive | Active |
|---|---|
| The window was broken by the storm. | The storm broke the window. |
| A decision has been made. | The board decided. |
| She was being followed. | Someone was following her. |
| The letter was left on the table. | He left the letter on the table. |
The quickest test: if you can add …by zombiesafter the verb and the sentence still parses, it is passive. “The window was broken by zombies” works. “The storm broke by zombies” does not.
When passive voice is the right call
Most advice on this is written for business memos and then applied to novels, where it does real damage. Passive is the correct choice more often in fiction than anywhere else:
- The actor is unknown. “The body was found at dawn.” Naming a finder you have not introduced is worse than the passive.
- The actor is irrelevant. “The bridge was built in 1890.” Nobody wants the contractor.
- You are withholding. Mysteries run on this. “The letter had been opened” is a plot point precisely because it does not say who opened it.
- The receiver matters more. If the chapter is about the victim, keeping them in the subject position keeps the focus where it belongs.
What to actually fix is passive used by accident — where you know who acted, it matters, and the sentence hides them anyway. That is the habit that makes a draft feel distant.
Common questions
Is this passive voice checker free?
Yes, and there is no signup or word limit. The check runs in your browser, so nothing you paste is uploaded, stored, or sent to us.
What counts as passive voice?
A form of the verb 'to be' followed by a past participle: was broken, is written, has been taken, was being followed. The subject of the sentence receives the action instead of performing it.
Is passive voice always wrong?
No, and any tool that says so will make your prose worse. Passive is correct when the actor is unknown ('the body was found at dawn'), irrelevant ('the bridge was built in 1890'), or deliberately withheld — which in fiction is often the entire point.
How much passive voice is too much?
Under about 15% of sentences is normal for fiction. Past 30%, sentences start hiding who is doing things, and the prose goes slack. Treat those as ranges to notice, not targets to hit.
Why does it highlight something that is not passive?
The check is a heuristic, not a parser. It skips the common adjectival cases like 'she was tired', but a phrase such as 'the door was locked' is genuinely ambiguous — it can describe a state or an action. You are the judge; the tool just points.