Comparison
Gender Decoder alternatives: how Neuromine compares
Gender Decoder by Kat Matfield is the original free tool for checking gendered language in job adverts. Here's an honest look at what it does well, where its scope ends, and what Neuromine checks on top.
What Gender Decoder does well
Gender Decoder deserves its reputation. Built by Kat Matfield and based on the Gaucher, Friesen & Kay (2011) study of gendered wording in job adverts, it does one thing cleanly: paste an advert, and it highlights masculine-coded words ("lead", "competitive", "dominant") and feminine-coded words ("support", "collaborative", "interpersonal"). It's free, instant, and has done more than any other tool to make gendered language in recruitment a mainstream conversation.
If your only question is "does this advert use gender-coded words?", it answers that question well.
Where its scope ends
A gendered-word list can't tell you the things candidates most often need to know and can't see from the word choices alone:
- Whether the salary or pay band is disclosed at all
- Whether essential requirements are listed or buried in prose
- Whether the interview format and number of stages are stated
- Whether reasonable adjustments or an accessibility contact are mentioned
- Whether "flexible" and "hybrid" come with concrete hours and days
- Whether the advert leans on intensity-culture framing ("fast-paced", "thrive under pressure")
These aren't criticisms of Gender Decoder — it was never trying to do them. But they are the signals that most strongly predict whether an application process will be transparent and accessible, particularly for disabled and neurodivergent candidates.
What Neuromine checks
Neuromine is a free job advert analyser built for the wider question: "what does this advert actually tell me, and what is it leaving out?" It combines deterministic pattern rules — pay disclosure, working-hours specificity, interview-format disclosure — with a constrained language-model pass for coded language, including gendered and personality-coded wording. Every flag is anchored in published UK guidance (EHRC, Acas, CIPD, Disability Confident, the Buckland Review of Autism Employment), and the tool reports its reasoning rather than producing a score.
It was built primarily for neurodivergent job seekers reading adverts, and employers use it equally often to check their own adverts before posting. It's free and needs no account.
The honest summary
Use Gender Decoder when you want a quick check of gendered wording — it's fast, proven and free. Use Neuromine when you want the whole picture: pay, requirements, interview process, adjustments and coded language together. They're complementary tools, and both are free, so there's no reason to choose only one.
Common questions
Is Neuromine a replacement for Gender Decoder?
Not exactly — they do different jobs. Gender Decoder is excellent at the specific thing it does: surfacing gender-coded words. Neuromine is a broader job advert analyser covering pay transparency, hidden requirements, interview format, adjustments information and neuroinclusion signals as well as coded language. Many people use both.
Is Gender Decoder still available?
Yes, at gender-decoder.katmatfield.com. It remains a useful, free tool based on the Gaucher, Friesen & Kay (2011) research on gendered wording in job adverts.
Is Neuromine free like Gender Decoder?
Yes. The full analysis is free with no sign-up, and there is no employer-facing paid product.
Does Neuromine check for gendered words?
It checks for gender-coded and personality-coded language as one category among several — alongside pay transparency, hidden requirements, interview format disclosure and accessibility signals, which are outside the scope of a gendered-word list.
Check a real advert
Neuromine's free analyser reads a job advert against every pattern on this page and tells you what it found — no sign-up, no employer score.
Written by Theo, who runs Neurodiversity at Work and builds Neuromine.
Theo's speaking and training practice works with UK employers on neuroinclusive hiring.