French verb conjugator

All 203 verbs

90 regular -er · 21 regular -ir · 13 regular -re · 29 stem-changing -er · 50 irregular

Which tenses you need, level by level

Every verb page shows twelve tenses in two groups, because that is how the exams grade you. A tense is not "advanced" because it is rare; it is placed at the level where an examiner first expects you to use it.

• A1–A2 (five tenses): present, passé composé, imparfait, futur proche and futur simple. Enough to talk about your day, your past and your plans, and the same five the conjugation drill tests — the two are checked against each other at build time, so a form here and an answer there can never disagree.
• B1 (four more): conditionnel présent, plus-que-parfait, subjonctif présent and futur antérieur. These let you be polite (je voudrais), give an opinion with a condition, tell a story in the right order and react with il faut que or je veux que.
• B2 (three more): conditionnel passé, subjonctif passé and the passé simple. The first two are what a B2 argument is built on — regret, criticism of what was done, hypotheses about the past. The passé simple is the one exception: B2 asks you to recognise it in a text, never to write or say it.

Each verb page also carries three more forms in a fold below the A1–A2 tables — passé récent, impératif and gérondif. They are useful from A2, but they are fixed patterns (venir de, the command form, en + -ant) rather than tenses you choose between.

How to use each tense

A1–A2

Present covers what is true now and what is habitual, so je parle is both "I speak" and "I am speaking" — French has no separate continuous form, which is the single most common thing to unlearn coming from English.

Passé composé is the everyday past: what happened, once, and finished. It is built from an auxiliary plus the past participle, and which auxiliary a verb takes is a fact about that verb, not about its ending — arriver and parler are both plain regular -er verbs and only one takes être. Every table above states its own auxiliary at the top for that reason.

Imparfait is the other past — what was going on, or what used to happen repeatedly. Choosing between the two is not about how long ago something was; it is about whether you are describing a completed event or a background state. That choice is drilled on its own at imparfait vs passé composé.

Futur proche (aller + infinitive) is what you will actually say out loud for near-future plans, and it is the easier of the two futures because the main verb never changes shape. Futur simple is one word, built on a future stem, and is more common in writing and in exam prompts. For a regular verb that stem is simply the infinitive; where it is not, the verb's own page says so.

B1–B2

Conditionnel présent is the futur simple's stem with the imparfait's endings — je parlerais, je ferais, j'irais — so if you know the futur stem you already know this tense. Use it to soften a request (Pourriez-vous m'envoyer le formulaire ?), to give advice (À ta place, je partirais) and for the result of an unlikely condition: Si j'avais le temps, je viendrais. The si half takes the imparfait, never the conditionnel.

Plus-que-parfait is the past before another past: the imparfait of the helper plus the participle. Quand je suis arrivé, le train était déjà parti. It is what keeps a TEF or TCF narrative from reading as a flat list of events, and it is the tense of the si half of a regret: Si j'avais su…

Subjonctif présent is not a tense of time but a mood. It follows a trigger — necessity (il faut que), wish (je veux que), emotion (je suis content que), doubt (je doute que) and some conjunctions (pour que, bien que, avant que). For most verbs it is built from the ils form of the present (ils prennent → que je prenne), with nous and vous borrowed from the imparfait (que nous prenions). Eight verbs break the rule and are worth learning by heart: être, avoir, aller, faire, pouvoir, savoir, vouloir, valoir. Which triggers want it, and which do not (je pense que + indicatif), is drilled at subjonctif ou indicatif.

Futur antérieur is the future of the helper plus the participle: what will be done before another future moment. Quand j'aurai reçu ma résidence permanente, je chercherai un appartement. After quand, dès que and lorsque, French uses a future where English uses a present — the commonest mistake with this tense.

Conditionnel passé (j'aurais fait, je serais venu) talks about a past that did not happen: regret (J'aurais dû postuler plus tôt), reproach, and the result half of si + plus-que-parfait. It is also how the news reports something unconfirmed: L'accident aurait fait deux blessés. Practise the si-clause pairing at conditionnel passé.

Subjonctif passé (que j'aie fini, qu'elle soit partie) follows the same triggers as the present subjunctive when the action is already complete: Je suis content que tu aies réussi ton examen.

Passé simple (il fut, elle fit, ils vinrent) is the past of novels, history and some newspaper features. Read it as a passé composé and move on; in your own writing and speaking, use the passé composé. Its il and ils forms are the ones you will meet. The passé simple lesson shows the three patterns.

Why there is no Gurmukhi column

Every other table on this site carries a Punjabi respelling, and these deliberately do not. Writing out 30 respellings per verb from spelling rules would produce confident-looking pronunciations that are sometimes wrong, at a scale nobody could check — and a respelling that is nearly right is worse than none, because the learner has no way to tell. Each verb page instead carries a note saying which of its forms sound identical, which is a rule rather than a guess. For real pronunciation practice, use the minimal pairs drill and the pronunciation guide.

How the deconjugator works

It is a lookup, not a guess: every form of every verb on this page is indexed, so typing finissais returns finir, imparfait, je/tu. Compound forms are indexed whole and by their last word, so both "ai pris" and "pris" find prendre. A form that is genuinely ambiguous — and French has many, since parle is four different persons — returns every match rather than picking one.

Conjugation tables last generated 2026-10-07.