Spam Words Checker
Paste your subject line or email body and instantly see which words and phrases trigger spam filters. Fix them before you send.
What are spam trigger words?
Spam trigger words are words and phrases that spam filters — both algorithmic filters and Bayesian classifiers — have learned to associate with unsolicited or deceptive email. When your subject line or body copy contains enough of them, the filter's confidence score crosses a threshold and your email is routed to the spam folder instead of the inbox.
Common offenders fall into predictable buckets: urgency language (act now, limited time), financial promises (free money, earn extra cash), health claims, and overused marketing phrases (click here, satisfaction guaranteed). Modern filters are more nuanced than a simple word list — context, sender reputation, and engagement history all factor in — but avoiding known trigger phrases still meaningfully reduces your spam rate, especially for new or warming domains.
Cold outbound emails are particularly vulnerable because they start from zero sender reputation. A subject line with two or three trigger words on a fresh domain is a reliable path to the spam folder.
How to use this checker
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Paste your email text
Copy your subject line, email body, or both into the text area. You can check the full email at once or isolate just the subject line — subject lines carry more weight with most filters, so check them separately if you're optimising.
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Click "Check for spam words"
The checker scans for over 150 known trigger phrases across six categories: Urgency & Pressure, Money & Financial, Health & Medical, Clickbait & Hype, Authority Faking, and Free Stuff.
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Review the results by category
Each flagged word is listed under its category so you know why it was flagged and can make a targeted edit. Zero flags is a pass; one or two is a caution; three or more is a reliable signal to rewrite.
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Rewrite and recheck
Replace flagged phrases with more neutral alternatives, paste the revised copy back in, and recheck. Most emails can be made filter-clean in one pass without losing their message.
Spam word categories
| Category | What it covers | Example phrases |
|---|---|---|
| Urgency & Pressure | Language designed to force a fast decision and suppress rational evaluation. | act now, limited time, urgent, now or never |
| Money & Financial | Promises of financial gain, discounts, or free offers. | free gift, double your income, money back, earn extra cash |
| Health & Medical | Claims about weight, medication, or health outcomes — a high-confidence spam signal. | lose weight, no prescription, weight loss, miracle cure |
| Clickbait & Hype | Overpromising copy and vague calls to action that bulk mailers overuse. | click here, amazing, congratulations, you've been selected |
| Authority Faking | Phrases that mimic official or endorsement language to build false credibility. | certified, official, as seen on, endorsed |
| Free Stuff | Variations of "free" and related giveaway language that filters score heavily. | free trial, freebie, prize, giveaway, gratis |
Frequently asked questions
Do spam trigger words actually affect inbox placement?
Yes, but they are one factor among many. Modern spam filters use a combination of content scoring, sender reputation, engagement history, and authentication results (SPF, DKIM, DMARC). A single trigger word on a trusted domain with good engagement will rarely cause a problem. But two or three trigger phrases on a new or cold domain — with no positive reputation to offset them — reliably pushes the content score over the spam threshold. Avoiding known trigger phrases is a low-effort, high-return improvement, especially in the first few weeks of sending from a new inbox.
Is my subject line or my email body more important to check?
Your subject line carries more weight per word because spam filters score it separately and it is the first thing both filters and recipients evaluate. A clean body with a spammy subject will often still land in spam. Check your subject line first. If your subject line passes, check the body — not because filters ignore it, but because some phrases (especially financial and health claims) are scored heavily wherever they appear.
What should I replace spam trigger words with?
Swap urgency language for specifics: instead of 'act now' use a concrete deadline ('reply by Thursday'). Replace financial promises with outcomes ('how [Company] reduced churn by 30%'). Avoid 'free' entirely in subject lines — 'complimentary', 'no charge', or restructuring the sentence to remove the word entirely works better. For 'click here', link naturally from descriptive anchor text. The goal is to communicate the same idea with language that a non-spammer would use in a genuine one-to-one email.
Does this checker guarantee inbox placement?
No. This checker flags known trigger phrases from a curated word list. It does not simulate a live spam filter, check your sender reputation, evaluate your authentication setup, or model your recipient's engagement signals — all of which factor into the actual placement decision. Think of it as a quick sanity check on your copy, not a deliverability audit. For a full picture, use the Email Health Checker to audit your domain's authentication and the Placement Test to see where your emails actually land across Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and iCloud.
My email has zero spam words but still goes to spam. Why?
Copy is only one deliverability signal. If your authentication is incomplete (missing DKIM, broken DMARC policy, misaligned SPF), your sending domain or IP is on a blacklist, you're sending to a cold list with low open rates, or your inbox hasn't been warmed up yet — your email will go to spam regardless of how clean your copy is. Run the Email Health Checker on your domain and consider starting a warmup cycle for new inboxes before high-volume sending.