How to Say “No Problem” in French

If you are looking for “no problem” as an informal way to say “you’re welcome” then check out our article on how to say you’re welcome in French. We touch upon it only a bit in this article.

Learning how to say “no problem” in French is for the most part straight forward and simple. In fact, it’s actually not that much different from English at its most basic level.

Although there are likely an endless number of ways how to say “no problem” in French, we are going to talk here about the ones you’ll hear the most.

Let’s get right into it…

This is probably the most commonly-known and used way of saying “no problem” in French. When translated literally it means “not any problem”. The phrase itself is more or less informal with its more formal version being il n’y a pas de problème. There are quite a few ways to use pas de problème and we’ll cover as many of them as possible below.

We’ve already gone over that pas de problème is the most commonly-used way to say “no problem” in French, but what about other ways? Let’s go over more ways below.

If you aren’t familiar with the phrase pas de souci you’ll be happy to learn that it’s simply a more informal way of saying pas de problème. If you’d like, you can just think of it as the French equivalent of “no worries” or “no dramas”.

The word souci often translates to the English word “worry” such as in the sentence..

Ne te fais pas de souci pour moi – Don’t worry about me

However in this section we’re mainly going to go over instances where its translation is closer to “no problem”. Just keep in mind however that souci is often used just like it is in the above sentence.

The Académie française has specifically stated that you shouldn’t use pas de souci in formal writing. You will however see it all the time in informal situations such as in emails or text messages.

The phrase aucun problème has more or less the same meaning as both pas de problème and pas de souci. However if a distinct definition had to be placed on it it would probably be “there is no problem at all”.

Using ça marche is a quick and simply way to say “no problem” in French. To be clear however, it’s really only used in situations where you are confirming something that someone else has said and acknowledging that there isn’t a problem.  It’s also more on the informal side of things.

For those who already have a fair amount of French experience you’ll probably already recognize the verb marcher as not only the verb that means “to walk” but also that can mean “to work” as in the sentence below…

Mon ordinateur ne marche plus – My computer doesn’t work (function) anymore

Although the context is completely different when using ça marche to mean “no problem” you can think of it in a similar way. 

If ça marche wasn’t informal enough for you then you just might want to use ça roule instead. For the most part, ça roule is a somewhat comical way of saying ça marche because although it means the same thing you need a vehicle to roule and feet to marche. Take a look at a couple of examples of ça roule below…

Ce n’est pas grave, more commonly-spoken as c’est pas grave or even pas grave, is a very popular way to emphasize that something is not a problem. Translated literally as “it’s not serious” it’s perfect for telling someone that something just isn’t really a big deal. Take a look at the below sentences.

Depending on who you speak to when practicing your French you may hear this one used rather frequently or almost never at all. It’s often used among teenagers so you may not hear this too much if you aren’t in that age range or don’t hang out with people who are.

À l’aise, which translates literally to “comfortable” or “relaxed”, is best thought of like “no prob”, “no sweat”, “piece of cake” or “easy peasy”.

You’ll sometimes hear people say À l’aise, Blaise ! Adding the name Blaise doesn’t change the meaning at all and is just done because it rhymes with l’aise.

Y a pas de lézard is an informal expression that, despite what it looks like, does in fact mean there’s no problem. Translated literally as “there is no lizard”, its origins come from, not the animal, but rather music recording.

Years ago when recording music in studios, the audio would sometimes contain an annoying hissing sound that would force the audio technicians to redo the recording. This hissing sound was called a lézard (lizard). If the audio didn’t contain this hissing sound they would say Y a pas de lézard, meaning the audio didn’t have this problem. 

Over the years the expression Y a pas de lézard has slowly evolved in meaning and can now be used in all sorts of situations to mean there’s no problem. You’ll often see it without il at the beginning, but you can add it if you’d like.

Hopefully with this guide you’ll be better prepared the next time you need to say no problem in French. With all the possible problems that one can have it can sometimes be nice to tell someone that there isn’t a problem at all!