PurposeThe Activity Impairment Assessment (AIA) is a 5 items questionnaire exploring the impact of acute cystitis on daily activities. It’s a self-administrated tool easy to use in primary care studies. The purpose of this study is to translate and validate a French version of the AIA: the AIA-fr.MethodsWe use a forward-backward translation before to analyze the psychometric properties of the French version. We proceeded to a quantitative, prospective, observational multicentric study. King Health Questionnaire and Ditrovie scale were used to determine convergent and divergent validity. Following an inclusion visit, each file was completed by the patient on day 0, 3 and 5.ResultsFifty-two files were received by the investigator of which two empty files. In the end, 50 files were included in the study. There was a 100% response rate for the AIA-fr on days 0, 3 and 5. Cronbach’s alpha was calculated at 0.87 with a 95% confidence interval between 0.78 and 0.92. We found that this coefficient was not improved by removing one of the items (Cronbach’s alpha 0.81–0.87). There is a negative correlation (p = 0.01 Rs = − 0.35) between the total AIA-fr score and the number of days between symptom onset and consultation (day 0). This implies that the higher the AIA-fr score the sooner women will seek medical care.ConclusionsThe French version of the AIA is a psychometrically acceptable self-report questionnaire for measuring the impact of acute cystitis on daily activities. It’s the first French tool evaluating this impact.