The distribution of orthographic patterns regarding noun gender varies cross-linguistically. Spanish has two informative endings: “-a” (feminine) and “-o” (masculine). German, however, has a less transparent gender system with complex orthographic cues and many exceptions. To explain the retrieval of gender from long-term memory, recent accounts propose a dual-route framework in which gender can be accessed via whole-word memory or via sub-lexical orthographic cues (Sá-Leite & Lago, 2024). The effectiveness of the sub-lexical route depends on cue predictiveness (i.e., frequency and consistency of the cues), so that transparent systems like Spanish should rely more on orthography to process gender than opaque systems such as German. We tested this prediction using gender categorization tasks. Native Spanish and German speakers judged whether written nouns were masculine or feminine. Nouns were transparent (highly predictive cues), regular (typical but less predictive), or opaque (no cues). Results indicated that Spanish speakers had speed and accuracy advantages for transparent and regular nouns, whereas German speakers had a speed advantage only for transparent nouns, with accuracy remaining unaffected by transparency. Considering that the “regular” category included more cues in German than in Spanish (reflecting the languages’ realities), gender retrieval appears cognitively similar across languages, differing mainly in the extent to which the sub-lexical route is used. These findings support dual-route models based on different-strength links: reliable orthographic cues support gender categorization via sub-lexical processing, whereas opaque nouns rely on whole-word representations; yet, as in German, greater gender-system complexity reduces the overall contribution of the sub-lexical route.