Your voice is an instrument. For example, in a string quartet consisting of four members, two violinists, a violist, and a cellist, each musician plays a member of the violin family of stringed instruments. These instruments differ in size and range, i.e., how low or high they play. Voices are like this, except that the voice is hidden from direct observation, and thus there can be a disagreement about what type of voice a given singer is actually "playing".

This makes a big difference at the training stage of a singer's career. For instance, a baritone with a solid A natural can sing all the baritone arias comfortably, whereas a tenor with a solid A natural and nothing usable above it is severly limited. This creates an incentive for unscrupulous or ignorant voice teachers to misdiagnose a beginning student.

How can you tell what type of voice you have? I have always found men's voices easier to diagnose than women's, especially since men's voices are usually reflected in their speaking voice to some degree. The key is your highest note, if you are an untrained singer. This note need not be particularly comfortable or beautiful. Let me give you the possibilities for men, together with this key note, essentially the top of your middle range.

Counter-tenor. Usual top for untrained voice: B flat.
Tenor. Ofen misdiagnosed as baritone or even bass, because of difficulty with top. They come in two sizes, Lyric and Spinto.Usual top for untrained lyric tenor: A flat, for untrained spinto often as low as F.
Baritone. Usual untrained top: E, sometimes D.
Bass. Usual untrained top: C or D, although sometimes true basses have an easier ascent to their top than baritones do.

Now for female voices. Because many musical concepts were codified during the age of enlightment, which corresponds in music to the classical period, rationality prevailed and it was assumed that women's voices were like men's only an octave higher. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Women, even big mezzos and contraltos, often have many naturally occuring high notes, but the passage from the low register to the high may be very difficult. Men, on the other hand, will simply go higher by pushing and shoving until they can go no further. There are three main voice types for women as follows:

Soprano. This is by far the most common female voice. It come in four sizes: Coloratura, Lyric, Spinto and Dramatic, from smallest to biggest. The bigger the voice the harder to find the key to opening the top. Diagnosis is made by where the break seems to come, with sopranos from treble C to F usually.
Mezzosoprano. They can be Lyric or Dramatic. There is an immense difference in size and natural agility between these two types. In a lyric mezzo the break is not that much lower than for soprano, but for dramatic mezzo it can be quite low, for example G to treble C.
Contralto. Their break is incredibly low. I used to work in a historically Polish church in East New York, Brooklyn where the two singers at mass were a husband and wife: the man was a true bass on the order of Paul Plishka, and his wife was a contralto, both in their seventies. They sang Polish folk songs written in two-part form, and she would take the lower part, in her octave.

In general, absent true evidence to the contrary, if you are a man, assume you are a tenor, if a woman assume you are a soprano. Singing above your true range makes your voice better, whereas singing below it tears it down and blows the color out.

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