GTranslate alternative for WordPress

Visitors read French.
Google reads English.

GTranslate’s free plan translates each page in the visitor’s browser: the address doesn’t change, nothing is stored, and GTranslate’s own FAQ says the free version “doesn’t give any SEO advantage”. Its plugin page also limits the free service to personal, educational, nonprofit and government sites. If translated pages should rank, or the site earns money, you need translations at their own URLs: TranslatePress (free for one extra language), Polylang (free, written by hand), Weglot (free up to 2,000 words), WPML (from €39 a year), GTranslate’s paid plans (from $120 a year), or the Builderify WordPress plugin with SEO translations on. Below: how to tell which kind you have, what each free plan holds back, a planner that prices your site in all six, and where each one is the better choice.

Price my site Which kind do I have?
GTranslate Free Not indexed Non-commercial use only

By the Builderify team

01 Translated after it arrives 02 Sent already translated

Illustration · one French page, two ways. Only the second exists for search engines in French.

01 / Two kinds

Does GTranslate’s free version help SEO?
Its own FAQ says no.

Every WordPress translation plugin does one of two things. Some send the page in your language and translate it afterwards, in the visitor’s browser, when they pick a language. Others give each language its own address and send that page already translated. Only the second kind puts translated pages in front of search engines, because a crawler doesn’t pick a language from your switcher: it fetches addresses.

GTranslate sells both. Its free plugin is the first kind; its paid plans, from $12 a month, are the second. Version 5.0.1 also swapped Google’s retired Website Translator widget for GTranslate’s own; if your site embedded Google’s snippet directly, the guide to replacing the Google Translate widget covers that move.

The address In the browser: The same URL in every language: /about/ Own URL: One URL per language: /fr/about/
What a crawler fetches In the browser: Your original language Own URL: The translated page
hreflang links In the browser: None Own URL: Each version lists the others
Translations stored In the browser: Not on GTranslate Free: made on the fly Own URL: Yes, in your database or the vendor’s cloud
Correct a line by hand In the browser: Not on GTranslate Free Own URL: Yes
Examples In the browser: GTranslate Free; Builderify on sites without its WordPress plugin Own URL: TranslatePress, Polylang, WPML, Weglot, GTranslate’s paid plans, Builderify’s plugin with SEO translations
01

“Our free version doesn’t give any SEO advantage.”

GTranslate, WordPress.org FAQ Its paid plans, it says, let search engines “discover and index the translated content”.
02

“Translated pages do not have separate URLs, so they are not indexed and do not provide SEO benefits.”

GTranslate, plans page Said of the cookies or sessions GTranslate Free uses to remember a visitor’s language.
03

“Google recommends using different URLs for each language version of a page rather than using cookies or browser settings.”

Google Search Central From Google’s guide to multi-regional and multilingual sites.

Which kind is on my site? The view-source test

A minute, any browser, no tools. It works on any translation plugin, ours included.

  1. Step 1
    Switch the page to another language

    Use your switcher the way a visitor would.

  2. Step 2
    Read the address bar

    If it still shows the original address, with no /fr/ or fr. in it, search engines have no separate page to find.

  3. Step 3
    View the page source

    Right-click the page and choose View Page Source. That is the HTML your server sent, before any script ran. If the text there is still in your original language, so is what a search engine is sure to read. A page served in French says lang="fr" near the top and lists its other languages in hreflang links.

The other catch: commercial use

GTranslate’s plugin page now says its free translation service is available “for personal, educational, internal testing, nonprofit and governmental purposes”, and that “commercial or revenue-generating use requires an applicable paid subscription”. It adds that WooCommerce compatibility “does not remove this requirement”.

So a shop, a business site or a site that runs ads needs a paid GTranslate plan even if it never wanted indexed translations, which makes it worth comparing with the alternatives below.

Read on the GTranslate listing and gtranslate.io on 17 October 2026. Not legal advice: read GTranslate’s terms for your own case.

02 / Free plans

What does each free translation plugin
hold back?

Five of the six can be used for free; WPML can’t, so its cheapest plan stands in. Each free plan gives away something different and keeps back something different: languages, words, automatic translation, or the slugs and meta descriptions that matter for search.

Swipe the table sideways

Free WordPress translation plans compared: GTranslate, TranslatePress, Polylang, Weglot, WPML’s cheapest plan and Builderify
Feature GTranslate Free TranslatePress Free Polylang Free Weglot Free WPML Blog, €39 a year Builderify Free credits
A URL per language No No: a switcher that translates in the browser Yes Yes, rendered by your server Yes Yes: a translated copy of each post Yes Yes, served from Weglot’s cloud Yes Yes: folders, subdomains or domains Partly On WordPress, with the plugin; a switcher elsewhere
Search engines index translations No No: “doesn’t give any SEO advantage” Yes Yes, with hreflang links Yes Yes, with hreflang links Yes Yes, with hreflang links Yes Yes Partly Yes with the WordPress plugin; not elsewhere
Extra languages Yes Any of 103 Partly One Yes No limit Partly One Note No limit listed Yes Up to 26, from a list of 27
Automatic translation Yes Google machine translation Partly 2,000 AI words, or your own Google API key No No: DeepL comes with Pro Partly Yes, within the 2,000 words No No: AI words start with CMS Yes AI drafts, paid from your credits
No cap on size Yes No word limit Yes None on your own translations Yes No limit No Capped: 2,000 words in total, never renewed Yes None on your own translations Partly Phrases up to 200 characters, 500 at most
Correct translations by hand No No: paid plans only Yes Yes, in a visual editor Yes Yes: that is how it works Yes Yes Yes Yes, in the WordPress editor Yes Yes, phrase by phrase
Translated slugs No No: from $170 a year No SEO Pack, paid Yes Yes: each translated post has its own No From the Pro plan Yes Yes No No: /fr/ plus the original slug
Meta descriptions No Not translated No SEO Pack, paid Yes Written per translated post Yes Translated Yes Translated Partly Only if the same text is among your phrases
Commercial use No Not on the free service Yes Allowed Yes Allowed Yes Allowed Yes Allowed Yes Allowed
WooCommerce Note Works, but a shop is commercial Yes Works out of the box No Needs Polylang for WooCommerce, €99 Yes Products, checkout and emails No Not on Blog: CMS, €99 Partly Shop pages phrase by phrase; emails, no
Where translations live Note Nowhere: made on the fly Note Your database Note Your database Note Weglot’s servers Note Your database Note Builderify, with a copy on your server for /fr/ pages
Plugin directory Note 900,000+ installs, updated 15 Sep 2026 Note 400,000+ installs, updated 13 Oct 2026 Note 900,000+ installs, updated 12 Oct 2026 Note 50,000+ installs, updated 15 Oct 2026 Note Not listed: sold on wpml.org Note Not listed yet: download from your dashboard

Read on each plugin’s WordPress.org page and each vendor’s pricing and documentation on 17 October 2026; links in the Sources. Builderify’s column assumes its WordPress plugin with SEO translations on.

TranslatePress free limitations, in one place

TranslatePress is the closest free match for what most people want from GTranslate: translated pages at their own URLs, made in your WordPress database, with a visual editor. The free version stops at these lines.

  • One translation language. The free settings let you choose your default language and one translation language. More need the Multiple Languages add-on, in every paid plan.
  • 2,000 AI-translated words. After that you translate by hand, or connect your own Google Translate API key, and Google bills you for what it translates.
  • No translated slugs, titles or meta descriptions. The SEO Pack adds those, plus image alt text, social tags and a multilingual sitemap. It is paid only, from €99 a year.
  • Indexing is in. Each language gets its own URL, and TranslatePress adds hreflang links for each language your site uses, free version included.
Not on this list: Loco Translate

Loco Translate, with 1,000,000+ active installs, edits the language files of your theme and plugins: the buttons, labels and messages they print. It doesn’t translate your posts and pages, and it doesn’t give a language its own URL. Use it alongside any of these when a theme string is wrong or missing in your language.

On Shopify instead?

Shopify has its own languages and its own limits. The Translate & Adapt guide covers the two-language limit and what to do past it.

03 / Cost planner

How much will it cost to translate
my WordPress site?

Tell it how many words your site has, how many languages you want and how you’ll translate. It checks every free plan against that, finds the first paid step that fits each one, and prices Builderify from its rate card. Nothing you enter leaves your browser.

Your site Runs in your browser
6,000

Unique words across the pages you’ll translate. Weglot and TranslatePress both have free word counters.

×
2
How you’ll translate

Automatically: machine or AI drafts you then check. By hand: you or a translator write them.

About the site
See what fits
Free plans
1 of 6 fit for free

6,000 words × 2 languages = 12,000 words to translate.

GTranslate
Free: browser only

Free plan: Not for this site: the free service is only for personal, educational, nonprofit and government use.

Startup $250 a year

All languages at its own URL, editable, no word limit. With translated slugs: $350 a year.

TranslatePress
Own URLs, indexed

Free plan: Free covers one extra language; you want 2.

Personal €99 a year

Includes 50,000 AI words a year. All languages, and the SEO Pack for slugs and meta descriptions.

Polylang
Own URLs, indexed

Free plan: No machine translation in the free plugin: you write each translation yourself.

Pro €99 a year

DeepL drafts in the editor, with your own DeepL API key, billed by DeepL.

WPML
No free plan

Free plan: No free version.

Multilingual CMS €99 a year

Three sites, WooCommerce and page builders, 22,500 AI words.

Weglot
Own URLs, indexed

Free plan: Free covers one language; you want 2.

Business €290 a year

50,000 words, 3 languages. Translated slugs from Pro, €790 a year.

Builderify
Own URLs, indexed

Free plan: Fits in the 250 free credits a month.

Nothing to buy $0

Each month after the first uses about 80 credits for page loads.

Columns: the plugin · does its free plan fit? · the first plan that does

Builderify, first monthCredits
8,000
Phrases750
Translation rows1,500
× 0.1 credits, once150
Page loads, a month80
First month230
Free every month−250
To buy, first year$0

Inside the 250 free credits every account gets each month.

The assumptions

  • Word allowances are used once per language, as Weglot counts them: 6,000 words in two languages is 12,000.
  • Prices are each vendor’s own, a year on annual billing, read on 17 October 2026: GTranslate in dollars, the others in euros, before VAT where they say so. Monthly billing costs more.
  • Builderify counts phrases, not words: each separate piece of text on a page, from a menu item to a short paragraph, stored once however many pages use it. The phrase size you pick is an estimate; your Translations screen shows the real count once training mode has run.
  • A translation row is one phrase in one language: 0.1 credits on the rate card, once. Page loads are 10 credits per 1,000, every month. Every account gets 250 free credits a month; the first year assumes everything is translated in month one.
  • Packs are the cheapest mix of Builderify’s one-time packs, from $9. DeepL’s bill for Polylang Pro and WPML’s extra AI words come on top and aren’t priced here.
05 / With Builderify

Translated pages Google can index,
from the Builderify plugin.

Builderify Translations works phrase by phrase. While training mode is on, the script reads the visible text of each page a visitor opens and sends the pieces it hasn’t seen before: menu items, headings, buttons, short paragraphs, the page title, and, if you allow it, placeholders, tooltips and image alt text. Each piece is stored once, however many pages use it. You translate those phrases yourself or with AI, in any of 26 languages besides your own, Arabic and Hebrew right to left.

On most platforms the translations are then applied in the visitor’s browser, which is the first kind in section 01. On WordPress, the Builderify plugin’s SEO translations make it the second kind: every language gets its own address, such as /fr/about/, and your own server sends that page already translated, with hreflang links, so search engines can index it.

Collect

Training mode: up to 120 new phrases a page, 2 to 200 characters each

↓
Translate

By hand in Translations › Strings, or with AI per language, per phrase or every 15 minutes

↓
Serve

WordPress: /fr/ pages from your server. Elsewhere: in the browser

Saved translations go live within about five minutes. AI translations go live straight away, marked Needs review until you edit them. A phrase you mark as ignored is never translated, and so is anything inside translate="no", the notranslate class or data-bdf-no-translate.

How Builderify Translations runs, from the app and the plugin’s code
On a /fr/ page, the plugin translates
  • Every phrase you have translated, wherever it appears on the page
  • The page title, and alt text, placeholders, tooltips and aria labels when “Translate labels and tooltips” is on
  • Links to your own pages, the canonical URL and og:url, which all point to the same language
  • The <html lang> attribute, and right-to-left direction for Arabic and Hebrew
  • hreflang links to every language on every page, plus x-default
  • WordPress’s own sitemap (wp-sitemap.xml): a translated address for every post and page
And leaves in your original language
  • Slugs. The French page is /fr/about/, not /fr/a-propos/. If translated slugs matter to you, TranslatePress, Polylang, WPML or Weglot do them.
  • Long text in one piece. A phrase longer than 200 characters, about 30 words, isn’t collected. You can raise the limit to 500; anything longer is never translated.
  • Meta descriptions and social descriptions, unless the same words are among your phrases. Training mode doesn’t collect them, so most stay as they are.
  • Text a script adds after the page loads. It is translated for visitors in their browser, but isn’t in the HTML search engines are sent.
  • WooCommerce emails, and anything else that isn’t a web page.

That limit on long text matters for blogs. Google warns that translating only the boilerplate of a page while “keeping the bulk of your content in a single language” makes a poor result. So if your posts are long, add /blog/* to Pages to skip in Languages & Setup: skipped paths stay in your original language, their /fr/ addresses redirect to the original, and they are left out of the translated sitemap.

How do I set it up on WordPress?

  1. 1. Download the plugin

    In Builderify, open Connect › Snippet and choose the WordPress tab. Download builderify.zip and copy your site key from the same tab. The plugin isn’t on WordPress.org yet.

  2. 2. Upload and activate it

    In WordPress, go to Plugins › Add New Plugin › Upload Plugin, choose the file, then Install Now and Activate. It needs WordPress 6.2 and PHP 7.4 or later, and works with classic and block themes.

  3. 3. Paste the key and switch SEO translations on

    Open Settings › Builderify, paste the key and tick “Publish translated pages at their own URLs (SEO translations)”. It needs pretty permalinks: any structure in Settings › Permalinks except Plain.

  4. 4. Add languages and collect your copy

    In Builderify, open Translations › Languages & Setup, switch translations on, add your languages and turn on training mode. Browse your own site to fill the list, then switch training off.

  5. 5. Translate and check

    Translate in Translations › Strings, by hand or with AI, and read the AI ones. The /fr/ pages start working within ten minutes, or as soon as you save the plugin’s settings again. If you use a page cache, clear it to see new translations.

Visitors switch language from a button beside the website widget, which sends them to the /fr/ address. The plugin has no shortcode or block; to put a language link in your own menu, add a custom link to a /fr/ address, or one pointing to #toggle_language, which opens the language picker.

Know this first
  • The plugin isn’t on WordPress.org yet: you download it from your dashboard, and updates come from there too.
  • Translated addresses go into WordPress’s own sitemap. Yoast SEO switches that sitemap off when its own is on, so the /fr/ pages won’t be in Yoast’s; the hreflang links on every page still lead crawlers to them.
  • If your credits run out, the widget pauses until you top up, and the language button with it. The cookie banner keeps running, and /fr/ pages already translated keep being served from the copy on your server.
  • Without the plugin, on Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, Webflow or any other platform, Builderify translates in the browser and search engines see only your original language.
  • Switching SEO translations off removes the language addresses. No pages are duplicated and nothing is written to your posts.
0.1 credits
per translation row, once: one phrase in one language
10 credits
per 1,000 page loads with the widget on them
250 free
credits every month, about 25,000 page loads, with no monthly fee
$9
one-time packs from, and purchased credits never expire

A phrase is translated once per language, wherever it appears. Change the wording on your site and the new wording is a new phrase to translate. Every rate is on the pricing page.

Start free
06 / Which to pick

How do I translate a WordPress site for free?
Pick by what you can’t do without.

There is a free way for most sites, as long as you know which limit you’ll hit first. These are the calls we’d make, including the ones where the answer isn’t us.

If

A nonprofit, school or personal site, and visitors only need to read along.

Then

GTranslate Free is fine. It translates into 103 languages at no cost; just don’t expect those translations in search results.

If

A business site that’s on GTranslate Free today.

Then

Its terms call for a paid plan, from $120 a year for one language or $250 for all. Price the alternatives in the planner before you renew anything.

If

One extra language, a small site, and you want it indexed for free.

Then

TranslatePress or Weglot, each free for one language and 2,000 words of automatic translation. TranslatePress keeps translating by hand after that; Weglot stops at 2,000 words.

If

Several languages, no budget, and you or a translator will write every word.

Then

Polylang. Free with no language limit, every translation its own post with its own slug. It takes the most work, and shops need its paid WooCommerce add-on.

If

A WooCommerce shop with translated emails, slugs and product data, or a team of translators.

Then

TranslatePress or WPML Multilingual CMS. Both translate shop content and slugs, and TranslatePress Business and WPML CMS add accounts for translators. Builderify does none of that.

If

A blog or a site of long articles.

Then

TranslatePress, Polylang, WPML or Weglot. Builderify translates phrases up to 500 characters, so long paragraphs would stay in your original language.

If

Mostly short copy, landing pages or service pages, on WordPress, and you want them indexed.

Then

The Builderify plugin with SEO translations. Short copy turns into few phrases, so many small sites fit inside the 250 free credits a month, and the same widget can run chat, popups or a cookie banner.

Run more than one translation plugin and they will fight over the same URLs, so pick one. For the rest of the stack, the guide to how many WordPress plugins is too many sorts out which plugins earn their place.

Questions

WordPress translation plugins, before you ask.

No. Since version 5.0.1, GTranslate's plugin page says its free translation service is for personal, educational, internal testing, nonprofit and governmental use, and that commercial or revenue-generating use needs a paid subscription. Its paid plans started at $12 a month, or $120 a year, for one extra language on 17 October 2026.

No. GTranslate's own FAQ says the free version doesn't give any SEO advantage: it translates in the visitor's browser, the URL doesn't change and translations aren't stored, so search engines see only your original language. Its paid plans serve each language at its own URL that search engines can index.

The free version adds one translation language and includes 2,000 words of AI translation. After that you translate by hand, or connect your own Google Translate API key and Google bills you. Translated slugs, meta descriptions and a multilingual sitemap come with the SEO Pack, part of the paid plans from €99 a year.

Polylang is free with no language limit, but you write every translation yourself. TranslatePress and Weglot are free for one extra language, with 2,000 words of automatic translation. Builderify's plugin runs on the 250 free credits every account gets each month, at 0.1 credits per translation row, so a small site with short copy can fit inside them.

On WordPress, yes, with the Builderify plugin's SEO translations switched on: each language gets its own URL such as /fr/about/, sent already translated by your server, with hreflang links and sitemap entries. On other platforms Builderify translates in the visitor's browser, so search engines see your original language. Slugs stay the same in every language.

Sources

Read on 17 October 2026. More in the WordPress plugins guide · ← All guides

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