Shopify Translate & Adapt limits
Two languages, translated free.
The third one
you type yourself.
Shopify’s free Translate & Adapt app translates your store automatically into 2 languages besides your default one, and you translate any others by hand. Stores in 12 European countries, including the UK, France and Germany, get 8 languages and a weekly Auto-sync instead. A language uses its slot for good: you can’t switch it, and removing the language does not give the slot back. Below: how the limit works, what the app can’t translate at all, a planner that sorts your languages into free, by hand and unsupported, and what the rest costs on three translation apps and on Builderify’s translation widget.
By the Builderify team
How the Translate & Adapt
language limit works.
The limit is on automatic translation, not on languages. Your Shopify plan decides how many languages you can sell in, and you can fill any of them with your own translations. How many Shopify will translate for you, and whether it keeps them up to date, depends on the country your store is registered in.
2 languages, by button
- Two languages besides your default, translated when you click Auto-translate.
- New products and edits are not picked up: go back and click Auto-translate again for each language.
- No Auto-sync.
The US, Canada, Australia, and every country not listed on the right, including EU members such as Portugal, Poland and Finland.
8 languages, kept in sync
- Eight languages besides your default, with Translate now.
- Auto-sync, per language: changes are translated on the same day and time each week.
- Translate a single product or page on its own.
- Austria
- Belgium
- Denmark
- France
- Germany
- Ireland
- Italy
- Netherlands
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- United Kingdom
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01
A slot is spent for good
Once a language has been translated automatically, it holds that slot. You can’t move the automatic translation to a different language.
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02
Removing a language won’t help
Shopify says removing a language from your store does not reset the limit. Pick the two (or eight) carefully the first time.
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03
Your edits are safe
Automatic translation fills in what is missing and refreshes its own out-of-date machine translations. It never changes a translation you added or edited.
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04
Manual is unlimited
Any language your plan allows can be translated by hand in the app, from the product page with More actions, Localize, or by importing a CSV.
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05
Some things are always manual
Legal policies can’t be translated automatically, and neither can URL handles. Shopify suggests a professional translator for policies.
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06
Your plan caps the total
Up to 20 languages on Basic, Grow, Shopify and Advanced, and up to 30 on Shopify Plus, automatic or not.
Some translation apps and community threads also mention a yearly cap of 100 million characters on Shopify’s machine translation. Shopify’s help centre does not list one, so the planner below shows your character count without treating it as a limit.
What Translate & Adapt
can’t translate.
Wherever a translation is missing, your store shows that part in its default language. That is how a published language ends up half translated: Shopify’s themes and checkout come with their own text in 33 languages, while anything below stays in the language you wrote it in.
Product images can be swapped for a different file per language, but the text inside an image is never translated. Right-to-left languages need a theme that supports them; Shopify confirms it for the latest themes in the Horizon family.
Not translatable in the app
- Collection filters
- Forms made with the Shopify Forms app
- Manual payment method instructions
- Product images
- Tags, on products, articles and blogs
- Third-party app content that isn’t stored as a Shopify translatable resource
Only by hand
- Legal policies
- URL handles: /es/products/zapatos, though the word “products” stays
- SEO title and description, if you customised them; default ones follow the translated product
- Every language past your automatic ones
14 languages the app can’t translate at all
- Bengali
- Cebuano
- Corsican
- Frisian
- Haitian Creole
- Hawaiian
- Hmong
- Latin
- Nyanja (Chichewa)
- Odia (Oriya)
- Samoan
- Scots Gaelic
- Sesotho
- Tagalog (Filipino)
Which of your languages
will Shopify translate free?
Pick your languages in the order you would add them. The first ones the app supports take the free slots; the rest are yours to translate. Then size your catalogue to see the words and characters involved, and what the rest would cost.
Tagalog, Bengali and Haitian Creole are three of the 14 languages Translate & Adapt can’t translate.
- Words per language
- 32,400
- Characters, about
- 194,400
- Auto-translated chars
- 388,800
Your products, pages and posts only; theme text comes translated for Shopify’s 33 languages. Characters are words × 6, spaces included.
| App | Plan | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Weglotby words and languages | Pro | $87 a month, or $870 a year |
| LangShopby products and languages | Basic | $10 a month, or $100 a year |
| Transcyby products and languages | Continental | $69 a month, or $660 a year |
| Builderifythe languages past your free ones | 2 languages | 298 credits once, then 200 a month in page loads |
About 1,490 strings per language, at 0.1 credits each. Page loads cost 10 per 1,000, from 250 free credits a month. It translates on the page, not for search engines: see section 05.
Weglot counts words across all languages together; LangShop and Transcy cap products instead. A cap a vendor does not state counts as not covered. US-dollar prices, before tax; Weglot sets its prices in euros. Builderify languages exclude regional variants it does not have, such as Chinese (Traditional).
How to translate Shopify
into more than 2 languages.
There are three ways, and they differ in one thing that matters for a shop: whether search engines see the extra language. Shopify’s own languages get their own URLs, such as /es/, which Google can index. Anything stored as a Shopify translation keeps that, including the work of compatible apps.
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01FreeYour time
By hand in Translate & Adapt
- Side-by-side editor, or More actions, Localize on any product
- Export a CSV from Settings, Languages, translate it, import it back
- Own URLs per language, indexed like the rest of your store
Best when the catalogue is small or you have a translator.
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02From $10 a monthBilled by words or products
A Shopify translation app
- Machine translation for every language your plan allows
- Works through Shopify’s translations, so languages keep their URLs
- Prices step up with languages, words and catalogue size
Best when search traffic in the extra languages matters.
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03From freeVisitors only
A translation widget on the page
- Translates the page in the visitor’s browser
- One language switcher for every language
- Search engines see your default language only
Best for visitors who arrive and want to read along.
| App | Free | Plan 2 | Plan 3 | Plan 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weglot | Free 1 language, 2,000 words | Starter, $17/mo 1 language, 10,000 words | Business, $32/mo 3 languages, 50,000 words | Pro, $87/mo 5 languages, 200,000 words |
| LangShop | Free 1 language, 50 products | Basic, $10/mo 5 languages, 250 products | Standard, $40/mo 10 languages, 2,000 products | Advanced, $75/mo 20 languages, 5,000 products |
| Transcy | Free 1 language, products not stated | Regional, $29/mo 3 languages, 200 products | Continental, $69/mo 15 languages, 300 products | Cross-Border, $99/mo 50 languages, 1,500 products |
Weglot’s word counts are fixed totals across all languages and do not renew; it also sells Advanced (10 languages, 1,000,000 words, $329) and Extended (20 languages, 5,000,000 words, $769). Yearly billing is cheaper on all three. Check an app’s listing for how it counts the languages Translate & Adapt already translated.
A Translate & Adapt alternative
for visitors, not for Google.
Builderify Translations adds a language switcher to every page with one script tag in theme.liquid. It learns your store’s text as people browse, translates it with AI or by your hand, and swaps it into the page for anyone who picks a language. Arabic and Hebrew switch the page to right-to-left.
The line it does not cross: it works in the visitor’s browser, so search engines only ever see your default language. If ranking in Spanish is the point, a Shopify language, translated by hand or by an app, is the right tool. Builderify fits the languages you want to offer visitors without building them into Shopify.
What it does
- 27 languages, with no cap on how many are on at once
- Text, page titles, and alt, placeholder and title attributes
- Content that loads later, such as cart drawers and app widgets
- Each piece of text translated once per language, then reused for every visitor
- Translations you edit by hand are never overwritten
- Brand names kept as they are: ignore a string, or mark an element translate="no"
- Prices and currency symbols left alone
Not yet
- Search engines: no language URLs or hreflang, and crawlers get the original page
- Long text: blocks over 200 characters are skipped by default, 500 at most, so long description paragraphs stay as written
- Checkout, which stays Shopify’s
- Regional variants such as Brazilian Portuguese or Traditional Chinese
- Detecting the visitor’s browser language: everyone starts in the original
- Meta descriptions, and text inside images
The switcher sits beside the floating website widget; without the bubble, link to it from your own button. Changing language reloads the page. If the credit balance runs out, the widget pauses and pages show the original language.
What it costs
Translating one string into one language is 0.1 credits on the rate card, and every 1,000 page loads with the widget are 10. Every account gets 250 free credits a month; packs are one-time, from $9, and never expire.
Alongside Translate & Adapt
Keep your two free Shopify languages for search, with their own URLs, and offer the rest on the page. Shopify’s language selector and Builderify’s switcher both show, so label them clearly.
Coming from Google Translate?
The old Google widget worked the same way, in the browser. The guide to replacing it covers finding the snippet in your theme and the move, step by step.
Stay on Translate & Adapt,
add an app, or add a widget?
You sell in two extra languages, or eight from one of the 12 countries.
Translate & Adapt alone. It is free, your languages get their own URLs, and nothing else needs installing. Outside the 12 countries, click Auto-translate again whenever you add products.
You need a third language and the catalogue is small.
Translate it by hand in the app, or export a CSV for a translator and import it back. It costs time rather than a subscription, and the language is indexed like the others.
You need several more languages, all of them found in search.
A Shopify translation app. Run the planner above: Weglot prices by words across languages, LangShop and Transcy by languages and products. Check how each counts the languages Translate & Adapt already did.
Visitors from other countries should be able to read along, and search in those languages is not the goal.
Builderify Translations. 27 languages from one switcher, priced in credits with no subscription. Keep Shopify languages for the markets you want to rank in.
Translate & Adapt, before you ask.
Two languages besides your store's default, translated when you click Auto-translate. Stores registered in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland or the UK can translate up to eight, and keep them updated weekly with Auto-sync. Any other language can be translated by hand in the app, as Shopify's help centre described it on 8 October 2026.
No. Once a language has been translated automatically, it keeps that slot, and Shopify says the automatic translation can't be switched to a different language. Removing the language from your store does not reset the limit either.
Translate the extra languages by hand in Translate & Adapt, or export a CSV from Settings, Languages, translate it and import it back. For machine translation of more languages, install a compatible translation app such as Weglot, LangShop or Transcy, which price by words or products and languages. Your Shopify plan allows up to 20 languages, or 30 on Shopify Plus.
Collection filters, Shopify Forms, manual payment instructions, product images, tags, and third-party app content that is not stored as a Shopify translatable resource. Legal policies and URL handles can only be translated by hand, and 14 languages, including Tagalog, Bengali and Haitian Creole, are not supported at all.
Not for search. Builderify translates the page in the visitor's browser after one script tag in theme.liquid, in 27 languages, so search engines only see your default language and checkout stays Shopify's. It suits languages you want visitors to read along in, while Shopify languages keep their own indexed URLs.
Sources
Shopify’s help centre and app listings, read on 8 October 2026.
- Shopify App Store Shopify Translate & Adapt listing
- Shopify Help Center Translating content automatically using Translate & Adapt
- Shopify Help Center Translating content manually using Translate & Adapt
- Shopify Help Center Requirements and considerations for Translate & Adapt
- Shopify Help Center Requirements for selling in multiple languages
- Shopify Help Center Localization and translation
- Shopify Help Center Adding translations using CSV files
- Weglot Pricing: words and languages by plan
- Shopify App Store Weglot listing and plans
- Shopify App Store LangShop listing and plans
- Shopify App Store Transcy listing and plans
- Weglot blog Shopify Translate & Adapt limitations (17 July 2026)
- Shopify Community Machine translation quota has been exceeded
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