Website translation cost

Words × languages.Then every edit.

What it costs to translate a website comes down to three numbers: how many words it has, how many languages you add, and how you pay for them, by the word, by a monthly plan, by the character or by the string. Then comes the part most price guides skip: what every edit costs after launch. A 20-page site of 8,000 words in 3 languages is 24,000 words to translate, which lands on Weglot’s Business plan at about $32 a month. The receipt below prices your own site side by side.

Price my site Start free
Plan prices from vendors’ own pages checked 30 October 2026

By the Builderify team

Plans billed monthly, USD Builderify after 250 free credits a month Review by a fluent person not included
01 / The answer

How much does it cost
to translate a website?
Count before you compare.

Every price for translating a website is the same sum: words × languages × a rate, plus what each later edit costs. A translator multiplies by a price per word. A plugin or proxy service sells a plan sized by translated words and languages. A machine translation API bills per character, per language. Builderify bills per string, per language.

So the average cost of translation for a website is less useful than your own word count. A five-page brochure site and a 400-product shop share no sensible average. Bring the three numbers on the right to any quote, and every price on this page becomes comparable.

  1. 01

    Unique words

    Count each page’s own copy once. The menu, footer and cookie notice repeat on every page, so count them once too. Product names, prices and codes that stay the same in every language don’t need translating at all.

  2. 02

    Languages

    Count the languages you add, not your original one. Weglot counts that way too, and it is the number that multiplies everything else. Where your visitors are from is the honest guide: User Journey shows the country of each visitor.

  3. 03

    Words changed a month

    New blog posts, a new product, a price note, a reworded offer. A site that never changes costs once; most sites keep changing, and each change has to be translated into every language again.

Pricing this because Google’s free dropdown stopped being supported on 1 October 2026? Start with the guide to replacing the Google Translate widget, then come back with your numbers.

02 / Four ways to pay

Website translation pricing,
four models side by side.

Each model charges for a different unit, which is why quotes are so hard to compare. Here is what each one counts, with prices from the source’s own page, read on 30 October 2026.

1. A translator or agency

Per word

A person translates your words and charges for each one, usually with a minimum fee per job. Rates depend on the language pair, the subject and the country, so the only price that counts is the quote for your words. As a published reference point, AUSIT, Australia’s professional body for translators, puts the minimum for general text at A$0.25 a word in its fee guide for self-employed translators, updated 29 October 2025.AUSIT

  • The same guide allows 3 hours to translate 1,000 words of general text and 45 minutes to check them in a separate session.
  • Post-editing machine translation to a human standard: 75% of the translation fee. Proofreading someone else’s translation: 50%.
  • AUSIT says these are for information, not market prices: some translators charge more, others less.

At that A$0.25 floor, the made-up site’s 24,000 words would come to A$6,000 before any edits. The receipt leaves the rate box empty for your own quote, in your own currency.

2. A translation plugin or proxy

Per month

A monthly plan, sized by translated words and languages, that machine-translates your pages and lets you edit the result. Weglot counts translated words as your original words times your languages: 8,000 words in three languages is 24,000.Weglot Academy GTranslate’s Startup plan is $25.00 a month or $250 a year for all languages with unlimited words and pageviews; its Custom plan, listed as bilingual, is $12 a month.GTranslate

Weglot plan Translated words Languages A month
Free 2,000 1 €0about $0
Starter 10,000 1 €15about $17
Business 50,000 3 €29about $32
Pro 200,000 5 €79about $87
Advanced 1,000,000 10 €299about $329
Extended 5,000,000 20 €699about $769

Weglot bills in euros and calls its dollar prices an estimate; prices exclude VAT, and yearly billing is ten times the monthly price.Weglot

3. A machine translation API

Per character

The cheapest per word and the most work. Google Cloud Translation’s standard model gives the first 500,000 characters a month free, as a $10 credit, then charges $20 per million characters. It counts the characters you send for each target language, spaces and HTML tags included, and translating a DOCX or PDF document is $0.08 a page.Google Cloud

What you don’t get is a website: someone has to build the language switcher, store the translations, send only changed text, and give you a way to correct the machine. That developer time is the real price of this route.

4. Usage, per string

Per string, per language

You pay for each piece of text once per language, with no plan. On Builderify Translations, one string in one language is a translation row at 0.1 credit. A string is one block of text the snippet finds: a heading, a paragraph, a button label. So 1,000 strings in 3 languages is 3,000 rows, 300 credits, or $2.70 at the Starter pack rate.

Every account gets 250 credits a month, which covers 2,500 rows if nothing else uses them. Packs are one-time, from $9, and their credits never expire; a row costs $0.0009 at the Starter rate and $0.000233 at the Scale rate. The widget’s page loads are billed too, at 10 credits per 1,000.

03 / Cost receipt

Website translation cost
calculator
Launch, then every month after.

Type in your pages, words, languages and how much you change a month. Add a translator’s per-word quote or another subscription price if you have one. The receipt prices the launch and each month after, side by side. Plan prices are pre-filled from the vendors’ pages on 30 October 2026; overwrite them if yours differ. Nothing you type leaves your browser.

Website translation cost · your site

Optional, from your own quotes

Words on the site
8,000
Words to translate
24,000
Strings, roughly
1,000
Translation rows
3,000

Translator, per word

Launch24,000 words
Each month1,500 words
Launch cost—
Edits a month—
Year one—

Type your quote’s per-word rate to price it. Minimum fees per job are not included.

Plugin or proxy plan

Weglot Business 50,000 words, 3 languages
A year, billed monthly$384.00
GTranslate StartupAll languages, unlimited words
A year, billed monthly$300.00
Your other plan, a year—

Checked 30 October 2026. Edits are included up to the plan’s word limit.

Builderify, per string

Launch3,000 rows300 cr
Edits a month189 rows18.9 cr
Page loads a month50 cr
Free each month−250 cr
To buy, month one118.9 cr
To buy, later months0 cr
Year one, Starter rate$1.07

Builderify in dollars, at each pack’s rate

Pack Launch, before free credits Month one Later months Year one
Starter $9 for 1,000 $2.70 $1.07 $0.00 $1.07
Growth $29 for 5,000 $1.74 $0.69 $0.00 $0.69
Pro $69 for 15,000 $1.38 $0.55 $0.00 $0.55
Business $149 for 50,000 $0.89 $0.35 $0.00 $0.35
Scale $349 for 150,000 $0.70 $0.28 $0.00 $0.28

Packs are bought whole, once, and their credits never expire, so each figure is the share of a pack that month uses. Month one and later months are after the 250 free credits; AI drafts, if you use them, are billed on top.

Words to strings, roughly. Builderify counts strings, not words. A button or menu item is one to three words; a paragraph can be fifty. Eight words a string is a starting guess, not a measurement: switch training on and the workbench shows your real count after a few days of visits.

Why edits are per string. Change one word in a sentence and the whole sentence is new text, so it is translated again in each language. The receipt rounds your monthly words up to whole strings for that reason.

What none of the columns include. A fluent person’s review, images with text in them, PDFs and emails. Section 05 prices those.

04 / After launch

What do updates cost
on a translated website?
The bill that never ends.

Every word you change after launch is translated again, once for each language. Quotes are written for the launch, so this line rarely appears on them, yet over a year it can be larger than the launch itself.

  • A translator: each change is a new small job, so the minimum fee often costs more than the words.
  • A plan: new text is translated automatically, up to the plan’s word limit. Weglot says it keeps translations until you delete them, so ask whether old versions still count towards your total.Weglot Academy
  • An API: you pay for whatever your code sends again, so it should send only what changed.
  • Builderify: an edited sentence is collected as a new string and translated into each language as new rows. Unchanged text is never charged again, and the old string stays in the list until you delete it.
One month of edits, 3 languages8 words a string
Words changed Words to translate Builderify rows Credits Starter rate
200 600 75 7.5 $0.07
500 1,500 189 18.9 $0.17
2,000 6,000 750 75 $0.68
5,000 15,000 1,875 187.5 $1.69

Credits before the 250 free ones each month, and without page loads. For a translator, multiply the middle column by the per-word rate on your quote, then check the minimum fee. On a plan, add the middle column to your translated-word total each month and see which tier it lands in.

05 / Hidden costs

What the price per word
leaves out.

Six things turn a cheap quote into an expensive project. None of them shows in a word count, and every method has to deal with them somehow.

  • 01

    Review by a fluent person

    Machine output needs reading before visitors see it, and someone has to do the reading. AUSIT’s guide allows 45 minutes to check 1,000 words of general text and prices proofreading at half the translation fee.AUSIT If a colleague or a friend does it, budget their hours instead.

  • 02

    Updates after launch

    The recurring line from section 04. Put a figure on how much you change a month before you sign anything, and ask each supplier what one changed sentence costs.

  • 03

    Images with text in them

    Words drawn into a banner or infographic are pixels, so no on-page tool can translate them. Each one is a new image per language, which is design time. Alt text is different: Builderify can collect it along with placeholders and titles.

  • 04

    PDFs and downloads

    Menus, price lists and brochures you link to are separate files, and a page translator leaves them alone. They are their own job: by the page with Google’s document translation at $0.08 a page,Google Cloud or by the word with a translator, plus re-laying out the file.

  • 05

    Emails and messages

    Order confirmations, newsletters and welcome emails never pass through the page, so translating the site doesn’t translate them. With Broadcast campaigns, you write each language’s version yourself and send it to the people who read it.

  • 06

    Pages that rank in Google

    A translation shown only in the visitor’s browser is not a translated page in search. To rank in another language, each one needs its own URL, translated meta tags and hreflang links, which some plans charge more for. The guide to translating a website into Spanish covers how.

Platform limits move the price too. Shopify’s free app machine-translates only a set number of languages: see how Translate & Adapt’s limit works. On Squarespace, read the guide to translating a Squarespace website. On WordPress, the GTranslate alternative guide compares free and paid translation plugins.

06 / Per string

Website translation
without a monthly plan
Pay for the strings, once.

Builderify has no plan and no subscription. Translations charges 0.1 credit for each string in each language, the widget’s page loads cost 10 credits per 1,000, and every account gets 250 free credits a month. Packs are one-time, start at $9 and never expire. See pricing for the full rate card.

What keeps the bill down

  • Repeats are stored once. Training mode collects your copy as people browse and keeps each piece of text once, so a footer that appears on fifty pages is one string.
  • Ignore what shouldn’t change. Brand names and product codes can be ignored in the workbench, and admin or checkout paths kept out of the queue.
  • Bring your own translator. Each language exports as a CSV or XLIFF file and imports back, so a translator can work in their own tools.
  • Nothing goes live unchecked. Translations stay drafts until you publish them, and you can flag one for someone else to review.

What it won’t do

  • Draft for free. The workbench can draft a language with AI, and those drafts are billed separately, in credits based on what the AI model used. They arrive as drafts flagged for review unless you chose to publish AI output straight away.
  • Match a professional translator. A machine draft read by someone fluent is fine for most site copy; legal pages, contracts and anything regulated deserve a qualified translator.
  • Make translated pages rank. Except with the WordPress plugin’s SEO translations, Builderify translates in the visitor’s browser, with no separate URL or hreflang per language, so it is no substitute for translated pages in Google.
  • Grow without a limit. It collects up to 5,000 strings per website, which suits a brochure site or a small shop more than a catalogue of thousands of products.
Questions

Website translation costs, before you ask.

Multiply the words on the site by the languages you add, then by the rate: a translator's price per word, a plan sized by translated words, or a price per string. On 30 October 2026, Weglot's Business plan was €29 a month (about $32) for 50,000 translated words in 3 languages. Then add what each later edit costs, because changed text is translated again in every language.

There is no reliable average, because rates vary by language pair, subject and country, so get a quote for your own words. As a reference point, AUSIT, the Australian professional body, puts the minimum for general text at A$0.25 a word in its fee guide updated 29 October 2025, with post-editing machine translation at 75% of that fee and proofreading at 50%.

Usually, yes. A translator bills each change as a new job, often with a minimum fee. On a plan, new text counts towards the word limit. On Builderify, an edited sentence is collected as a new string and costs 0.1 credit per language, while unchanged text is never charged again.

Per word, yes. Google Cloud Translation gives the first 500,000 characters a month free, then charges $20 per million characters for each target language. But an API is not a website feature: someone has to build the language switcher, store the translations and send only changed text, and that time usually costs more than the characters.

Sources

Each vendor’s pricing page was read on 30 October 2026, monthly billing, before tax. Weglot bills in euros and its dollar figures are its own estimate. Lokalise, Localize and ConveyThis are left out because their pages didn’t give word and language limits we could print with confidence that day. The AUSIT figures are Australian dollars and a guide for self-employed translators, not a market survey. The Builderify figures come from the rate card on this site.

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