Amazon Translate
AWS machine translation API priced at $15 per million characters, with a 2 million character monthly free tier for the first 12 months
Free
Category
The best Translation software
Translation & Localization software and applications
- Tools listed
- 29
All 29 translation tools
Every listing shows its published starting price on the same footing, so a shortlist does not take ten tabs.
What translation software costs
Counted from the published pricing of the 29 listings on this page. A tool counts as free only where it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence or a starting price of zero.
- Cheapest paid plan
- $0.06Gengo
- Median entry price
- $21.49across 18 priced
- Dearest entry price
- $2,904memoQ
- Publish a $0 plan
- 13of 29
Paid translation plans in this set start anywhere from $0.06 a month for Gengo to $2,904 for memoQ. The median entry price across the 18 tools that publish one is $21.49, half of them start below that figure and half above it.
Entry price is not the ceiling. The dearest published tier anywhere in this category is Smartcat's at $60,000 a month, 20.7× the highest entry price on the page. Read the top of each ladder as well as the bottom, because that is where you land after two years of growth.
13 of 29 publish a $0 plan, and 5 of those charge nothing at all. 10 tools have no free tier of any kind.
19 of 29 keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote, which in practice means the number you end up paying at the top end is not on this page or on theirs.
How these vendors bill
The billing model each of the 29 translation listings publishes, counted. Two tools at the same headline price are not the same purchase if one of them charges per seat.
- quote
- 6
- subscription
- 6
- Open source, no licence fee
- 3
- Per million characters
- 3
- free
- 1
- freemium
- 1
- Per hour of transcription
- 1
- Per month by source key count
- 1
- Per month by string count
- 1
- Per power user per month
- 1
- Per user per month
- 1
- Per user per month, or quote for Enterprise
- 1
- Per word
- 1
- Per year by processed word volume
- 1
- Per year by Smartword volume
- 1
Separately, 19 of 29 publish at least one tier with no price attached. Those are sold by quote, so the top of the ladder is negotiable, and unknowable, until you talk to sales.
What “Translation” covers in practice
The subject tags that recur across these 29 listings, with the number of tools carrying each. A category label is a filing decision; this is the closer read of what is actually filed under it.
- Localisation9
- Translation Management8
- localization7
- Machine Translation5
- Translation Memory5
- Open Source4
- Translation Api4
- Cat Tool3
- Enterprise3
- Free3
- Tms3
- Gettext2
Carried by a single tool: ai, Community Translation, desktop, grammar, language-learning, Per Seat Pricing, Published Pricing, storytelling. If one of those is the reason you are here, the category page is the wrong lens, go straight to that product.
How to choose between them
Four things the numbers above should change about your shortlist.
Start with the free tiers if there are enough of them
13 of 29 translation tools here publish a $0 plan, which is enough to run a real trial without a purchase order. A free tier is worth more than a free trial when you are evaluating: a trial expires on the vendor's schedule, a free plan expires when you outgrow it. The thing to check before you commit is which of the capabilities below sit above the free line, starting with price not published, the single most frequently named capability in this category's published tiers.
Read the spread before you read the features
$0.06 to $2,904 is a $2,903.94 spread on entry price alone, and a spread that wide is never about polish, it is about who the vendor built for. Tools at the bottom of this ladder are priced for one person or a small team; tools near $2,904 are priced for a department with a procurement process. Decide which of those you are before you compare capability, or you will shortlist four tools that were never competing for the same buyer.
Check which tier you actually land on
19 of 29 tools here publish three or more tiers, and the median vendor in this category ships 3 of them. The advertised price is the first rung, and the things teams tend to need, price not published, translation memory, are named in higher plans far more often than in entry ones. Price your shortlist at the tier that contains what you need, not at the tier on the pricing page's left edge.
The billing model matters more than the headline number
This category splits across 15 billing models: quote on 6 listings, subscription on 6, and 13 other arrangements across the rest. A per-user price and a flat subscription at the same headline figure are not the same purchase, the first one grows with headcount and the second does not. Multiply by your real team size before you compare two numbers side by side.
Compare translation tools directly
Every pairing below is a full comparison: the same checklist applied to both, so a gap in one is a gap in the other.
- Amazon Translate vs Gengo
- Gengo vs Google Translate
- Google Translate vs MateCat
- MateCat vs Microsoft Translator
- Microsoft Translator vs OmegaT
- OmegaT vs Plunet
- Plunet vs Reverso
- Reverso vs Systran
Go straight to the numbers
- Amazon Translatepricingalternatives
- Gengopricingalternatives
- Google Translatepricingalternatives
- MateCatpricingalternatives
- Microsoft Translatorpricingalternatives
- OmegaTpricingalternatives
Questions people ask about translation software
Answered from the listings on this page, and nowhere else.
- How much does translation software cost?
- Across the 29 translation tools listed here, paid plans start between $0.06 and $2,904 a month, with a median entry price of $21.49. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $60,000 a month (Smartcat). 13 of 29 also publish a $0 plan.
- What is the cheapest translation software?
- 5 of the 29 tools listed here cost nothing at all. Among the ones that charge, Gengo has the lowest published entry price at $0.06 a month. Cheapest and best value are different questions: check which tier the capability you need actually appears in before you compare starting prices.
- Is there free translation software?
- Yes, 13 of 29 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. 5 of them are free outright, with no paid tier above. A tool is only counted as free here when it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence, or a starting price of zero, a free trial does not count.
- How is translation software usually billed?
- quote (6), subscription (6), Open source, no licence fee (3), Per million characters (3), plus 11 less common arrangements, counted across the 29 listings on this page. The distinction that costs money is per-seat versus flat: a per-user plan at the same headline price scales with your headcount and a flat subscription does not. 19 of 29 tools also keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote.
- What does translation software actually cover?
- The 29 tools on this page do not describe themselves the same way. The subject tags they carry most often are localisation (9), translation management (8), localization (7), machine translation (5), translation memory (5). That spread is the honest answer to what the category means in practice: it is not one product shape, and two tools filed under translation may overlap on very little.
- How many pricing tiers do translation tools offer?
- 29 of 29 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 3 tiers. 19 of 29 publish three or more. More tiers is not generosity, it usually means the capability you are buying for sits two rungs above the advertised price, so price your shortlist at the tier that contains it.
- How many translation tools are listed on Softwr?
- 29 approved translation listings appear on this page, including Amazon Translate, Gengo, Google Translate, MateCat. Each links to a full breakdown with its pricing tiers and plan detail, and the category can be filtered by price and sorted by rating above. You can also read the shortlist view at /best/translation, which ranks the same set by published rating.
Keep this
Email me these 29 picks
The shortlist for “Translation”, plus a note if any of their prices change.
Keep reading
Neighbouring categories
- Real Estate
- Email Marketing
- Project Management
- Mobile Development
- Documentation
- No-Code
- Field Service
- Gaming
Adjacent in the same taxonomy, not a ranking.