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Translation · head to head

Amazon Translate vs Gengo

Amazon Translate logo

Amazon Translate

Translation

AWS machine translation API priced at $15 per million characters, with a 2 million character monthly free tier for the first 12 months

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Gengo logo

Gengo

Translation

Human translation marketplace and API, priced per word from $0.06, owned by Lionbridge since 2019

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Amazon Translate has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Amazon Translate the generous 2 million character monthly free tier applies only for a customer’s first 12 months on AWS, so translation costs step up materially in year two with no change in usage.; Gengo it is not a fit for specialised legal, medical or literary translation, since the crowdsourced model is built for higher-volume, lower-complexity content.
  • They diverge on capability: Amazon Translate covers Text translation API, Gengo covers Standard and Pro quality tiers.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Amazon Translate and Gengo actually diverge.

Attributes where Amazon Translate and Gengo differ
AttributeAmazon TranslateGengo
Starting priceFreeOn request
Pricing modelPer million charactersPer word
Free tierYesNo

Identical on both: platforms (Web), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Translation).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Amazon Translate

  • Text translation API
  • Document translation
  • Active Custom Translation
  • Real-time document translation
  • Formality control
  • AWS-native integration

Only in Gengo

  • Standard and Pro quality tiers
  • Developer API
  • No minimum spend
  • Crowdsourced translator network
  • Bulk file upload
  • CMS and platform integrations

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Amazon Translate

  • An AWS-native development team wanting translation billed through the same console as the rest of their infrastructurenot Gengo
  • A new AWS customer running a translation-heavy pilot project inside the generous first-year 2 million character monthly free tiernot Gengo
  • A team building a translation pipeline directly integrated with S3 and Lambda for document processingnot Gengo
  • A business wanting formality-adjusted output for specific language pairs in customer-facing contentnot Gengo

Gengo

  • An e-commerce seller translating product listings into multiple languages without a minimum spend requirementnot Amazon Translate
  • A company integrating the Gengo API into a content pipeline to automatically route text for human translationnot Amazon Translate
  • A support team needing occasional human-translated responses without committing to Unbabel’s enterprise minimumnot Amazon Translate
  • A publisher needing straightforward, transparently priced human translation for shorter, lower-stakes contentnot Amazon Translate

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Amazon Translate

  • The generous 2 million character monthly free tier applies only for a customer’s first 12 months on AWS, so translation costs step up materially in year two with no change in usage.
  • There is no consumer-facing app or website, so it is unusable for casual personal translation the way Google Translate or Microsoft Translator are.
  • Document translation of Office files costs double the standard per-character rate, which is easy to underestimate when budgeting a document-heavy project.
  • Active Custom Translation, the tool for improving output with domain-specific data, costs four times the standard rate at $60 per million characters.
  • As with all major MT APIs, output for low-resource languages and specialised terminology often still needs human review, so it does not substitute for a human translation service on customer-facing or legally sensitive content.

Gengo

  • It is not a fit for specialised legal, medical or literary translation, since the crowdsourced model is built for higher-volume, lower-complexity content.
  • Quality consistency depends on which individual translator from the crowdsourced network is assigned, which can vary more than a dedicated agency relationship would.
  • Turnaround, while fast for its category, is still meaningfully slower than a machine translation API, since every job requires a human to complete it.
  • Since being acquired by Lionbridge in 2019, Gengo’s product direction is now set within a much larger localisation company’s priorities rather than as an independent business.
  • Per-word pricing, while transparent, is still substantially more expensive per unit of content than a machine translation API, so it is a poor fit for translating very large volumes of low-stakes content.

Pricing, plan by plan

Amazon Translate

Free
  • Standard text translation$15/month
    • $15 per million characters
    • 2 million characters per month free for the first 12 months on AWS
  • Document translation (Office files)$30/month
    • $30 per million characters, double the standard rate
  • Real-time document translation$15/month
    • Text and HTML documents, no free tier
  • Active Custom Translation$60/month
    • $60 per million characters
    • 500,000 characters per month free for the first 2 months

Gengo

On request
  • Standard$0.06/month
    • Human translation, $0.06 per word starting rate
    • No minimum spend or setup fee
  • Pro$undefined/month
    • Higher-quality tier, rate varies by language pair and content type
    • Human translation with additional review

Which should you pick?

Choose Amazon Translate if

  • You need text translation api.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You also want document translation.
Amazon Translate review

Choose Gengo if

  • You need standard and pro quality tiers.
  • You also want developer api.
Gengo review

Questions people ask

Is Amazon Translate or Gengo better?
Neither clearly leads. Amazon Translate starts at Free and Gengo at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Amazon Translate or Gengo?
Amazon Translate has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Amazon Translate and On request for Gengo.
Does Amazon Translate or Gengo run on more platforms?
Both run on Web, so platform support will not decide this one for you.
Can I use Amazon Translate for free?
Yes. Amazon Translate has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Gengo starts at On request.
What is Amazon Translate best used for?
Amazon Translate is most often used for an aws-native development team wanting translation billed through the same console as the rest of their infrastructure, a new aws customer running a translation-heavy pilot project inside the generous first-year 2 million character monthly free tier, a team building a translation pipeline directly integrated with s3 and lambda for document processing, a business wanting formality-adjusted output for specific language pairs in customer-facing content. Of those, an aws-native development team wanting translation billed through the same console as the rest of their infrastructure and a new aws customer running a translation-heavy pilot project inside the generous first-year 2 million character monthly free tier are not what Gengo is typically brought in for.
What can Amazon Translate do that Gengo cannot?
Amazon Translate covers Text translation API, Document translation, Active Custom Translation, Real-time document translation. Gengo covers Standard and Pro quality tiers, Developer API, No minimum spend, Crowdsourced translator network.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Amazon Translate: How generous is the free tier really?

2 million characters per month, the largest of the three major cloud APIs, but only for the first 12 months after which standard per-character pricing applies to everything.

Gengo: Is Gengo machine translation or human translation?

Human translation. It should be compared with Unbabel, not with Google Translate, Microsoft Translator or Amazon Translate, which are machine translation APIs.

Amazon Translate: Is there a consumer app like Google Translate?

No, Amazon Translate is a developer API only, accessed through the AWS console and SDKs, with no separate public-facing app.

Gengo: Is there a minimum spend?

No, Gengo publishes per-word pricing with no minimum spend or setup fee, unlike Unbabel’s enterprise-gated rate structure.

Amazon Translate: How much does document translation cost compared to text?

Double the standard rate, at $30 per million characters for Office file formats.

Gengo: Who owns Gengo?

Lionbridge, a larger localisation and AI data services company, acquired Gengo in January 2019.

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