Gengo

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

As of 1 September 2026, Gengo's pricing is not published; the vendor quotes on request. A crowdsourced human translation service priced transparently per word with no minimum spend or setup fee, distinct from machine translation APIs because every job is completed by a human translator. Softwr lists it under Translation. Gengo is made by Gengo (a Lionbridge company), available on Web.

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Overview

What Gengo does

Gengo is a human translation service offering both a self-serve web interface and a developer API for submitting text and documents for translation by a crowdsourced network of vetted translators, tiered by quality level and language pair. It was founded in Tokyo in 2008 and built its reputation on fast turnaround for shorter, lower-stakes content such as product listings, reviews and support tickets, expanding later into higher-quality tiers for more demanding content. Commercially it sits in the same category as Unbabel rather than alongside Google, Microsoft or Amazon’s machine translation APIs, since every Gengo translation is completed by a human, not a model; comparing its per-word price to a machine translation API’s per-character price is comparing two different products. Standard-tier translation starts at $0.06 per word, with higher Pro-tier rates for specific language pairs and content types, and Gengo publishes its pricing transparently with no minimum spend, setup fee or hidden cost, which is more open than Unbabel’s enterprise-gated rate structure. Lionbridge, a much larger localisation and AI training-data company, acquired Gengo in January 2019, folding it into a broader AI and machine learning data services offering. Buyers are businesses needing straightforward human translation without an enterprise minimum commitment, from individual sellers translating product listings to companies integrating the API into a content pipeline. The trade-off is turnaround speed and depth: it is built for high-volume, lower-complexity content rather than specialised legal, medical or literary translation, and quality consistency depends on which of its crowdsourced translators is assigned to a given job.

What people use it for

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

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about 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.

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Gengo

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

Gengovs
Unbabel
Unbabel: If you need enterprise-scale volume and are prepared to commit to a minimum annual spend for a lower effective rate
Gengovs
MateCat
MateCat: If you want a free CAT tool for managing your own translators rather than paying per word for a managed marketplace

Pricing

What Gengo costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Standard

$0.06 /mo

Human translation, $0.06 per word starting rate
No minimum spend or setup fee

Pro

On request

Higher-quality tier, rate varies by language pair and content type
Human translation with additional review

Capabilities

Features

Standard and Pro quality tiers
Per-word pricing that varies by translator quality level and language pair
Developer API
Programmatic submission and retrieval of translation jobs for content pipelines
No minimum spend
Transparent per-word pricing with no setup fee or minimum commitment
Crowdsourced translator network
Vetted freelance human translators across many language pairs
Bulk file upload
Batch translation submission through the web interface
CMS and platform integrations
Plugins for common content management and e-commerce platforms

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

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.

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.

Who owns Gengo?

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

Keep looking

Where to go from Gengo

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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Gengo, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

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