Google Translate

Free consumer translation app and website, backed by the paid Cloud Translation API priced per million characters

As of 1 September 2026, Google Translate is free to use. The free consumer-facing translation product is a different commercial entity from the Cloud Translation API that developers integrate, though both use the same underlying models. Softwr lists it under Translation. Google Translate is made by Google LLC, available on Web, iOS, Android, Browser extension.

Visit siteVisit Google Translate

Overview

What Google Translate does

Google Translate is a free web, mobile and browser-extension translation tool covering text, real-time conversation, camera-based image translation and document upload, supporting well over 100 languages. The consumer product carries no charge and no usage cap for ordinary personal use. What matters commercially for a business buyer is that the same translation capability, sold as the Cloud Translation API for developers to integrate into applications, is a metered product distinct from the free consumer app. Google’s Neural Machine Translation tier is priced at $20 per million characters, with the first 500,000 characters each month free on a recurring, non-expiring basis; a Translation LLM tier bills $10 per million characters for input and $10 per million for output, arriving at similar total cost. Custom model training carries its own tiered pricing starting at $80 per million characters, dropping at higher volumes. Document translation of DOCX, PPT or PDF files is billed separately at $0.08 per page. Buyers of the free consumer app are individuals and casual users with no volume constraints to worry about. Buyers of the API are developers and businesses embedding translation into a product, and the trade-off is that API costs scale directly with content volume, so a high-traffic application translating large amounts of user-generated content can accumulate meaningful monthly cost even at $20 per million characters.

What people use it for

An individual traveller or student using the free consumer app with no volume constraints
A developer embedding translated user-generated content into an app, paying per million characters translated
A company needing occasional bulk document translation and using the per-page document API pricing
A business training a custom domain-adapted model for specialised terminology using AutoML Translation

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 Google Translate.

The free consumer app and the metered developer API are commercially separate products despite sharing branding, which confuses buyers evaluating cost for an integration project.
API costs scale linearly with content volume, so a high-traffic application can accumulate significant monthly spend even at $20 per million characters.
Custom model training pricing starts as high as $80 per million characters at low volumes, a steep premium over the standard NMT rate for domain adaptation.
Machine translation output for low-resource language pairs or specialised terminology often still needs human post-editing, so the API alone does not replace professional translation for anything customer-facing at high stakes.
There is no bundled human-in-the-loop quality tier; a business needing verified accuracy has to pair the API with a separate service such as Unbabel or Gengo.

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Google Translate

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.

Google Translatevs
Microsoft Translator
Microsoft Translator: If you are already inside the Azure ecosystem and want per-character API pricing there instead
Google Translatevs
Amazon Translate
Amazon Translate: If you want a larger free tier (2 million characters per month for the first year) inside AWS
Google Translatevs
Gengo
Gengo: If you need human-translated, not machine-translated, output for customer-facing content

Pricing

What Google Translate costs

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

Google Translate (consumer)

Free

Free web, mobile and browser extension use
No published usage cap for personal use

Cloud Translation API (NMT)

$20 /mo

$20 per million characters translated
First 500,000 characters per month free, recurring

Cloud Translation API (Translation LLM)

$10 /mo

$10 per million characters input, $10 per million output

Document translation

$0.08 /mo

$0.08 per page for DOCX, PPT and PDF translation

Capabilities

Features

Text translation
Over 100 languages via web, app and browser extension
Real-time conversation mode
Two-way spoken conversation translation on mobile
Camera translation
Image-based translation of text captured through a phone camera
Document upload
Translation of uploaded document files in the consumer app
Cloud Translation API
Metered developer API for embedding translation into applications
Custom models (AutoML Translation)
Domain-adapted translation models trained on customer-supplied data

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 the consumer Google Translate app really free with no limits?

Yes, for personal use there is no published cap or charge; usage limits only apply to the metered developer API.

How much does the developer API cost?

$20 per million characters for standard neural machine translation, after a recurring 500,000-character monthly free allowance.

Can I train it on my own terminology?

Yes, through AutoML Translation custom models, priced separately and starting at $80 per million characters at low volumes.

Keep looking

Where to go from Google Translate

Best Translation software for

Compare Google Translate with

Other Translation software

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 plan10 researched notes
Microsoft Translator
Azure AI Translator, priced at $10 per million characters for standard text translation with volume commitment discounts available
Free plan10 researched notes
Systran
Enterprise and on-premises machine translation, sold on per-user monthly plans and separate quoted API and installed-server products
Pricing on request10 researched notes
Gengo
Human translation marketplace and API, priced per word from $0.06, owned by Lionbridge since 2019
10 researched notes
Unbabel
Human-in-the-loop translation combining machine translation with human post-editing, priced per word rather than per character
Pricing on request10 researched notes
Reverso
Consumer translation, dictionary and grammar tool with a free tier and a Premium subscription around $6.49 to $9.99 a month
Free plan10 researched notes
DeepL
AI-powered language translation
Free, then $8.99/mo9 researched notes
OmegaT
Free, open source desktop CAT tool under the GPLv3, maintained by a volunteer community rather than a company
Open source10 researched notes
Sonix
Automated transcription and translation with per-hour pricing published up front
From $10/mo12 researched notes
XTM Cloud
Enterprise translation management from XTM International, now the centre of a private-equity backed roll-up that also owns Transifex
Pricing on request12 researched notes
Localazy
Localisation platform priced per source string, where adding target languages costs nothing extra
Free, then $34/mo12 researched notes
Wordbee
Luxembourg translation management priced at a flat 150 EUR per power user per month, with translators and requesters not counted as seats
From €150/mo12 researched notes
Twine
An open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories
Free plan9 researched notes
Weglot
Make your website multilingual in minutes
Free, then $17/mo11 researched notes
Plunet
Business and translation management system for language service providers and in-house translation departments
Pricing on request11 researched notes
Unbabel
Human-in-the-loop translation combining machine translation with human post-editing, priced per word rather than per character
Pricing on request10 researched notes
XTM Cloud
Enterprise translation management from XTM International, now the centre of a private-equity backed roll-up that also owns Transifex
Pricing on request12 researched notes
Wordbee
Luxembourg translation management priced at a flat 150 EUR per power user per month, with translators and requesters not counted as seats
From €150/mo12 researched notes

Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Google Translate, 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.

Best Translation software alternatives

View all Translation software