Translation API pricing is confusing on purpose. Some charge per character, some per word, some per request. Some have free tiers that look generous until you hit the limits. Some quote prices that don't include the base subscription fee.
I calculated comparable costs at three volume levels using public list prices and recurring credits where they are directly comparable. DeepL's retired API Free and API Pro numbers are deliberately not reused: new customers choose Developer or Growth and should verify the live Growth quote.
The comparison table
| API | 5M chars/mo | 25M chars/mo | 100M chars/mo | Quality |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Langbly | $22.50* | $122.50* | $497.50* | Context-aware |
| Langbly (per-M rate) | $5/M | $5/M | $5/M | Context-aware |
| Google Translate | $90** | $490** | $1,990** | Neural MT |
| Google (per-M rate) | $20/M | $20/M | $20/M | Neural MT |
| DeepL Growth | Check live plan | Check live plan | Check live plan | Neural MT |
| Amazon Translate | $75 | $375 | $1,500 | Neural MT |
| Amazon (per-M rate) | $15/M | $15/M | $15/M | Neural MT |
| Azure Translator | $50 | $250 | $1,000 | Neural MT |
| Azure (per-M rate) | $10/M | $10/M | $10/M | Neural MT |
| MyMemory | Free**** | N/A | N/A | Mixed |
| LibreTranslate | Free (self-host) | Free (self-host) | Free (self-host) | Basic MT |
* Langbly pricing: $5 per million characters (500K/month free). 5M = $22.50, 25M = $122.50, 100M = $497.50.
** Google provides 500K free characters per month. Calculated as: (volume - 500K) * $20/M.
*** DeepL's current Growth pricing should be checked directly; retired API Pro prices are not a valid current benchmark.
**** MyMemory limits and commercial terms should be checked before production use.
Breaking it down
Cheapest at 5M characters/month
At 5 million characters per month (typical for a SaaS app supporting 3-5 languages), the ranking is:
- Langbly: $22.50/month ($5/M × 4.5M after 500K free). No base fee.
- Azure Translator: $50/month at $10/M.
- Amazon Translate: $75/month at $15/M.
- Google Translate: $90/month (after 500K free credit).
At this volume, Langbly's calculated API cost is 55% below Azure's listed unit-rate result and 75% below Google Translate after Google's monthly credit. DeepL is omitted from the numeric ranking because its current Growth terms are plan-dependent.
Cheapest at 25M characters/month
At 25 million characters per month (typical for a product localized into 10+ languages with regular updates):
- Langbly: $122.50/month ($5/M × 24.5M after 500K free).
- Azure Translator: $250/month.
- Amazon Translate: $375/month.
- Google Translate: $490/month.
The gap is significant at higher volumes. Langbly is 51% cheaper than Azure and 75% cheaper than Google Translate.
Cheapest at 100M characters/month
At 100 million characters per month (large-scale localization, content platforms, or translation service providers):
- Langbly: $497.50/month ($5/M × 99.5M after 500K free).
- Azure Translator: $1,000/month.
- Amazon Translate: $1,500/month.
- Google Translate: $1,990/month.
At this volume, Langbly is 50% cheaper than Azure and 75% cheaper than Google. That's nearly $1,500/month saving compared to Google Translate alone.
The "free" options
Google Translate free tier
Google gives you 500,000 characters per month free. That sounds like a lot, but it's roughly 100 pages of text. If you're translating a website or app into multiple languages, you'll blow through it in the first week. After the free tier, you're paying $20 per million characters with no volume discounts. See the full Google Translate API pricing breakdown for details.
DeepL Developer
DeepL's old API Free and API Pro plans can no longer be purchased. Developer includes one million characters in total for development and evaluation; it is not a renewable monthly free tier. Production customers should compare the current Growth plan, its included usage and its overage terms. Details are in our DeepL API pricing guide.
MyMemory
MyMemory offers 5,000 characters per day for free (roughly 150,000 per month). Quality is mixed because it blends machine translation with crowd-sourced translation memories. Fine for testing. Not reliable for production. No SLA, no guarantees on uptime or quality consistency.
LibreTranslate
LibreTranslate is open-source and free to self-host. The catch: you need to run your own server. That means server costs ($20-50/month for a basic instance), maintenance, updates, and dealing with performance tuning. Translation quality is noticeably below Google, DeepL, and Langbly. It uses the Argos Translate engine, which handles common language pairs adequately but struggles with less common ones.
Hidden costs to watch for
The per-character price isn't the whole story. Other costs that affect your total spend:
- Character counting differences: Google counts spaces and punctuation. So does DeepL. A 1,000-character paragraph might be counted as 1,200 characters including spaces. This inflates your bill by 15-20%. Langbly counts the same way (it's part of the Google Translate v2 compatibility), but the lower per-character rate absorbs the impact.
- HTML markup: If you send HTML to translate, the tags count as characters on most APIs. A paragraph with formatting can be 40% markup. Google doesn't charge for HTML tags if you specify the "html" format, but not all providers offer this.
- Retranslation: Cheap translation that requires heavy human editing costs more in total than better translation that needs light review. The per-character cost of the API is one input. The cost of human review per string is the other. Lower-quality engines save on API costs but increase review costs.
- GCP/AWS account overhead: Using Google Translate or Amazon Translate means setting up and maintaining a cloud provider account. That's not technically a translation cost, but it adds complexity and time.
What about quality?
Cheapest isn't always best. The cheapest translation that requires 50% editing by a human costs more in total than a slightly more expensive translation that requires 10% editing.
At the quality tiers:
- Basic (LibreTranslate, MyMemory): Understandable but often awkward. Fine for getting the gist of text. Not suitable for production software UI or customer-facing content.
- Standard (Google, Amazon, Azure): Reliable for most content. Good grammar, decent vocabulary. Struggles with context-dependent translations and domain-specific terminology.
- Advanced (DeepL, Langbly): Better handling of context, more natural phrasing, fewer errors in complex sentences. DeepL is particularly strong for European languages. Langbly's context-aware approach handles technical content and placeholder-heavy strings well.
For production use, I'd exclude the basic tier entirely. The standard tier works if you have human reviewers. The advanced tier works with lighter review or, for internal content, without review.
Switching costs
One thing that keeps teams on expensive APIs: the perceived cost of switching. If you've built your integration around the Google Translate v2 API, switching to a different API means rewriting your translation code, right?
Not necessarily. Langbly is specifically designed as a Google Translate v2 drop-in replacement. Same endpoint structure, same request/response format. Change the API URL and key, keep everything else. Your existing integration code, your TMS integration, your CI/CD pipeline: all unchanged.
If you're on Amazon Translate or Azure, switching requires some code changes since they use different API formats. But the actual translation call is usually a single function in your codebase. The migration is hours, not weeks.
Recommendations by use case
Hobby project or prototype: Google's recurring 500K-character monthly credit, Langbly's included 500K input characters per month, or DeepL Developer's one-million-character total evaluation allowance can all support testing. The allowances are not equivalent, so choose based on whether you need recurring or one-time evaluation usage.
SaaS app, 2-5 languages: Langbly ($22.50/month for 5M characters). Cheapest paid option by far, with quality on par with or better than Google Translate.
Growing product, 5-15 languages: Langbly calculates to $122.50 for 25M input characters after the included 500K. At this volume, Google's listed text-translation price calculates to $490 after its monthly credit; verify DeepL's live Growth quote separately.
Large-scale localization: Langbly ($497.50/month for 100M characters) or Azure Translator ($1,000/month for 100M) if you're locked into the Microsoft ecosystem.
Self-hosted, maximum control: LibreTranslate if you can accept lower quality and handle infrastructure. Budget $30-50/month for server costs plus your time maintaining it.
For a broader comparison including feature details, see our translation API pricing comparison.