Best Alternative for Google Translate? 4 Top Options Compared in 2024

Searching for some alternatives for Google Translate?

Google Translate is one of the best translation services that you’ll find. It supports a huge number of languages and is generally pretty accurate no matter which language pairs you choose.

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best translation service for your specific situation. You might be better off with a different service for your specific language(s) or there might be budget restrictions that factor into your decisions.

Overall, while Google Translate is great, there are also other quality translation services that you can consider, which is the focus of this post.

We’ll start off by quickly running down some of the pros and cons of using Google Translate. Then, we’ll dig into four Google Translate alternatives, and explain why each service might make a good alternative.

We’re going to focus primarily on using these tools to translate your own website or app via API. However, most of these alternatives also offer consumer-focused apps and web interfaces to translate other websites or content, which we’ll also be sure to note.

So whether you want a tool to translate your website or you just want some translation help on your next trip abroad, you should be able to find a good option on our list.

Google Translate Pros and Cons: Do You Need an Alternative?

While we are writing a post on alternatives for Google Translate, we still think that Google Translate is the best translation service for most people.

It has several large advantages:

1. If you have a WordPress website, you can easily translate all of your site’s content by pairing Google Translate with TranslatePress;
2. It supports the most languages of pretty much any tool that you’ll find. With over 133 languages supported, there’s a pretty good chance you can find whatever language pair you need;
3. Its translations are very accurate. While we will share one service that ranks above Google Translate, Google Translate is generally one of the highest-rated services when it comes to automatic translation. Basically, it’s hard to find an alternative with more accurate translations;
4. The web browser and smartphone apps are free to use. There’s also an API for website translation that has a free tier;
5. For consumers, it has useful features like the ability to translate text in images or translate voice conversations.

However, there are some disadvantages that might make other tools more optimal for your situation:

• While Google Translate is generally very accurate, you can find services that are more accurate for certain language pairs, especially when it comes to understanding context and local idioms;
• If you’re on a tight budget and you need translation API access, you can find services that have more generous free tiers and cheaper premium prices. This is probably one of the biggest reasons to consider a Google Translate alternative, as Google Translate is on the pricier end of things.

Best Alternative for Google Translate: Four Top Options

Now, let’s get into our picks for the four best Google Translate alternatives. For each alternative, we’ll do our best to explain both its advantages and disadvantages vs Google Translate.

There are two ways that you can use most of these translation services:

1. API – you’ll use an API if you want to translate your website’s content. The API lets you automatically send your site’s content to the service for translation using a tool like TranslatePress, which is helpful for bulk translation. This is a more business-focused solution.
2. Browser interface or apps – you can translate content by manually typing or pasting it into a web browser interface or smartphone app. Or, some tools can translate voices or text from images. This is a more consumer-focused solution. For example, you could use a smartphone app to help you translate stuff during your trip to France.

Again, we’re mainly interested in website translation and API usage for this post, but we will mention the consumer-focused solutions when applicable.

1. DeepL

DeepL is one of the best Google Translate alternatives for people who really value accuracy, especially when it comes to grasping context and local idioms.

DeepL offers an API that you can use to automatically translate your website, as well as a web interface and apps to translate text content or text files (like .docx or .pptx).

Again, the biggest advantage of DeepL is the quality/accuracy of its translations. In a blind test between DeepL, Google Translate, Amazon Translate, and Microsoft Translator (that was commissioned by DeepL), most translators preferred DeepL’s translation when there was a noticeable difference between the translations:

*Note – this graph does not include situations where translators ranked the translations as equally good (e.g. they were identical). It only highlights situations where translators preferred one service to the other. In those situations, they were way more likely to prefer DeepL over the other translation services.

The main downside of DeepL is its limited language selection. While Google Translate supports over 100+ different languages, DeepL only supports 31+ languages at the time that we’re writing this post – you can see the full list here. However, over 800 combinations between these languages are possible.

DeepL supports most European languages, as well as Chinese*, Japanese, and Korean. *You can use both traditional and simplified Chinese as your translation source. However, you can only output translations as simplified Chinese.

DeepL is also about 25% more expensive than Google Translate for the translation API, which might factor into your decision if you need to exceed the DeepL API free tier (which lets you translate 500,000 characters per month for free).

Overall, DeepL can be a great alternative to Google Translate because of its accuracy. However, you’ll need to make sure that DeepL supports your chosen languages, as it doesn’t offer as broad of a selection as Google Translate. You’ll also need to be ok with paying a little more if your needs exceed the free tier.

To learn more, you can read our Google Translate vs DeepL comparison or our full DeepL Translator review.

If you’re using WordPress, we also have a guide on how to use DeepL to automatically translate a website on WordPress.

2. Microsoft Translator

Microsoft Translator is, as the name suggests, the translation service from Microsoft.

Through Microsoft’s cloud services, you can use the Microsoft Translator API to translate your website’s content.

Microsoft Translator also offers lots of consumer-focused tools and applications, such as the ability to start a group meeting and let everyone participate in their own languages.

At the time that we’re writing this, Microsoft Translator supports an impressive 113 languages, which is the highest of any alternative on this list. That’s almost as many as Google Translate, but it’s a lot more than DeepL.

The main advantage that Microsoft Translator has over Google Translate is its pricing. If you’re looking to translate your website or app, Microsoft Translator has a more generous free tier and is also more affordable if you need paid translation.

First off, let’s look at the free tiers:

• Microsoft Translator API free tier lets you translate up to 2,000,000 characters per month (two million).
• Google Translate API free tier only lets you translate up to 500,000 characters per month (five hundred thousand).

If you need to exceed that, Microsoft Translator is still more affordable:

• Microsoft Translator API charges $10 per one million translation characters.
• Google Translate API charges $20 per one million translation characters.

To sum that up, the Microsoft Translator API has these pricing advantages:

• You get 4X as many monthly translation characters on the free tier.
• The paid translation costs half of what Google Translate costs.

And even more than that, Microsoft Translator offers extra discounts as the volume of words increases per order.

However, there are two main downsides of Microsoft Translator vs Google Translate:

1. Google Translate supports a few more languages, though this may or may not matter for your specific language pairs, especially since the difference is fairly small.
2. Most people consider Google Translate’s translation to be a little better than Microsoft Translator, which you can see in the DeepL translation study above.

Overall, Microsoft Translator can be a great option if you’re looking to save money, but it offers few advantages vs Google Translate outside of that.

3. Amazon Translate

Amazon Translate is the machine translation service that’s part of Amazon Web Services. Whereas all of the previous tools offer both consumer-focused translation apps and interfaces as well as translation APIs, Amazon Translate is almost exclusively focused on API usage.

That means you can use it to translate your app or website, but you can’t use it for smartphone translations during your trip to France.

Amazon Translate currently supports 75+ different languages, which is less than what Google Translate or Microsoft Translator offer, but more than DeepL.

As with Microsoft Translator, the main advantage of Amazon Translate over Google Translate is the pricing.

First off, Amazon Translate’s free tier has a higher monthly limit than Google Translate:

• Amazon Translate API free tier lets you translate up to 2,000,000 characters per month (two million).
• Google Translate API free tier only lets you translate up to 500,000 characters per month (five hundred thousand).

However, Amazon Translate’s free tier only lasts for 12 months. It’s not a lifetime free tier like Google Translate. So if your translation needs will last longer than a year, that might be one thing to consider.

If you need the paid tier, Amazon Translate is cheaper than Google Translate, but not as cheap as Microsoft Translator:

• Amazon Translate API charges $15 per one million translation characters.
• Google Translate API charges $20 per one million translation characters.

However, Amazon Translate has the same downsides as Microsoft Translator when you compare it to Google Translate:

• Google Translate supports more languages, though this may or may not matter for your specific language pairs.
• Most people consider Google Translate’s translations to be a little better than Amazon Translate, which you can see in the DeepL translation study above.

4. Yandex Translate

Yandex Translate is the machine translation service from the Russian search giant, Yandex.

It supports 89+ different languages, which is pretty good, although still not quite as comprehensive as Google.

Like Google Translate, it also offers both consumer-focused applications (e.g. a web-based translation interface), as well as a translation API that you can use to automatically translate your website.

Because it comes from a Russian company, it can also make an especially good option for translating Russian language pairs.

The biggest advantage of Yandex Translate, however, is its incredibly low prices, especially when compared to other translation services. For translation, it costs just a flat $3.9376 per one million characters, which is 1/5 the price of Google Translate.

When it comes to pricing, Yandex offers a pretty good deal compared to Google Translate, although not as good as Microsoft. The standard price per million characters starts at $15 for orders up to 50 000 000 characters and then, as the volume increases, the cost decreases significantly. For example, if you need to translate between 500 000 001 to 1 000 000 000 characters per month, you’ll only have to pay $6/million characters.

The downside, however, is that there’s no longer any free tier for API usage (though you can use the web interface for free).

Overall, if you want a budget option and you exceed the free tiers on other services, Yandex Translate is definitely one to consider.

Start Translating Today

Google Translate is one of the best machine translation services that you’ll find. However, it’s far from being the only option when it comes to automatic translation.

If you’re mainly concerned with the accuracy of your translations, you might want to use DeepL. While DeepL doesn’t support as many languages as Google Translate and is a little more expensive for bulk usage, it has the highest-rated accuracy of any translation service, especially when it comes to context and slang.

On the other hand, if you’re primarily concerned with saving money, you can find machine translation services that are cheaper than Google Translate, though you’ll make some sacrifices when it comes to language selection and translation quality:

• Microsoft Translator has the cheapest prices on this list. It offers a 4x larger monthly free tier and also costs half as much for premium translation.
• Yandex Translate offers similarly priced services with Microsoft Translator, though it does not offer a free version. At high volumes of characters, it’s almost 1/4 of the price of Google Translate and still significantly cheaper than other Google Translate alternatives.
• Amazon Translate offers a 4x larger monthly free tier (but only for the first year). The premium tier also only costs $15 per one million characters, vs the $20 that Google Translate charges.

All of these services offer API services that let you translate your website or app. If you’re looking for more of a consumer-focused tool for translating documents or communicating with people in other languages, Microsoft Translator is probably the best option, though DeepL also has some useful consumer-focused tools.

Finally – if you’re looking for an automatic translation service for your WordPress website, you can use TranslatePress. TranslatePress not only supports Google Translate for automatic translation, but it also supports DeepL, which is the best alternative to Google Translate for people looking for accurate translations.

To learn more, you can check out these guides:

• How to automatically translate WordPress
• Google Translate WordPress tutorial
• DeepL WordPress tutorial

Do you still have any questions about picking the best Google Translate alternative for your needs? Let us know in the comments!

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