Website translation pricing: per word, per language, or by platform

You ask for three quotes to translate your website and they come back with three different units: one charges per word, another a monthly fee per language, and the third adds it to your platform's plan. You can't compare them because they aren't measuring the same thing.

The short answer: the price of website translation depends more on the unit used for billing than the rate itself. A professional per-word service costs from $0.09 per word on Gengo (prices checked in October 2026) and you pay again with every change; a per-language tool like Lantis It costs $3.50/month for one language and $3 per language for 2 to 9, with only new content translated. For a 10,000-word website in 3 languages, that's the difference between a one-time payment of around $2,700 and $9 a month. The difference isn't just the number: it's what you actually get.

Quick summary

• There are three billing units: per word (professional services and machine translation APIs), per language per month (website translation tools), and per platform (native features added to your plan).
• Per-word pricing buys you text, not a translated website. Setting up the translations, language-specific URLs, and SEO is separate.
• The price per word is multiplied by the number of languages.: 10,000 words in 3 languages are quoted as 30,000 words.
• The platform fee is added to your existing plan: Webflow Localization from $12 per language/month and Framer around $20, on top of the site plan (prices checked in October 2026).
• Recurring billing matters more than the initial setup: a living website generates fresh content every week, and with a per-word rate, every minor change triggers a new quote.
• Lantis charges per active language: $3.50/month for one, $3/language for 2 to 9, and $2.50/language from 10 onwards, with 500,000 words included per language and no charges for visits.

The three ways you're charged for website translation

A website translation quote is always based on one of these three units, and each answers a different question.

1. Per word or per character. This is used by agencies, freelance translators, translation marketplaces, and machine translation APIs. You pay by text volume, once per language.
2. Per language, per month. Used by tools that publish your translated website. You pay a fee for each active language, which covers translation, hosting, and maintenance.
3. Per platform. Used by native features in Webflow, Framer, or Shopify. You pay per locale or plan, on top of what you already pay to host your site.

The first two aren't directly comparable: one is a one-time volume cost, the other is a subscription. To decide, you need to normalize them to the same scale, and the honest scale is 'the first-year cost for the content you actually intend to publish.'

Price per word: exactly what you are paying for

With a per-word service, you're buying the translated text, not a functioning website. The rate is calculated based on the original text and multiplied for each target language.

Gengo, one of the few professional services that publishes its rates openly, charges for its pricing page starting from $0.09 per word on the Standard plan starting at $0.18 per word on Advanced, with no minimum order or setup fee (prices verified in October 2026). In the Spanish market, rates published by agencies and freelancers range from €0.08 to €0.10 per word: we have compiled them with their sources in how much it costs to translate a website into English.

The automated variant of this same unit is the API: Google Cloud Translation charges $20 USD per million characters for neural translation, with the first 500,000 characters per month free. It's incredibly cheap, but it only does half the job: it returns translated text to your server, while publishing that text to your site—including URLs, hreflangs, and sitemaps—remains your responsibility.

What's never included in a per-word rate:

• The integration. Someone has to input the translations into the CMS, duplicate pages, and check that the design hasn't broken.
• International SEO. URL structure by language, hreflang tags, language-specific sitemaps, and translated metadata. If missing, pass it on to why your translated website doesn't appear on Google.
• Maintenance. Every new page, post, or price gets quoted all over again.

Price per language per month: what changes

With a per-language tool, you pay to have your website live in that language, not for the text itself. The subscription includes translating current content, any future content, and hosting it with its SEO.

Two variants coexist within this group that shouldn't be confused, because only one is truly charged by language:

• Monthly fee per active language. The price depends on the number of languages you have, not on the size of the website or the traffic. This is the Lantis model: $3.50/month for one, $3/language for 2 to 9, and $2.50/language from 10 onwards, with 500,000 words per language included and additional 500,000-word packs for a one-time payment of $5.
• Word-limit plan. The plan might seem to be based on languages, but the real limit is the total word count across all languages. Weglot charges €15/month for 10,000 words and 1 language, €29 for 50,000 words and 3 languages, €79 for 200,000 words and 5 languages, and €299 for one million words and 10 languages (prices checked in October 2026). Their cap doesn't reset every month: the math is in how much Weglot really costs.

The difference shows up as you grow. With a per-language fee, publishing 300 new articles doesn't change your bill. With a word limit, each article consumes your quota multiplied by the number of languages.

Price per platform: the cost that is added on top

The third unit is the least visible because it doesn't arrive as a separate invoice; it's added to the one you already pay. Webflow Localization charges per locale, starting at $12 per language/month on the Essential plan ($9 annually) and $35 on Advanced ($29 annually), on top of your site plan. Framer localization costs around $20 per language/month, also in addition to your plan (prices checked in October 2026). The limits for each are as follows: Webflow Localization: pricing and limits.

In return, you get the real benefit of a native experience: everything lives inside the editor you already use, with no middle layers. The downside is that the price per language is high and your translations remain tied to that platform.

The same website, measured in three different ways

A 10,000-word website translated into 3 languages, using the prices mentioned above. The calculation is ours; the rates are each provider's own.

Two ways to read the table. First: with per-word pricing, you pay a high fee upfront and then pay for every subsequent change; with per-language pricing, you pay a small monthly fee and updates are included. Second: the API row is the cheapest in the chart but solves the least, because you're still on the hook for the entire integration process.

To calculate it using your own figures, the web translation cost calculator compare the models using your word count and language needs, and the tool-by-tool table is at website translation tool pricing.

A website translation quote shouldn't be compared by the rate, but by what is left for you to do once it is delivered.

How to calculate your real cost in five steps

1. Counts the actual words. Pages, blog, product descriptions, menu, footer, forms, error messages, cookie banners, and legal texts, plus titles and meta tags for every URL.
2. Multiply by the number of languages you want over 12 months, not yesterday's. That simple multiplication is what ruins per-word budgets.
3. Calculate the total volume of content you will publish this year. If you write two 1,000-word articles per month, that is an extra 24,000 words per language.
4. Factor in the setup costs. If the provider only delivers text, estimate the hours needed to input it into the CMS and configure URLs, hreflang, and sitemaps—or find out who bills you for that.
5. Compare the first full year, not the first payment, and check what happens on the second: for a live website, maintenance carries more weight than startup, as we explain in what happens to the translations when you change your website.

When a per-word service is a better fit

Paying by the word isn't a mistake; it's a different kind of purchase. It makes sense when:

• The text is critical. Contracts, informed consent forms, medical files, or claims: these require a human who takes responsibility for every sentence.
• The volume is small and closed. Five pages that won't change for two years: paying once and forgetting about it is cheaper than any subscription.
• You're selling your brand through its tone. Marketing campaigns, slogans, and homepage headlines require transcreation, not just translation—and that is a job for a human.
• You have a localization team. If you already have translation workflows in place, you need a text provider, not a platform.

And the opposite: if your website changes weekly—like a blog or catalog—and you want each language version to rank independently, a monthly subscription model is more cost-effective for ongoing maintenance than per-word rates. A common middle ground is to automate the translation of everything and only pay for human review on pages that directly generate sales.

Common mistakes

• Comparing rates vs. subscriptions. $0.09 per word and $3/month per language aren't comparable figures. Convert them into a first-year total cost before you decide.
• Forgetting to multiply by the number of languages. The per-word quote is multiplied by every target language; the website doesn't change in size, but the invoice does.
• Only count the visible text. Menus, forms, legal texts, and metadata add up to thousands of words that nobody remembers when asking for a quote.
• Assuming SEO is included. No per-word quote includes language-specific URLs, hreflang tags, or sitemaps. If you don't know why these matter, start here: hreflang explained easy.
• Budget for the launch, not just the year. The useful question isn't what it costs to translate the website, but what it costs to have it translated by December.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a website translation service cost?

It depends on the billing unit. A professional per-word service starts at around $0.09 per word on Gengo (prices checked in October 2026), which for a 10,000-word website in 3 languages comes to about $2,700 for text alone. A tool that handles website publishing charges per active language, starting from $3.50/month for one language, and includes all new content.

Does the price per word get multiplied by each language?

Yes. With a per-word service, the original text is billed once for each target language: a 10,000-word website translated into four languages is quoted as 40,000 words. This is why multilingual projects become expensive so quickly with this billing unit, and why the per-language monthly price is more predictable.

What isn't included in a website translation quote?

It almost never includes integration or international SEO. A per-word quote covers the translated text; inserting it into the CMS, creating a URL per language, generating hreflangs and sitemaps per language, and translating titles, meta descriptions, and Open Graphs are excluded, as is translating any future content you publish.

How much does it cost to translate a 10,000-word website into 3 languages?

Based on the rates mentioned in this article: about $2,700 for a one-time per-word fee at Gengo's Standard level, €29/month with a word-based plan like Weglot's Business tier if you fit within their 50,000-word limit, $36/month plus your site plan with Webflow Localization, or $9/month with Lantis's per-language pricing. These are our own calculations based on public pricing as of October 2026.

Do you have to pay again when the website changes?

With a per-word rate, yes: every new page or article is a new invoice. With a monthly subscription, it isn't, provided new content is translated automatically. At Lantis, our overnight pre-translation engine processes your new content and flags it as «pending review» in your dashboard, ready for you to approve or edit.

Conclusion

The price of website translation is decided before you look at rates: it's decided when you choose whether you're buying text, a published website, or an add-on for your platform. With a per-word rate, you pay a high amount upfront and pay again with every change. With a platform-based fee, you pay a convenient but expensive price per language. With a monthly per-language subscription, you pay a small, constant fee, and maintenance stops being a one-off project. Calculate the full first-year cost, including the languages and content you'll actually have, and the decision becomes obvious.

Lantis charged per active language: $3.50/month for one, $3/language for 2 to 9, and $2.50/language for 10 or more, with 500,000 words included per language, 500,000-word add-on packs for a $5 one-time fee, and an Agency Plan at $59/month for up to 20 websites. It is installed with one line of code in the <head> in Framer, Webflow, Shopify, WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, or any HTML site, it serves each language on its own URL with hreflang, sitemaps, and translated metadata, and it doesn't charge per visit. You have the details in the pricing page and you can try it with 100 free translations, no credit card required: Start free.