The 12 best website translation software in 2026, compared

Most website translation tools are good at putting a translated page online. Very few give you control over what the translation actually says once you have thousands of pages of it. That second job is where AI Glot sits, which is why it is first on this list, and why it works alongside most of the other eleven rather than against them.

I build AI Glot, so read the ranking with that in mind. Every price below was checked on the vendor’s own pricing page in September 2026, and every tool gets an honest “watch out for” line, including ours.

Three ways to translate a website

Before comparing names, it helps to know that these tools do not all do the same thing. There are three mechanisms, and picking the wrong one is a more expensive mistake than picking the wrong vendor.

A live layer (a proxy or a JavaScript snippet) intercepts your pages and serves a translated copy. It is the fastest way to launch, and the translations live on the vendor’s servers.

A CMS plugin creates translated copies inside WordPress itself. Your data stays in your database, but you are tied to that CMS.

A file-based tool works on the content your site is built from: the CMS export, the product CSV, the JSON or PO files of a coded site. It takes a little more setup, and it is the one that gives you real control at volume.

Most teams end up using two of these together. More on that below.

The 12 tools at a glance

Why AI Glot is first

Here is the thing nobody on a comparison page tells you. Most tools on this list use the same few translation engines underneath. Weglot, GTranslate, WPML and the platforms all route your text through a machine translator or a large language model. So the raw quality of one sentence is rarely what separates them.

What separates them is what happens at volume. Can you tell the tool which parts to translate and which to leave alone? Does your terminology hold on page 3,000? Do you know the cost before you spend it? Those are the questions that decide whether a translated site reads like your brand or like a machine, and they are the questions AI Glot was built to answer.

A few AI Glot customers came to us because DeepL was no longer clearing their quality bar on their real content, with their real terminology. That is customer experience, not a benchmark. The mechanism behind it is simple: a machine translator sees one string at a time, while AI Glot applies your brief and your glossary, as meaning, to each string as it is written.

1. AI Glot

AI Glot translates the content of your website at volume, with quality you control. You upload the export or the file, you describe the job in one plain sentence, you read a plan with the word count and the cost, and only then does anything get spent. One translated file comes back, in the same format, ready to re-import.

What makes it different:

• Scope in one sentence. “Translate the description and the SEO title, leave the handle alone.” “Only the rows where the French column is still empty.” The instruction is free text and it replaces the column-mapping screen other tools make you fill in. No other tool here can translate only the missing rows from a sentence.
• A plan before a single credit is spent. The languages, the scope, the word count and the cost, on screen, correctable, free to redo.
• A glossary that outlives the job. Your brand glossary belongs to the workspace, so the twentieth file agrees with the first without anyone re-attaching it.
• More than 35 formats, one workflow. CSV, Excel, JSON and ARB, YAML, XLIFF, PO, Android XML, iOS .strings, Java .properties, RESX, SRT subtitles, and ZIP archives of any of them. That covers a Shopify or Webflow export, a WPML XLIFF archive, and the locale files of a coded site.
• Your agents can call it. A REST API, a CLI and an MCP server, so a coding agent can translate your site’s locale files without anyone opening a browser.

More than 25 free tools, no account needed. Every format AI Glot supports has its own page with a working translator on it. Drop a file, pick a language, download the result. Five files a day, up to 2 MB each, and up to 5,000 words translated per file, which is enough to judge the quality on your own content before you decide anything.

Start with the free CSV translator, the free JSON translator or the free XLIFF translator, whichever matches what your site exports.

Pricing: your first 5,000 words free, as a sample on your first file. One credit is one word in Standard quality. You can also buy credits once in any amount, starting at 10€ for 10,000 words, with volume discounts up to 65%, and they last 12 months. Subscriptions start at 29€ per month billed annually (42€ month to month) for 100,000 credits, and add Lite quality, which covers about three times more words per credit for bulk content. See the pricing page.

Watch out for: AI Glot does not serve a live translated site. It translates the content that goes into one. If you have no export and no files, pair it with one of the tools below, or start with one of them.

2. Weglot

The easiest way to put a multilingual site online. Weglot works as a reverse proxy or a JavaScript integration, connects to 70+ platforms and supports 110+ languages. Paste a snippet, pick languages, and the translated pages are live. Read how Weglot works for the detail.

New in 2026: a custom translation model that learns your tone and terminology, and an AI glossary on every plan.

Pricing (monthly, excl. VAT): Free for 2,000 words and one language. Starter €15 (10,000 words, 1 language), Business €29 (50,000 words, 3 languages), Pro €79 (200,000 words, 5 languages), Advanced €299 (1M words, 10 languages), Extended €699 (5M words, 20 languages). Annual billing gives two months free. Our Weglot pricing breakdown runs the numbers.

Watch out for: every plan caps both words and languages, and exporting your translations as CSV or XLIFF is only available from Advanced, at €299 per month. On a large site, that is exactly the moment you want to review or correct them in bulk.

Pairs with AI Glot: export the XLIFF or CSV, fix it with a glossary and one instruction in AI Glot, import it back.

3. WPML

The standard for serious multilingual WordPress. WPML creates real translated copies of posts, pages, menus and WooCommerce products inside WordPress, with a translation management layer for teams and agencies.

Pricing (one year of updates): Multilingual Blog €39 (1 site, no AI translation, no string translation or WooCommerce), Multilingual CMS €99 (3 sites, 22,500 AI words), Multilingual Agency €199 (unlimited sites, 45,000 AI words).

Watch out for: the bundled AI allowances are small. A site with a few hundred posts in four languages blows past 45,000 words quickly, and extra credits cost more.

Pairs with AI Glot: WPML exports translation jobs as a ZIP of XLIFF files. AI Glot takes the ZIP unopened, all language pairs included. We wrote the full WPML guide from a real 44-post export.

4. TranslatePress

A visual, front-end translation editor for WordPress. You click on any text on the live page and translate it in place. Translations are stored in your own database.

Pricing (annual): a free version, then Personal €99 (1 site, 50,000 AI words), Business €199 (3 sites, 200,000 AI words, DeepL), Developer €349 (unlimited sites, 500,000 AI words).

Watch out for: WordPress only, and there is no documented file export for bulk review. The upside is real: if your licence lapses, you keep the translations you already have.

5. GTranslate

A language switcher that grows into hosted translation. The free widget translates on the fly with no search indexing. Paid plans serve indexable translated pages from GTranslate’s own delivery network.

Pricing (USD per month): Free, then Custom $12 (one extra language), Startup $25, Business $35 (adds URL translation), Enterprise $50 (adds language-specific domains). Every paid plan includes unlimited words.

Watch out for: the free version cannot be indexed by search engines or used commercially, so it does nothing for multilingual SEO. The paid translations live on GTranslate’s servers, and we found no documented export.

6. ConveyThis

A Weglot alternative with a long language list. ConveyThis installs as a JavaScript snippet or a plugin on 50+ CMSs, claims 200+ languages, and offers an AI translation layer with a glossary and a visual editor.

Pricing (USD per month): Free for one language and 5,000 words, then Starter $12 (30,000 words), Business $24 (3 languages, 100,000 words), Pro $64 (5 languages, 400,000 words), up to $960 for 100 languages and 10M words.

Watch out for: limits stack on three axes at once: languages, words, and monthly page requests. Model your real traffic before you choose a tier.

7. Crowdin

A localization platform built around your repository. Crowdin syncs string files from GitHub, CMSs and 700+ integrations, and gives translators an editor with translation memory and glossaries on every plan.

New in 2026: Crowdin AI with your own OpenAI, Anthropic or Gemini keys, and an official MCP server.

Pricing (EUR, billed annually): Free (60,000 hosted words, 1 private project), Pro from €45/month, Team from €136/month, Team+ from €407/month, Business on request.

Watch out for: “hosted words” means your source words multiplied by the number of languages, so every language you add multiplies the bill. On the free plan, your translations feed Crowdin’s shared translation memory.

8. Lokalise

A polished platform for product teams. Lokalise handles apps, websites and documents, with in-context editors, SDKs and over-the-air updates for mobile.

New in 2026: multi-LLM routing, custom AI profiles trained on your content, and an MCP server.

Pricing (USD, billed annually): Explorer $149/month (10 languages, 5 projects), Growth $379/month (unlimited languages), Advanced from $1,049/month. No free plan.

Watch out for: a high entry price for a small team, and the entry plan stops at 10 languages.

9. Phrase

The enterprise localization suite. Phrase Strings handles software strings, Phrase TMS handles documents and translators, and Phrase Language AI picks between machine translation and LLM engines with quality scoring.

Pricing: business plans start at $1,195/month billed annually (Team: 20 Strings seats), then Business and Enterprise on request. Smaller developer and freelancer plans exist.

Watch out for: you pay for seats plus several separate meters for words, machine translation and AI. Great if you run a localization department, heavy if you do not.

10. Smartling

A platform and a translation agency in one. Smartling combines a translation management system with an AI Hub (a choice of LLMs and machine translation engines) and professional linguists you can order from inside it.

Pricing: no public prices. Two plans, Core (“free to start”) and Enterprise, both through a sales call.

Watch out for: on Core, translation memory is only kept for 180 days.

11. Smartcat

AI agents plus a marketplace of human linguists. Smartcat assigns AI “coworkers” to translate, review and check your content, claims 280+ languages, and lets you hire freelance translators on the same platform.

Pricing (USD, billed annually): Adapt from $1,200/year (100,000 Smartwords, unlimited users), Accelerate from $24,000/year, Anticipate from $60,000/year.

Watch out for: the jump from the first plan to the second is steep, and API access only arrives on the higher tiers.

12. MotionPoint

Website translation as a fully managed service. MotionPoint runs a translation proxy, puts human translators and AI on your content, and handles the whole operation for you.

Pricing: quote only, based on languages, quality level and site complexity.

Watch out for: you get the least control and the least visibility into cost of anything on this list. That is the point of it, and also the risk.

Removed from this list in 2026

IBM Watson Language Translator was in earlier versions of this article. IBM withdrew it completely on 10 December 2024, so it is gone. SYSTRAN is a strong machine translation engine and document translator, but it does not translate a website, so it moved out too.

The setup most teams end up with

Here is the pattern we see most often, and it is why AI Glot does not compete with the live layers. Use a live layer or a plugin to serve the site, and use AI Glot to control the words.

This matters most for content you already translated automatically and now want to fix in bulk: a blog archive, product metadata, a help centre. Guides for the common exports: Shopify product CSV, Webflow CMS export, WooCommerce products.

Where to spend on humans, and where not to

The words that matter most are rarely where most of the words are. Your homepage, your pricing page and a handful of key pages are a few hundred words, and they carry most of your reputation. The blog archive, the catalogue and the help centre are almost all of the volume.

Some teams publish the AI Glot output straight away. Others add a native reviewer on their most important languages. Both are reasonable choices about risk and budget. Our AI versus human translation guide goes deeper.

How to choose

• You want a multilingual site live this week, with no files: Weglot, or GTranslate on a tight budget.
• You run WordPress: WPML for complex sites and WooCommerce, TranslatePress for a visual editor.
• You ship software with a team of translators: Crowdin or Lokalise. Phrase or Smartling once localization is a department.
• You want someone else to do all of it: MotionPoint.
• You have volume, and you care what the translation says: AI Glot, alone for exports and coded sites, or on top of any tool above that can export.

FAQ

What is the best website translation software in 2026? It depends on the mechanism you need. For launching a site quickly, Weglot. For WordPress, WPML. For controlling the quality and cost of large amounts of content, AI Glot. Many teams combine a live layer with AI Glot.

Can I translate a website for free? Yes, within limits. Weglot and ConveyThis have small free plans, GTranslate has a free widget that search engines cannot index, and AI Glot has more than 25 free tools with no account plus a free sample of your first 5,000 words.

Is machine translation good enough for a website? For most of the volume, yes, provided terminology and scope are controlled. For your homepage and flagship pages, pay a native professional or add review.

Do these tools help with SEO? Tools that serve indexable translated pages with their own URLs do. A widget that translates in the visitor’s browser does not. Translated meta titles and descriptions matter as much as the page copy, see our guide to translating SEO metadata.

Ready to see the difference on your own content? Try a free tool on any format, or create a free account and translate your first 5,000 words free.