AI Translation

Comparison

Tool	Best for	Pricing
DeepL	Professionals translating business emails, reports, and marketing copy who need natural-sounding output, not just literal accuracy	$10.49/month (Starter plan, monthly billing; about $8.74/month billed annually)
Google Translate	Anyone needing quick, free translation of text, speech, images, or web pages for everyday use	Free
Lokalise	Development teams localizing a software product, mobile app, or website into multiple languages on an ongoing basis	$144/month (Explorer plan)
Microsoft Translator	Organizations already standardized on Microsoft 365 who want translation built directly into Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Teams	Free tier available; paid usage from roughly $10 per 1 million characters
Reverso	Language learners who want to see how a word or phrase is actually used in context, not just a direct translation	Premium subscription (monthly or annual billing); see reverso.net for current pricing
Smartcat	Businesses that need ongoing translation of marketing, product, or support content reviewed by professional linguists, not just machine-translated	$1,200/year (Adapt plan, billed annually)

Reviews

DeepL

A neural machine translation engine widely regarded as producing the most natural, fluent translations available, with Pro plans adding formality control, glossaries, and unlimited document translation.

Google Translate

Google's free, broadly available translation service, covering roughly 249 languages and language varieties across text, speech, images, and documents.

Lokalise

A software and app localization platform built for development teams, managing translated strings, translation memory, and AI-assisted translation directly inside a product's build pipeline.

Microsoft Translator

Microsoft's neural machine translation service, built into Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and Edge, with a separate Azure AI Translator API for custom development and enterprise document translation.

Reverso

A translation and language-learning tool that pairs machine translation with real example sentences drawn from human-translated text, plus a dictionary, grammar checker, and conjugation tools.

Smartcat

A business translation-management platform that blends machine translation with a marketplace of 500,000+ professional linguists, aimed at companies that need translated content reviewed and managed at scale.

Frequently asked questions

Is AI translation accurate enough to replace a human translator?

For everyday communication, travel, and understanding foreign-language content, modern AI translation is usually accurate enough on its own. For anything with legal, medical, financial, or brand-critical stakes, treat AI output as a strong first draft that still needs a qualified human reviewer — this is exactly the gap platforms like Smartcat are built to fill.

What's the difference between a translator like DeepL and a localization platform like Lokalise?

DeepL and Google Translate translate text you give them, one piece at a time. Localization platforms like Lokalise manage the ongoing translation of an entire product — tracking which strings changed, keeping translations consistent across releases, and plugging into a development pipeline — which a standalone translator isn't designed to do.

Which AI translator supports the most languages?

Google Translate currently covers the broadest range, with support for around 249 languages and language varieties. DeepL and Microsoft Translator support fewer languages overall but are frequently rated higher for fluency and naturalness in the languages they do support.

Can I use these tools to translate an entire document or website while keeping the formatting?

Yes — DeepL, Microsoft Translator, and Google Translate all offer document translation that preserves layout for common formats like Word, PowerPoint, and PDF. For an entire website or app with ongoing updates, a dedicated platform like Lokalise or Smartcat is a better fit than translating files one at a time.

Do I need a paid plan, or is a free tool enough?

For occasional personal use, the free tiers of Google Translate, DeepL, or Reverso are usually sufficient. Paid plans become worthwhile once you need higher volume, document translation without limits, API access, formality controls, or team and workflow features that free tiers don't include.

On-demand translators vs. localization platforms

This category splits cleanly in two, and picking the wrong side is the most common mistake. On-demand translators take text, speech, or a document and give you the translation back, one piece at a time. That covers almost everything an individual needs and a lot of what a business needs too: a message to send, an article to read, a contract to skim, a PDF to understand.

Localization platforms solve a different, ongoing problem. When a website or app is translated into a dozen languages and keeps changing, someone has to track which lines changed, keep the wording consistent across releases, and feed all of it through a development pipeline. That’s what these platforms are for, usually blending machine translation with human review. If you’re translating things now and again, a translator is enough. If you’re maintaining the same product in many languages over time, you want a platform.

How to choose the right AI translation tool

Match the tool to what you’re translating and how often you do it:

• A one-off or an ongoing product? Occasional text is a job for a general translator. A website or app that keeps changing needs a platform built around translation memory, glossaries, and team review.
• Fluency vs. language coverage. Some engines produce the most natural output in the languages they support; others cover far more languages but read a little flatter. For business writing, fluency usually wins; for reaching unusual languages, breadth does.
• Where does the content live? A document, a browser, a chat app, and code inside a CMS each favour different tools. Look for one that plugs into where your text actually sits.
• Do you need tone and formality control? For customer-facing or brand content, the ability to set formality and keep terminology consistent matters more than raw language count.
• How is it priced? Per character, per word, per seat, or per year all scale very differently with volume. Estimate your real usage before comparing sticker prices.

How AI translation differs from a human translator

The old options were a slow, expensive human translation or nothing at all. AI changed the default: a good-enough translation of most everyday content is now instant and often free, which is why so much cross-language communication that simply wouldn’t have happened now does. For fluent, common language pairs, the best engines are close enough that a bilingual reader mostly nods along.

The limitation is the errors you can’t see. A model can produce confident, natural-sounding text that quietly gets a negation, a legal term, or a cultural nuance wrong, and you won’t catch it if you don’t read the target language. For anything with real stakes — contracts, medical information, marketing that carries your brand — AI output is a strong first draft that still needs a qualified human, not the final word. The rarer or more distant the language pair, the more that holds.