How much does translation cost? Short answer: from zero (free machine tools) to $1,000 or more per 10,000 words (professional agencies), with AI document services priced per task in between. The right number depends on what you are translating and what you will do with the result. Here is the breakdown.
Cost by provider type
Free machine translation — Google Translate, DeepL's free tier, browser tools. Cost: $0. Best for understanding short text. You get a draft and nothing else: no glossary control, no review files, no accountability when a number changes.
AI document translation services — priced per task with credits, and the good ones show an estimate before you submit. You receive editable files, a bilingual review file, and a quality report. This is the middle path: real deliverables without agency overhead.
Freelance translators — commonly quoted per word, with rates shaped by language pair and specialization. You buy judgment and a human author, and you manage the project yourself.
Agencies — commonly quote $1,000 or more per 10,000 words, bundling translation, review, and project management. The premium buys process and accountability, which matters for regulated or high-stakes content.
Cost by document type
| Document | What you will typically see |
|---|---|
| A 10-page business document | Tens of dollars via AI service; hundreds via agency |
| A technical manual | Agency quotes climb fast with volume and terminology demands |
| A full-length book | Self-publishing communities commonly report quotes of $5,000+ from human translators |
| A website or app | Agency projects with strings extraction, often quoted per project |
The pattern: volume multiplies everything, and specialization raises the rate before volume even enters.
What actually drives the price
Whatever provider you pick, four levers move the number:
- Volume — more source text, more cost. This is the only lever with a near-linear effect.
- Language pair — common pairs are cheaper everywhere.
- Subject risk — legal, medical, and technical text costs more because errors are expensive.
- Turnaround — rush work carries rush pricing.
There is a fifth lever people forget: review. Deciding who checks the output, and giving them the right artifacts (a bilingual file, a quality report), changes the real cost of the project even when the translation invoice stays the same.
How to get a real number before committing
Ask for the estimate before the work starts — any provider worth using will give you one. With GoodTrans you upload the file, see the credit estimate, and only then decide; the translate page shows the flow and the pricing page lists current packages. For context on how per-word math works under the hood, see translation cost per word.
When paying more is the right call
Honest guidance, including against our own interest:
- Certified or court-filed documents: use a certified translator. GoodTrans does not provide certified translation.
- Literary publication where the voice is the product: a human literary translator earns the rate.
- Everything else — manuals, reports, policies, specs, manuscripts for review — is well served by estimate-first AI translation with proper review artifacts, at a fraction of the agency number.
The expensive mistake is not picking the "wrong" tier. It is picking a tier blindly, without knowing what the deliverable will be. Start from the deliverable, then pick the price.
