How much does website localization cost? Published prices for every route

The short answer

Putting a website into another language costs three things: the words, the platform that serves them, and the work around the words. These are the prices vendors published on their own pages on 7 November 2026:

• Human translation: from USD 0.06 to 0.12 a word for English to Spanish or Portuguese at vendors that list rates. Most agencies quote per project.
• Machine translation: USD 10 to 27.50 per million characters after free allowances, which cover a small site's first draft.
• Translation proxies: about USD 20 to 87 a month for two languages. The upper end buys translated URLs.
• Platform add-ons: from nothing (Shopify's Translate & Adapt app, Sanity) to USD 35 per language a month (Webflow Localize Advanced, billed monthly). Some CMSs limit languages by plan instead.

For a 30-page, 15,000-word site going into Spanish and Portuguese, that works out to USD 1,800 to 3,600 one-off for human translation, or about USD 2,400 to 2,700 in the first year for a proxy or a native Webflow build with a native reviewer. The SEO setup, forms, legal pages and design work come on top. The worked example below shows every line.

What you're paying for

Most pages about website localization cost stop at these factors. The rest of this guide puts a published price on each one where the vendor publishes it, and says so where it doesn't. Prices are before tax, in US dollars unless the vendor lists euros.

Route 1: human translation, priced per word

Gengo's English–Portuguese page lists the same 6 and 12 cents, and its language pricing table charges a cent less a word through its API. Three things to know before you multiply:

• "From" is a floor. Vendors price by language pair, subject and deadline, and MotaWord says its rate varies by language.
• Agencies often don't publish a rate card. MotionPoint asks for your languages and estimated word count; Smartling says its team sizes your content, workflows and languages before recommending a plan.
• A translator returns text, not pages. Someone still has to put it into the CMS, fix layouts where it runs longer (Gengo notes that English text can expand by up to 25% in Spanish) and check it on the live page.

Route 2: machine translation APIs, priced per character

Machine translation is billed by the character, not the word. We assume 6 characters per English word, counting the space after it; 5 to 6 is typical, and 6 keeps the estimate on the safe side. A 15,000-word site is then about 90,000 characters for each target language. You pay once per target language, and Google counts every character you send, including spaces and HTML tags (Google Cloud).

DeepL showed the same US-dollar prices with the United States, Colombia, Mexico or Brazil selected as the country. For the example site, the machine pass costs nothing: 180,000 characters fit inside every free allowance above, and at list price they would cost USD 1.80 (Azure) to 4.95 (DeepL's extra-character rate).

The money goes into fixing what the machine gets wrong. Google treats localized pages as duplicates only when their main content stays untranslated (Google Search Central), so translated pages aren't penalized for being translations; the risk is quality. On 14 October 2026 we retired 15 machine-translated languages from dardo.studio: 795 of its 954 URLs, bringing about four search clicks a week. Our multilingual SEO guide explains that decision.

Route 3: translation proxies and plugins, priced per month

A proxy (Weglot, ConveyThis, MotaWord Active) translates your pages and serves them at language URLs without rebuilding the site. A WordPress plugin (TranslatePress, WPML) stores the translations in your own site. Both include machine translation up to a word allowance, so the price is mostly a subscription.

What the plan names don't tell you:

• Translated slugs cost more. Weglot and ConveyThis reserve URL translation for their Pro tiers. If you want /es/precios/ rather than /es/pricing/, budget for Pro.
• Word limits are total, not monthly. Weglot counts unique words across all your languages, and the limit doesn't renew. Our 15,000-word site in two languages uses 30,000 of Business's 50,000.
• Leaving has a price. With a proxy, the translations live in the vendor's system. Weglot lists export and import of translations on its Advanced plan (USD 329 a month), so check how you'd take your translations with you before you commit.
• WPML's cheaper plan isn't for business sites. The EUR 39 Multilingual Blog plan doesn't translate menus or text from themes and plugins.

Route 4: localization built into your platform

Platform fees are rarely the biggest line; their limits matter more. On Webflow, translated slugs need Advanced; on Framer, AI translation spends credits; on Contentful, a third language is the step from free to USD 300 a month. Our guides to Webflow pricing, Framer pricing and Contentful pricing cover the rest of each plan.

The work around the words

Factor lists describe this part and nobody prices it, because it depends on the site. It's usually quoted per project, and it decides whether the second language works:

• URLs and hreflang. Google recommends a separate URL for each language version rather than cookies or browser settings (Google Search Central). Each version must list itself and every other version, and if two pages don't point to each other, Google ignores the tags (Google Search Central).
• Search research per language. Titles, descriptions and headings written from what people search in that market, not translated from your English keywords.
• Images, screenshots and video. Text inside images, product screenshots and subtitles. On Webflow, asset localization is part of Localize Advanced.
• Forms, emails and messages. Labels, error states, confirmation emails, autoresponders and the CRM fields behind them. A Spanish form that sends an English confirmation email undoes the page.
• Legal pages. Privacy notices and terms need a qualified translator or counsel for each jurisdiction, not the cheapest tier.
• Native review. A fluent reviewer reads every page in context before launch. At MotaWord's published proofreading rate, from USD 0.06 a word.
• Layout. Navigation labels, buttons and headings need room for the longer language.
• Upkeep. Every new page or price change becomes two or three edits, and each language needs an owner.

Worked example: 30 pages, 15,000 words, into Spanish and Portuguese

The assumptions:

• 30 pages with 15,000 English words, counting navigation, forms and emails.
• Two target languages, so 30,000 translated words.
• 6 characters a word: 90,000 characters per language, 180,000 billed characters.
• Published "from" prices read on 7 November 2026, before tax and card fees.

The words, one-off

The cheapest published human rate and the cheapest published post-editing rate are the same 6 cents, from different vendors. That says more about how "from" prices work than about the methods: MotaWord itself puts its post-editing at up to 30% below its full human translation.

The platform, per year for two languages

These exclude the site plan itself (Webflow, Framer or Shopify) and hosting. On Webflow Essential, 15,000 words per language is more than a month's 10,000-word allowance, so the first machine pass spans two months or part of it is done by hand.

Four routes, first year

None of these lines includes the multilingual build or setup, hreflang, search research per language, forms and emails, legal review or design. Year two drops to the subscription plus updates: if you add 1,500 English words a year, that's 3,000 translated words, from USD 180 at 6 cents.

Which route fits

For a US business adding Spanish, our bilingual English–Spanish website guide covers when the second language pays off and how to rank in Spanish.

How we handle it at Dardo

dardo.studio is published in English, Spanish and Portuguese, and every translation is its own entry with its own address, linked to its English original. We work in English and Spanish every day, and we build real language versions rather than browser widgets, because a script that translates text in the visitor's browser doesn't create pages search engines can index. When our machine-translated languages didn't earn their keep, we removed them. Multilingual website projects are quoted per scope in a written proposal; see pricing.

What to do next

1. Count your words, including navigation, forms, emails and legal pages, and multiply by the number of languages.
2. Name who reviews each language before you buy anything.
3. Pick a route from the table above, then price the site itself: our website cost calculator shows what published prices suggest.
4. Plan URLs and hreflang with the checklist in our multilingual SEO guide.
5. If you'd like us to scope it, tell us about your site.