Google Translate APIs and Alternatives

Check out this list of Google Translate API Alternatives!

About this Collection:

What are Translation APIs?

Translation APIs are APIs that help programatically identify the current language and provide a suitable translation from one language to another.

Google Translate API

One of the most popular translation APIs out there is the Google Translate API. The Google Translate API uses machine learning to decipher text and allows developers to easily integrate translation functionality into their website(s) or mobile app(s).
Check out the Tutorial here.

However, if you’re looking for an alternative or replacement to the Google Translate API, take a look at this API collection.

Google’s API is a powerful tool, but comes with a cost.

How much does it cost to use the Google Translate API?

The Google Translate API is not free. Its pricing is based off monthly usage in terms of millions of characters.

It costs $20 per 1 million characters for translation or language detection.

Price is per character sent to the API for processing, including whitespace characters. Empty queries are charged for one character. Google charges on per character basis, even if the character is multiple bytes, where a character corresponds to a (code-point). For example, translating “こんにちは” to English counts as 5 characters for the purposes of billing.

Using the Google Translate API could become quite costly. If you are looking for a more affordable solution, consider some of these other translation APIs.

Google Translate API Alternative

Some Google Translate API alternatives include:

  • MyMemory
  • Yandex Translate
  • IBM Watson Language Translator
  • Microsoft Text Translation

Summary: Best Alternatives to the Google Translate API

APIPopularity ScoreLatencySuccess Rate
MyMemory Translation API8.7/10541ms100%Connect to API
IBM Watson5.5/10170ms100%Connect to API
Yandex Translate8.2/10256ms100%Connect to API
Microsoft Text Translation8.5/10677ms98%Connect to API

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Yandex API Free?

Unfortunately, the Yandex Translate API is not free. The API pricing is based on number of characters in the requests as seen here:

Number of characters in the requests for calendar month Rate (in US dollars per 1 million characters)
less 50 000 000 15
from 50 000 001 to 100 000 000 12
from 100 000 001 to 200 000 000 10
from 200 000 001 to 500 000 000 8
from 500 000 001 to 1 000 000 000 6

How do you get a Google Translate API Key?

  1. Create a new Project from the top bar.
  2. With the new project selected, go to the hamburger menu to the left and visit API & Services. From Dashboard enable Google Translate API. From Dashboard enable Google Translate API.
  3. From the credentials interface create a new API Key.
  4. Copy your API Key for use in RapidAPI.
  5. Add the API Key into the form field and you’re set!

Is Google Translate Safe?

While Google Translate is one of the quickest ways to translate and convert languages, it is still performed by a machine. Therefore, the translations are not perfect. To improve accuracy try supplementing Google Translate with any of the APIs in this collection or have some manual checkwork and audits.

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