Cost of website translation: the three numbers that move a website translation price more than the per-word rate does
- Words in the source site
- 54,000
- Words across every language
- 162,000
- Words a person still has to touch
- 64,800
The arithmetic runs on the figures you type. The tag rules the map applies are Google's own documented requirements for localized versions, linked where they are used.
The cost of website translation is a word count times a rate, and almost every site guesses both. The word count is your pages times the average words on a page times the number of languages, which is usually three to five times what people expect once every locale is counted. The rate is what your translator or agency quotes per word, and it differs by whether they are translating from scratch or editing machine output. This page is how to work it out before you ask for a quote, and the worksheet does the arithmetic.
Open the How to translate a website Free to use. No account, no card, no trial clock.
Count the words you actually own
Take five typical pages, count the words and average them, then multiply by the pages you intend to translate. Shared chrome such as menus and footers is translated once, not once per page, so leave it out of the average and add it as a single block.
Multiply by locales, not by pages
Three languages means three times the words, and a fourth is another whole site. This is the number that decides whether the project is a fortnight or a quarter, and it is the one most briefs to an agency leave out.
Split the human half from the machine half
Decide which pages a person has to touch: the legal ones, the checkout, anything that carries a promise. Post-edited machine output is quoted lower than translation from scratch, so the split changes the number more than the rate does.
Expect the word count to be bigger than the page count suggests
A hundred and twenty page site at four hundred and fifty words a page is fifty four thousand words before anything repeats. Add the shared chrome once, the form labels, the transactional emails and the error states. Sites that quote from a page count rather than a word count are usually a third under, and the difference appears as a change order. Moving from forty percent machine translated to seventy percent takes a third off the human word count, which is where the money is. The judgement is which pages: keep a person on anything that sells, promises or is legally required, and let the machine take the rest.
Keep the software and the maintenance out of the quote, and in the budget
The software, which is small: a translation product's entry tier runs around $17 a month, read from Weglot's published pricing on 2026-09-06, against a translation bill in the thousands. And the maintenance, which is the recurring one: every source change is a retranslation of those words, forever, which is the argument for knowing which pages are stale.
What a site owner asks before running the Cost of website translation
What is a typical per-word rate?
It is yours to get quoted, and it varies by language pair, subject and whether the work is post-editing or translation from scratch. The worksheet takes the rate you have been given rather than inventing one.
Do we pay again when a page changes?
For the words that changed, usually. That is why knowing which pages are stale is worth more than it sounds, and it is what the paid record keeps.
Is the software cost part of this?
No. This sizes the translation work; what a plugin or this product costs is on the pricing page and is a much smaller number.
Is it cheaper to translate everything at once?
Per word, sometimes. In total, no: launching four locales at once buys four times the words before you know whether one of the markets works.
What is the recurring cost?
Every change to a source page is a retranslation of those words in every locale. That is the cost that decides whether the record is worth keeping.
Tell us about the site behind your Cost of website translation
Tell us about your site and its languages and we will tell you plainly whether this fits it.