How much does it cost to translate a website

For a 5-page brochure site in one language, expect £400 to £1,500 with freelancers depending on quality tier, or £497 activation plus £99 monthly with us. For a 25-page ecommerce store across four EU languages, expect £8,000 to £25,000 with freelancers plus a separate developer bill for hreflang, or £1,997 activation plus £249 monthly with us. The freelance route looks cheaper on day one and ends up more expensive by month six because maintenance, hreflang validation and ongoing product translation add 30 to 60 percent to the original quote within a year. Managed pricing flattens that curve.

Native AI-edited freelancers charge £0.08 to £0.12 per word. Native human-only translators charge £0.15 to £0.25. Specialist legal, medical or technical translators charge £0.25 to £0.40. Marketing and ecommerce copy lands in the £0.10 to £0.15 sweet spot. A 30,000-word ecommerce store at £0.12 per word runs £3,600 in one language, £14,400 across four. We do not charge per word because per-word billing punishes you for adding products. We charge a flat activation plus a monthly that covers ongoing translation as the site grows. See our deep per-word breakdown at /data-centre/translation-cost-per-word-2026/.

Because translation is not a one-time event for an active ecommerce site. Every product you add, every blog post you publish, every legal update, every seasonal campaign needs translating, formatting and republishing across every language. Hosting needs maintaining. SSL certificates need renewing. Hreflang needs validating after every site change. The monthly fee covers all of it under one invoice. Brands that pay a freelancer once for a static translation typically spend the same money again within 12 months keeping the site current, but they spend it across six different invoices and three different freelancers, which is more expensive and harder to manage.

Only on the headline. Weglot's Starter plan at £15 monthly covers one language and 10,000 words. Add three more languages and the human review tier on a real ecommerce store and you are paying £150 to £400 per month before any translation work happens. You still run your own Shopify hosting, your own SSL, your own GDPR setup, and you still need a developer to fix the hreflang. Our Growth tier at £149 monthly bundles all of that plus the actual translation. If your existing app stack already costs £200 monthly, you are paying more for a worse outcome.

Yes — five of them. Hreflang implementation runs 4 to 12 developer hours nobody quotes for. Word-count overages on SaaS plans hit when you add products. Project management time eats 10 to 20 percent of any freelance budget. Maintenance to keep translations in sync runs 30 to 60 percent of the original cost annually. And cancellation or platform-lock-in fees on widget services can run £500 to £2,000 if you migrate away. Our pricing includes hreflang, has no word-count caps, has no project management hours to bill, includes ongoing maintenance, and has no cancellation fee. One invoice, one operator, no surprises.