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Last Updated: 07-12-2026 12:51 PM (UTC)

LibreTranslate

Machine translation with no Google, no Azure, no per-character billing, and no text leaving your infrastructure: LibreTranslate is a free, open-source translation API that runs entirely on your own server. The engine underneath is Argos Translate, which runs OpenNMT neural models with SentencePiece tokenization and Stanza sentence-boundary detection, all offline. Models install as portable .argosmodel packages covering dozens of languages - English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, Portuguese, and many more - and Argos handles automatic pivoting: with es-to-en and en-to-fr installed, it chains them to translate es-to-fr without a direct model. The API is a straightforward HTTP POST to /translate with source and target language codes, returning JSON - simple enough that the ecosystem has clients in every major language and integrations across tools like Weblate and Mastodon. Beyond plain text it translates HTML while preserving markup and handles whole file uploads (documents in, translated documents out), plus automatic language detection when the source is unknown. A clean bundled web UI serves interactive translation for end users, and optional API keys with rate limits control access. AGPL-licensed and trainable with custom models, it is the standard answer when translation must be private, unmetered, and self-contained - GDPR-sensitive text never touches a third party.

LibreTranslate

Benefits

  • Text Never Leaves Your Server
  • Translations run offline on local neural models - the answer for GDPR-sensitive and confidential content.
  • No Per-Character Billing
  • Translate millions of words for the flat cost of your server instead of metered cloud API fees.
  • One Simple API
  • A JSON POST to /translate works from any language, with clients and integrations across the ecosystem.
  • Broad Language Coverage
  • Dozens of language pairs, extended further by automatic pivoting through intermediate models.

Features

  • Neural Translation Engine
  • Argos Translate running OpenNMT models with SentencePiece tokenization, fully offline.
  • Automatic Pivoting
  • Chains installed models through intermediate languages to cover indirect pairs.
  • HTML and File Translation
  • Preserves markup when translating HTML and processes whole document uploads.
  • Language Detection
  • Identifies the source language automatically when it isn't specified.
  • Web UI Included
  • A clean bundled interface for interactive translation alongside the API.
  • API Keys and Rate Limits
  • Optional per-key access control and throttling for shared instances.