LibreTranslate
Self-hosted translation API built on Argos Translate with no dependency on commercial cloud services.
About
Privacy-focused deployments reach for LibreTranslate when they need a translation API with no Google or Azure dependency. The server wraps the Argos Translate neural engine and its installable language packs in a REST API and web interface, self-hosted with pip install libretranslate, Docker (including a CUDA compose file for GPU inference), or Kubernetes; once language models are downloaded, the whole stack runs offline on commodity hardware, and the documentation lists 59 supported languages. Licensing is AGPL-3.0, the repository has about 15,500 stars, and documentation lives at docs.libretranslate.com. For teams that would rather not run infrastructure, a hosted instance at libretranslate.com offers the same API with paid keys, Pro at 29 dollars a month for bursts up to 80 translations a minute and Business at 58 dollars a month for up to 200, and the revenue funds development. It has become a default choice for open-source projects and privacy-sensitive products that need machine translation on their own hardware.
Should you use LibreTranslate?
Pick it when
Pick LibreTranslate when several apps or users need a shared translation API on your own hardware with no text sent to Google or Azure, deployed via Docker or Kubernetes, or when you want the same API hosted for a monthly fee.
Look elsewhere when
Skip it if you only translate inside one Python program, where Argos Translate directly is less to run. Under AGPL-3.0, a modified version you offer over a network must share its source with users, which some companies rule out.
Alternatives to LibreTranslate
- Argos Translate
The underlying engine as an MIT or CC0 library with no server to operate, simpler for a single app, but no REST API or web UI.
- CTranslate2
Fast inference engine for serving your own Transformer translation models, more model control, but you build the API and language handling.
- Transformers
Runs larger multilingual checkpoints with more model choice, but no ready API server or language packs, and some popular ones such as NLLB are non-commercial.
Reviews (0)
Leave a Review
No reviews yet. Be the first to review!
Details
- Category
- Natural Language Processing
- Price
- Freemium
- Platform
- Hybrid
- Difficulty
- Easy (2/5)
- License
- AGPL-3.0
- Added
- Jul 29, 2026