GTranslate alternatives: six options compared for 2026

GTranslate's free language switcher has more than 900,000 active installs on WordPress.org. The switcher translates in the visitor's browser with Google Translate. GTranslate's paid plans are a different product: a translating proxy that serves each language at its own URL for search engines, at a flat monthly price with no word or page-view limit. So when someone looks for an alternative, the first thing to settle is which GTranslate they are leaving.

I build LangRelay, a WordPress plugin, which comes after the six vendors here. Their facts and prices are from their own sites on 7 October 2026.

What GTranslate does well, and where people outgrow it#

GTranslate's paid plans are priced by features. Custom is $12 a month for one extra language, Startup $25 for all languages, Business $35 with URL translation, and Enterprise $50 with a language on its own domain. Its terms treat recurring traffic above 100,000 translated page hits in 24 hours as excessive, and below that the bill stays the same however large the site gets. It works on any HTML site and lists 103 languages.

Reasons people look elsewhere:

• The free widget gives no SEO advantage, GTranslate's WordPress page says, because the URL does not change and translations are not stored. Its terms limit the free version to personal, educational, internal testing, nonprofit or governmental use that does not directly generate revenue.
• I found no approval step: paid plans serve machine translation as it is made, and you refine it afterwards with pencil icons on the page.
• Its help center says that when the original text changes, a manual edit made for it is replaced by automatic translation.
• There is no glossary. Paid plans can skip phrases, CSS selectors or pages instead.
• Translations are kept by GTranslate, not in WordPress.

The six alternatives side by side#

Prices are the cheapest paid plan each vendor listed on 7 October 2026.

LangRelay is a WordPress plugin too, but it keeps translations in its own service and its plugin serves them from your server, and translations go live by default, with free checks that hold a page with untranslated text, the wrong language or a changed price. Its plans are on the pricing page.

If you are leaving the free widget#

Moving to a paid GTranslate plan is the shortest step: Startup turns on indexable pages for every language. If you leave instead, each alternative here serves translations search engines can see.

Of the hosted services, Weglot uses DeepL where it supports the pair, and its free plan has 2,000 words in one language. ConveyThis has a free plan of 10,000 words, one language and 2,500 page loads a month, with no time limit and no card, and its visual editor is on every plan. Linguise has no free plan but a one-month trial.

Of the WordPress plugins, Polylang is free with no language limit, but someone writes each translation. TranslatePress's free plugin adds one language and includes 2,000 AI words.

If you want someone to check translations first#

Five of the six have some form of check. WPML's PTC engine can hold translations as drafts until a Translation Manager approves them. Weglot can stop translating new content automatically so it waits for your approval. Polylang Pro's DeepL output waits as a draft. TranslatePress can keep a whole language hidden until you publish it. ConveyThis can keep the site private while you review and edit, then publish it as a whole, and its features page mentions approving changes; I found no hold on a single translation in its help center. Linguise's install guide says the whole site is translated once the API key is applied.

If you want translations in WordPress#

WPML, TranslatePress and Polylang all write translations into your database, and all three keep working if you stop renewing: TranslatePress without its AI, Polylang Pro without updates or support, and WPML keeps showing the translations. WPML and Polylang make each language its own post. TranslatePress keeps one post and translates the rendered page, closer to how GTranslate looks from the front end.

A worked example: a small business site in two languages#

A worked example, priced from each vendor's page on 7 October 2026. A company site on WordPress has 10,000 words and wants French and Spanish pages that search engines index. The free GTranslate widget is out, both for SEO and under GTranslate's terms for a site that earns revenue.

Weglot and the two plugins count a word once per language, so the site needs 20,000. ConveyThis counts words when translated content is shown, and its FAQ says only views in a translated language count toward the monthly page loads. Prices are in the currency each vendor printed.

What moving away from GTranslate involves#

GTranslate keeps its translations on its own network, so every alternative starts from your original pages. From the free widget there are no translated URLs to redirect. From a paid plan on subdirectories, a tool that also uses /fr/-style paths keeps the same addresses; from a subdomain or a country domain, plan redirects. If you used URL translation on Business or Enterprise, note your translated slugs first: in LangRelay a translated slug is set by hand per page and language.

LangRelay keeps one post per page, translates what WordPress renders, and serves approved translations under /fr/-style paths with hreflang and a canonical per language. The plugin reports an edit about a minute after you save it, and only the changed text is translated. During the pilot it supports nine languages, far fewer than GTranslate's 103, and off WordPress its script embed translates in the browser without SEO value, much like GTranslate's free widget.

The LangRelay vs GTranslate page goes into the two in detail, Weglot vs GTranslate compares the two proxies, and the buyer's guide covers every tool here by capability.