The short answer
Amazon Translate is billed per million chars. It has a free tier: 2M chars/mo for 12 months. The paid plans we list start at $15.00 / 1M characters (Standard Text Translation).
Plans and prices
| Plan | Price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Standard Text Translation | $15.00 / 1M characters | Real-time and asynchronous batch text translation; billed per character including whitespace, pay-as-you-go. |
| Batch Document Translation | $15.00 / 1M characters | Asynchronous translation of documents stored in Amazon S3. |
| Real-Time Document Translation (Text & HTML) | $15.00 / 1M characters | Synchronous document translation preserving formatting; no free tier. |
| Real-Time Document Translation (Docx) | $30.00 / 1M characters | Synchronous Word .docx translation; no free tier. |
| Active Custom Translation (ACT) | $60.00 / 1M characters | Domain-customized output using parallel data; includes 200 GB free parallel-data storage ($0.023/GB/mo overage). |
| Free Tier | $0 | 2M characters/month free for first 12 months (standard & batch); ACT 500K characters/month free for 2 months. |
How Amazon Translate bills you
The pricing model is per million chars. Pay-as-you-go MT tightly integrated with the AWS ecosystem and IAM; SDK coverage in every AWS-supported language but a time-limited free tier. Best suited to: mt inside the aws stack.
What to watch for on the bill
- No casual free tier beyond the 12-month allowance; requires AWS account and credit card, frustrating occasional users
- Docx real-time translation costs double ($30/1M) and ACT is 4x standard ($60/1M)
The pricing page we read
Source: https://aws.amazon.com/translate/pricing/. Prices change, so confirm there before you commit.
Compare Amazon Translate with alternatives
- Google Cloud Translation API vs Amazon Translate pricing
- Azure AI Translator vs Amazon Translate pricing
- Amazon Translate vs DeepL API pricing
Other translation apis: Google Cloud Translation API, Azure AI Translator, DeepL API, Lara Translate, Lokalise.
Looking at quality rather than price? See the Amazon Translate score on APIbenchmarks. Full entry: Amazon Translate pricing.