LibreTranslate
United Kingdom
Self-hostable machine translation API built entirely on open-source models, no Google or Microsoft required.
European Alternative to:
An open-source machine translation API you can self-host. LibreTranslate uses the Argos Translate engine under the hood and is licensed under AGPLv3, which is part of why it's become the default "Google Translate but on my own server" pick for a lot of European projects.
What you get
- A REST API for translation between dozens of language pairs
- A simple web UI for ad-hoc translations
- A Docker image, so a self-hosted instance is one `docker run` away
- Optional language packs so you can keep the install small or download more
- A hosted instance for people who don't want to run their own, with pay-as-you-go pricing
Where it sits
The project is community-maintained on GitHub, with multiple European deployments running their own instances rather than calling Google or DeepL. The whole stack, from the model files to the API server, can live entirely on infrastructure you control.
Honestly
Translation quality is below DeepL and below Google for most major language pairs, especially for nuance and idiom. For a lot of work (UI strings, basic comprehension, internal tooling) it's good enough, and the ability to call a private translation endpoint without sending text to a US cloud is the actual reason to use it.
Germany