A multilingual WordPress website costs whatever the single-language build costs, plus a translation plugin, the translation itself and the developer time to wire it all up. Plugins run from free (Polylang) to €99 a year for WPML's main plan or €15 a month for Weglot. Human translation typically costs $0.15 to $0.30 per word, and you pay that again for every extra language.
Developer time goes on the language switcher, hreflang, translated forms and, on WooCommerce, multi-currency checkout. Market estimates put a basic plugin setup at around $300, with more on top for custom templates, forms and stores. In almost every case, the plugin licence is the smallest line on the bill.
Below is each cost, a comparison of WPML, Polylang and Weglot, and where the money goes on a multilingual WooCommerce store.
What does a multilingual WordPress website cost in total?
The total is your base single-language WordPress build plus five cost lines: the translation plugin, translation, developer setup, multilingual SEO and, for shops, WooCommerce currency support. If you don't have a base figure yet, get a quote for the single-language site first, then add the lines below.
| Cost line | Typical market cost | What pushes it up |
|---|---|---|
| Translation plugin | WPML €39 to €199 a year; Polylang free, Pro from €99 a year; Weglot from €15 a month | Number of sites, WooCommerce, word volume on Weglot |
| Translation | $0.15 to $0.30 per word for human translation; machine translation costs far less | Word count multiplied by languages, legal or technical copy, review rounds |
| Developer setup | From about $300 for a basic plugin setup; custom work is billed at developer hourly rates (UK rates, US rates) | Page builder support, custom fields, forms, emails, theme strings |
| Multilingual SEO | Developer hours at the same hourly rates, multiplied by pages and languages to check | URL structure, translated slugs and meta, hreflang, sitemaps |
| WooCommerce and currency | Included in WPML's CMS plan; Polylang Business Pack from €139 a year | Number of currencies, payment gateways, tax and shipping rules |
Here's how the plugin and translation prices above add up for three example sites. The word counts are assumptions, so swap in your own. Developer setup and SEO come on top.
| Scenario | Plugin | Translation | Total before developer time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10-page brochure site, about 5,000 words, English plus one language, machine translation | Weglot Starter, €150 a year | Included in the 10,000-word allowance | About €150 a year |
| Same 10-page site, human translation | Polylang free | 5,000 words × $0.15 to $0.30 = $750 to $1,500 | $750 to $1,500 one-off |
| 200-product WooCommerce store, about 30,000 words, English plus two languages, human translation | WPML CMS, €99 a year | 60,000 words × $0.15 to $0.30 = $9,000 to $18,000 | $9,000 to $18,000 one-off, plus €99 a year |
The Swiss agency Noevu says it well in its WPML guide: the licence fee is "the most visible but rarely the largest cost factor". The real money goes on two things. Translating the words, and the developer hours it takes to make every template, form and email work in every language.
That developer work is easy to underestimate. Installing the plugin takes minutes. Then someone has to translate menus, footers, cookie banners, form labels, validation messages, thank-you pages and transactional emails. Every template needs checking in each language, and layouts break where German or French runs a lot longer than English. Arabic or Hebrew adds right-to-left layout work on top.
WPML vs Polylang vs Weglot: which should you pick?
Pick WPML for a WooCommerce shop you plan to run for years, Polylang for a lean site you translate by hand, and Weglot if you want the fastest launch with little developer time. All three can run a professional multilingual site. Where they differ is how you pay and where your translations live.
| Plugin | Pricing model | Where translations live | WooCommerce | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WPML | Blog €39, CMS €99, Agency €199 a year; CMS covers 3 live sites and 90,000 AI translation credits | Your WordPress database | Included with CMS and Agency | Business sites and shops that want full control |
| Polylang | Free core; Pro from €99 a year; Business Pack from €139 a year | Your WordPress database | Via Polylang for WooCommerce (in the Business Pack) | Lean sites, manual translation, DeepL in Pro |
| Weglot | Free up to 2,000 words; paid from €15 a month or €150 a year for 10,000 words and one language | Weglot's cloud service | Supported | Quick launches with little developer time |
| TranslatePress | From €8.25 a month, billed yearly | Your WordPress database | Supported | Visual, front-end translation editing |
- WPML Blog39€
- WPML CMS99€
- Polylang Pro99€
- TranslatePress Personal99€
- Polylang Business Pack139€
- Weglot Starter150€
- WPML Agency199€
On paper the licences look close. The gap opens up over time:
- WPML stores each translation as its own page or product in your WordPress database. The CMS plan includes the WooCommerce add-on and works with the major page builders, so for a shop on Elementor or Bricks it's usually the safest default. Like any multilingual plugin, it adds work to every page load, so test speed once it's set up and make sure caching and hosting keep up.
- Polylang is a lean option, and the free version handles a brochure site well if you translate by hand. You start paying when you need WooCommerce, DeepL machine translation or other Pro features.
- Weglot is the quickest to switch on, but it's priced by translated words, and the allowance gets used once per language. A 10,000-word site in two extra languages already needs 20,000 words, which is past the Starter plan's 10,000 words and one language, so you'd move up a tier. Translations are served from Weglot's own service, so the subscription keeps running for as long as those languages stay live.
As a general rule: if you'll keep the site for years and sell through WooCommerce, a database plugin (WPML or Polylang) usually works out cheaper over three to five years. If you need two languages live next week and the site is small, Weglot is hard to beat.
How much does translating the content cost?
Translation is usually the biggest single cost on a multilingual WordPress site. Human translation runs $0.15 to $0.30 per word, multiplied by every extra language. Machine translation, or a mix of machine and human, brings that down a lot.
- Human translation: professional rates run $0.15 to $0.30 per word, depending on the language pair and subject. Freelance translators on platforms like Upwork charge $15 to $40 an hour, which suits review and editing work.
- Machine translation: WPML's CMS plan includes 90,000 AI translation credits, and Polylang Pro has a DeepL integration. Weglot machine-translates within your word allowance.
- Hybrid: machine translation first, then a native speaker reviews the pages that sell, like the home page, service pages, product pages and checkout.
A quick worked example. A 15,000-word site translated into French and German is 30,000 words. At $0.15 to $0.30 per word, fully human translation comes to $4,500 to $9,000. If a reviewer only polishes the key pages after machine translation, you'll typically pay well below that.
Then there are the words nobody counts: form errors, button labels, order emails, PDF invoices, alt text and meta descriptions. Missing strings are what make a translated site look half-finished.
On timing, translation and native-speaker review usually take longer than the plugin setup. Freeze the source content before translation starts, because every change to an English page after that means paying to translate it again in every language. For single-language baselines, see how long it takes to build a website.
What does hreflang and multilingual SEO setup involve?
Multilingual SEO on WordPress means giving each language its own URL, translated slugs and meta, correct hreflang and canonicals, and a place in the sitemap. Hreflang tells Google which pages are language versions of each other, so a French searcher lands on the French page. Google's documentation lists three ways to declare it: HTML link tags, HTTP headers or your XML sitemap. Each version has to list itself and every other version, and the links must point back to each other.
WPML, Polylang and Weglot all output hreflang automatically. What breaks in practice is everything around the plugin: canonicals pointing every language at English, translated pages still on noindex from staging, slugs left in English, or a sitemap missing a language. Work through this checklist:
- 1
Pick a URL structure
Subdirectories such as /fr/ are the simplest to run and keep all authority on one domain. Separate country domains only make sense with separate local teams and budgets.
- 2
Translate slugs and meta
Give every language its own slug, title tag and meta description, written for how people search in that language.
- 3
Check hreflang and canonicals
Each page should point its canonical at itself and list every language version plus an x-default, with return links on both sides.
- 4
Submit language sitemaps
Make sure every language appears in the sitemap, and check indexing per language in Google Search Console.
- 5
Let visitors choose
Offer a clear language switcher instead of forcing redirects by IP, so both people and search crawlers can reach every version.
For translated titles and descriptions, my free Meta Tag Generator gives you options to hand to a native speaker for review. If you want the SEO side set up and audited properly, that's part of my technical SEO service.
How much does multilingual WooCommerce with currency switching cost?
Currency switching on its own can be free with the WooCommerce Multilingual plugin. Full language plus currency support is included in WPML's €99-a-year CMS plan, or comes with Polylang's Business Pack from €139 a year. Language and currency are separate decisions, and a lot of WooCommerce stores need currency first.
If you only need multiple currencies on a single-language store, the free WooCommerce Multilingual plugin on WordPress.org can do it. If you need both, WPML's CMS plan includes the multilingual and multicurrency add-on at no extra cost. It supports manual prices per currency, so you can charge a clean €19.99 instead of an odd converted figure. On Polylang, you need the Business Pack.
For Wow Vastra, a UK Indian fashion boutique, I added a currency switcher and a worldwide checkout to the WooCommerce store, so overseas shoppers could see prices in their own currency and pay easily. The store kept a 1.5 second load. That project was about currency and checkout, not translation, and that's common: international buyers often care more about price and payment than translated copy. I've covered the currency side in detail in how to sell in multiple currencies on WooCommerce.
What adds developer time on a multilingual WooCommerce store:
- Translating product attributes, variations and categories, not only descriptions
- Payment gateways that support each currency
- Rounding rules, tax display and shipping zones per country
- Translated order, refund and account emails
- Product feeds for Google Merchant Center per country and language
Do you need translation, or just country-specific content?
If you sell to countries that share your language, you may only need country-specific content. A UK business selling to the US speaks the same language but might need different phone numbers, delivery messages, pricing notes or legal text.
For Bricks Builder sites I built Geo Targeting for Bricks Builder, a WordPress.org plugin that shows or hides Bricks elements by visitor country, resolved via IPinfo Lite. One page can show a UK banner to UK visitors and a US banner to US visitors, and you never maintain a translated copy of the site. That costs far less than a full multilingual setup. One thing to watch: if you use page caching, your developer needs to make sure country-based content isn't cached and shown to everyone.
What should you ask a developer before you hire?
Ask which translation plugin they recommend and why, who does the translation, and how they'll handle hreflang, WooCommerce currencies and plugin lock-in.
- Which plugin do you recommend for my site, and why that one over the others?
- Who handles translation, and is it machine, human or hybrid?
- Will slugs, meta titles, forms, emails and checkout all be translated?
- How will you set up and test hreflang, canonicals and sitemaps per language?
- On WooCommerce, how will currencies, payment gateways and shipping work per country?
- What happens to the translations if we stop paying for the plugin?
If the answers to the last three are vague, expect surprises after launch.
How do you get a quote for a multilingual WordPress site?
Send me your page list, the languages and countries you're targeting, and whether you sell online. I'll tell you which plugin fits, what needs translating and where most of the cost will land. Book a 20-minute call, or see how I build WordPress sites on Bricks, Elementor and Oxygen.
