DeepL Translator: reduced character limit and price increase
DeepL Translator is a translation service that is available as mobile apps, desktop programs and a web service. The service is offered as a free limited version and a Pro version.
We reviewed DeepL Translator in 2017 for the first time and followed the service's development ever since. DeepL, in a nutshell, promises translations that are closer to human translations than competing services like Google Translate. DeepL Translator supports fewer languages than other machine-based translation services, which is its biggest drawback.
DeepL Translator Free could be used to translate up to 5000 characters in one session, up to 3 locked document translations per month, and to use 10 glossary entries, up until now.
DeepL Pro subscribers get access to unlimited characters, more file uploads, support for formal and informal tones, at least one a glossary with 5000 entries and other benefits.
When you visit the DeepL Translator website right now, you may notice that the company has reduced the character translate limit from 5000 to 3000 characters.
Not all visits show the reduced translate limit at this time; opening another browser and visiting the site may display the previous limit of 5000 characters.
On this system, I got the 3000 character limit in Brave and the 5000 character limit in Edge. Both showed the English version of the website.
It is possible that the new character limit is rolling out slowly or A-B tested by the company to gather feedback and data.
The changed character limit is not the only difference that users may encounter. Eagle-eyed visitors may also notice that the price of a Pro Starter account increased from €5.99 per month to €7.49 per month ($8.74 in the US) when paid annually. The updated price was displayed in all browsers, unlike the 3000 characters limit per translation.
The character limit for translations may limit accessibility somewhat. Users may help themselves currently by doing repeat translations if the character count of the text is larger than 3000 characters. This had to be done previously for texts with more than 5000 characters as well.
Now You: do you use DeepL Translator? Do you see the old or new character limit for translations?
I think they are at a death throes with this since OpenAI GPT-4 and Claude 3 Sonnet provide a way better translations and with way better speed/API than them nowadays so they just can’t support their model anymore.
Deepl again decreased the characters from 3000 to 1500.
If anyone regularly translating between Russian & English should try Bing translator. It used to be far superior translating between these 2 languages compared to google translate. Now the gap has decreased but it is still superior. Plus Bing translator app can translate offline, though quality may differ.
When greed takes over corporate decisions it is better to leave. Life was possible before that.
When people think that other people’s work and infrastructure should be free, it is indeed better for those first people to leave.
I use DeepL Translator occasionally.
At this time I do not see the old or new character limit for translations (Firefox 108.0 / Windows 7)
Occasionally and never for long texts in which case I call upon a ‘SimplyTranslate’ instance to perform the translation [https://simple-web.org/projects/simplytranslate.html]. These instances offer several translation engines (Google | ICIBA | Reverso), but DeepL has been removed at least on the instances I use :
[simplytranslate.org | simplytranslate.pussthecat.org | translate.bus-hit.me | translate.josias.dev | translate.namazso.eu | translate.northboot.xyz | translate.riverside.rocks | translate.tiekoetter.com]
where I set ‘Google Translate’ (default) to do the job.
We avoid all Google servers with one exception :
[translate.googleapis.com] # Exception for *googleapis* (required by ‘TWP – Translate Web Pages’ Firefox extension)
That’s it.
I use the free, open source Lingva (lingva.ml), and find it good. Don’t know what the character limit is.
There is no limit other than Google translate limit since Linva is an anonymous front-end for Google translate.
@mikhoul: what is your source?
@Klaas Vaak
“I use the free, _open source_”
Have you tried looking at this very “open source”? There, the authors directly write:
“Alternative front-end for Google Translate”
@Honorius: ah, fair enough. It also says on their Github page:
“Lingva scrapes through Google Translate and retrieves the translation without directly accessing any Google-related service, preventing them from tracking.”
Similar to Startpage, before it was acquired by an advertising company.
Lingva as well as ‘SimplyTranslate’ are a front-end in that they connect to translation engines, but by themselves, not via the user. Google Translate receives the text from Lingva (or from ‘SimplyTranslate’), the user himself does not connect to the translation engine.
As Google cannot be trusted in terms of privacy I’ve also chosen to use DeepL translator. But most of the time only to translate single words or phrases, so the change doesn’t affect me.
just now checked and on my Firefox , it offers 5000 characters in free translations.
Yes I do use Deepl regularly as I find the quality of translations better than google translate.
Not recently. In the later months I saw Google Translate do a job on the similar level. Also DeepL is way too bad with onomatopoeia, unknown words and various forms of tags.