What is DeepL?

Who makes DeepL

DeepL is made by DeepL SE, a company based in Cologne, Germany, founded in 2017. It calls itself a Language AI company, and its products include DeepL Translator, DeepL Write and the DeepL API.

DeepL says over 200,000 businesses use it. Nimdzi estimates its 2025 revenue at $197 million. Those are different kinds of figures: the business count comes from DeepL, while the revenue figure is an outside estimate.

How the translator works

DeepL Translator is the translation product; the API lets you send translation requests from your own software. DeepL Write is another product in the lineup, separate from the translator and API.

What happens to the text you send? That depends on whether you're using the free version or paid Pro services, and it's worth checking before you paste in anything you don't want used for training.

DeepL's privacy policy says text sent to the free version is used to train and improve its neural networks. Text sent to paid Pro services is stored only temporarily and isn't used to improve them.

That's a real distinction. Don't treat the free and paid services as having the same rules for your text.

Free and Pro plans

As of November 2026, the translator plans below are priced in EUR, billed annually, with VAT included. Annual billing saves 16%. The monthly prices are monthly equivalents under annual billing, not prices for paying month by month.

• Free gives you 50,000 characters a month and 1 file.
• Individual costs €7.49 a month, with 300,000 characters and 3 files.
• Team costs €24.99 per user a month, with 1,000,000 characters per user and 20 files.
• Business costs €49.99 per user a month. It includes unlimited characters under fair use, plus 100 files up to 100 MB.

"Unlimited" still comes with fair use. And if you're comparing plans for a team, keep the per-user pricing and character allowances in view rather than reading them as totals for everyone.

These are the translator plans. For an integration, look at the API plans below instead.

The DeepL API

The API has its own plans, and the free allowance has changed. The old API Free plan with 500,000 characters a month and the old API Pro plan can no longer be bought.

Here's what's available:

• Developer is free, with a one-time allowance of 1,000,000 characters. It never resets.
• Growth costs €23.80 a month, billed annually, plus usage. It includes 12 million characters a year, charges €22 per extra million, and has a cap of 50 million characters a month.
• Enterprise has custom pricing.

The reset matters. If you're expecting Developer to give you another free allowance next month, it won't.

For translation controls, the API supports glossaries, formality, HTML and XML tag handling, and a quality-optimized model option. There's also a context parameter that isn't billed (useful to keep separate from the text you're paying to translate). Requests can be up to 128 KiB.

If you're comparing API options, Translinga accepts DeepL API requests as they are, including the DeepL-Auth-Key header. DeepL's own Node and Python libraries work when pointed at https://api.translinga.com; switching means changing the URL and key. Its Fast tier costs $2.50 per million characters and Quality costs $5.00 per million. Every character counts, including spaces, once per target language. Credit starts at $5 prepaid and never expires; the first $1 is free, about 400,000 characters on Fast, with no card needed for a key.

When DeepL is the wrong fit

Don't assume tag handling will preserve every bit of template code, or that giving context will settle every ambiguous word.

In an English-to-Dutch test on October 27, 2026, Translinga found that DeepL changed the Shopify filter | money to | geld. Shopify then prints the raw amount in cents. DeepL also translated "Save" in a combat menu as "Opslaan," meaning saving a file, even with context supplied, and "Charge" on a billing page as "Opladen," meaning charging a battery.

Those are specific failures, not a score for every translation. But if your strings contain template code or words like those, check the output before using it. Translinga takes Liquid tags, HTML and placeholders out before translation, checks each reply tag by tag, and retries any string returned with a missing tag.