100% Self-Hosted. No Limits. No Ties to Proprietary Services.
Reviewed by Gabriel Bachmann
LibreTranslate
libretranslate.com 3 ratings so far*
Rate LibreTranslate: No account needed
Threat level
Hardened
A hardened pick. Worth the effort once you have chosen to shrink your footprint on purpose. Enough for most people. Threat levels
Our take
The only fully self-hosted, machine-learning translator in this group, which means with your own instance no text ever touches a proprietary service, a real privacy win. The honest trade is quality: its open models don’t match DeepL or Google on nuance, especially for less common languages. Pick LibreTranslate when independence and not leaking text to a third party outrank polish, and you can run the server. If you need the most accurate translation and privacy is secondary, this is not the one.
GitHub at a glance
LibreTranslate/LibreTranslate
Stars
15,451
+ 925 this week
Last commit
19d ago
healthy
License
AGPL-3.0
Latest release
v1.9.6
2mo ago
Stars, last 37d
Website at a glance
libretranslate.com
F score 10
Weak website security headers
Graded by Mozilla HTTP Observatory, tested 5d ago
Inspect this site yourself
Measures the security configuration of the tool's own website, not the privacy of the product itself. A strong tool can still score low here.
LibreTranslate alternatives
Lingva Translate Retrieves translations without using any Google-related service, preventing them from tracking.
LanguageTool Great alternative to Grammarly. Plugins and apps available for: Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Safari, Opera, iOS, macOS, Windows, Google Docs, Microsoft Office, LibreOffice,…
DeepL Translate Warning: The free version of DeepL does not respect your privacy, only the paid pro version. Source: Privacy Policy. The texts of free users are used to train and improve the…
TranslateLocally Offline neural machine translation that runs entirely on your device, with a desktop app and browser extension.
Linguist Linguist is not just another browser extension. It's a full-featured translation system that respects your privacy. Translate offline on your device, use any translation…
SimplyTranslate Mobile Clearweb, Onion, I2P and Lokinet instances are also available for SimplyTranslate.
LibreTranslate license, in plain English
AGPL-3.0 Strong copyleft · network
Free to use, even commercially. Changes must be published under the same license, and running a modified version as a network service counts as distributing it.
Permits
- Commercial use
- Modification
- Distribution
- Patent use
- Private use
Requires
- Disclose source
- Network use is distribution
- Same license
- State changes
- License and copyright notice
Does not provide
- Liability cover
- Warranty
Why it matters: The network clause is the point. Anyone who runs a modified version as a hosted service has to publish those changes, so the code handling your data stays inspectable. This is why privacy-first projects reach for AGPL.
Plain-language summary of the project's license, not legal advice. Read the full text for the exact terms.
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