Translation privacy ratings
Translation apps and services, including ones that run offline.
8 translation are rated against 11 public criteria, and 8 have enough evidence for a letter grade. Of the 7 with a known jurisdiction, 6 are based in a Five Eyes country, and 7 in the wider Fourteen Eyes.
Open-source translation only · Criteria for this category · Suggest an addition · Markdown
| Name | Grade | Score | Data | Jurisdiction | Open source | No trackers or telemetry | No ads or data sales | Independent audit | Transparency report | Tells users about requests | Works offline | Text not kept | TLS configuration | Security headers | Modern web standards |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Open-source desktop app that translates text on the device with downloadable neural models from the Bergamot project, originally built at the University of Edinburgh. Browser extensions are also available. |
Grade B | 87 | 100% | United Kingdom Five Eyes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Not applicable | Not applicable | Yes | Yes | Not applicable | Not applicable | Not applicable |
Free and open-source rule-based machine translation platform, focused on related and lesser-resourced languages. Usable on apertium.org or installed locally for offline translation. |
Grade B | 77 | 100% | – | Yes | Partial | Yes | No | Not applicable | Not applicable | Yes | Yes | Not applicable | Not applicable | Not applicable |
Open-source machine translation API built on Argos Translate that can be self-hosted. A hosted instance at libretranslate.com offers a free web translator and paid API keys. |
Grade C | 67 | 100% | United States Five Eyes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Partial | No | Not tested yet |
Built-in Firefox feature that translates web pages on the device with local machine translation models, without sending text to a cloud service. |
Grade C | 63 | 100% | United States Five Eyes | Yes | Partial | No | No | Not applicable | Not applicable | Yes | Yes | Not applicable | Not applicable | Not applicable |
Translation service from Kagi Inc. that uses large language models from several providers to translate text, documents and web pages. Free to use on the web and in mobile apps. |
Grade F | 38 | 100% | United States Five Eyes | No | Yes | Yes | No | Partial | No | No | Partial | Partial | No | Not tested yet |
Microsoft's machine translation service for text, speech, images and conversations, available as Bing Translator on the web, as mobile and Windows apps, and built into Edge and Microsoft 365. |
Grade F | 33 | 100% | United States Five Eyes | No | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Partial | No | Yes | Partial | Not tested yet |
Machine translation service from DeepL SE in Cologne, with a free web translator, paid DeepL Pro plans, an API, and desktop and mobile apps. |
Grade F | 31 | 100% | Germany Fourteen Eyes | No | No | Yes | Partial | No | No | No | Partial | Yes | Partial | Not tested yet |
Google's machine translation service for text, documents, websites, speech and images, available on the web and as mobile apps. |
Grade F | 31 | 100% | United States Five Eyes | No | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial | Partial | No | Not tested yet |
Questions
What is the most private option among translation?
No pick has been made yet. The table above is sorted by score, based on public evidence.
How are translation rated?
Each entry answers 11 questions: open source, no trackers or telemetry, no ads or data sales, independent audit, transparency report, tells users about requests, TLS configuration, security headers, modern web standards, works offline and text not kept. Answers need links to evidence. See the full criteria.
Does jurisdiction matter?
Jurisdiction decides which laws can compel a provider to hand over data. Each entry shows its country and whether it is in the Five, Nine or Fourteen Eyes. The data a provider can hand over depends mostly on what it stores and who holds the keys. Read about jurisdictions and the CLOUD Act.