Mobile Translation Tools, 2026

General
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Revisiting this topic to review current options

The current, singular PG recommendation is LibreTranslate. I’ve used it for some time & it works quite well. However, web interface users will find the tool unusable today, being prompted with a popup:

Due to bot abuse, translation requests are temporarily limited to users with a valid API key. Sorry for the inconvenience!

The API key costs $30/month and does not appear to support anonymous payment. For many, this is disqualifying

LibreTranslate does support self-hosting, for those with the means to setup a home server & a VPN to access from mobile, remotely. But given the current costs for RAM & such, self-hosting will likely be cost-prohibitive for many in 2026

Regrettably, it seems that LibreTranslate is not a reliable, anonymous, accessible option for mobile users in 2026

Other options have been discussed on PrivacyGuides before, but none seem to have gained broad community support:

So I ask you, PG community: which of these tools do you use for translations on your mobile device? Has a new option emerged? Does LibreTranslate remain king, and users simply need to accept a compromise on anonymity/cost/accessibility?

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Offline Translator for Android
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I am also disappointed by the existing options tbh. Just to add to the list, there is also GitHub - DavidVentura/offline-translator: Use Firefox Translation Models for on-device translation on Android Offline Translator based on Mozilla’s models and a small correction, it is written RTranslator.

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You probably are not liking this but these days I actually do all translations with Proton Lumo which I have in my proton subscription. LLMs have better results than most translators. DeepL is however still a great more specific mind of AI translator.

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Thanks, Ive updated my post to fix RTranslator

I can find no evidence that your Offline Translator has been discussed on PG before - that’s a new tool! Hopefully other users lurk here & can weigh in with their experience below

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That may be an interesting meta discussion on PG in the near future - should translation tools be merged with the AI chats? Theyre converging tool categories

Lumo Plus is 1/3 the cost of LibreTranslate’s API subscription, lmao

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I’ve been using Kagi Translate and it works really well. Give that a try too. It’s the newest app/service from Kagi.

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Thanks - adding link to Kagi Translate, another translation tool for which I can find no past PG discussions

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Wait, how heavy is it to self-host? :thinking:

Is it that bad? Otherwise yes, having it piped into your phone through a self-hosted VPN might be quite a lot of work but that sounds like the only option that is non-LLM unfortunately. :sweat_smile:

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It doesnt look terribly resource-intensive, you may be able to run a viable instance on an old laptop. That’ll probably be another project added to my list haha

Regardless, privacy should be available for all, not only those of us with the technical ability to run a server farm. This post is for the normal humans who dont know what a dockerfile is

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If you use IronFox, you can go to about:translations and use local translations there.

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I like this awesome apps:

Last one uses Mozilla translation models

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Sure, but a datacentre VPS is still cost-efficient.

None of them.

Mozhi, but it is not new (to me):

@cryptor referenced Crow Translate, which uses Mozhi.

No.

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It works quite well also.

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