What is Microsoft Translator?

Microsoft Translator is a free consumer app that translates typed, spoken and handwritten text and text in images, with downloadable language packs for offline use on some platforms. Microsoft also sells the translation engine to developers as Azure Translator (a cloud API and containers) on separate, usage-based pricing.

Who it's for

The consumer app suits travelers and everyday users who want free text, speech and image translation on Windows, iOS and Android. The Azure Translator API is aimed at developers and businesses that add translation to their own apps, documents and workflows and need an Azure account.

Pros & cons

Strengths

The Microsoft Store listing says the app translates typed, spoken and handwritten (Windows Ink) input and images such as menus and signs, and supports downloadable language packs for offline use.
The App Store listing shows the price as Free, lists text translation in 100+ languages, real-time speech translation and text-in-image translation, and lists no in-app purchases.
Microsoft's docs say the Azure text translation API version 2026-06-06 (GA) lets developers choose neural machine translation or an LLM per request, and adaptive custom translation adapts supported LLMs from 5 to 10,000 aligned segment pairs.
The docs describe document translation in two modes: asynchronous batch (needs Azure Blob Storage) and synchronous single file (no storage needed); version 2026-03-01 adds image files (.jpeg, .png, .bmp, .webp) and PDF batch translation via Azure Document Intelligence.
Azure Translator is offered as a REST API, through the Microsoft Foundry portal, and as containers for text and document translation, with Text Translation and Document Translation SDKs; the docs list GA client libraries for Python, Java, .NET and JavaScript.
Microsoft's no-trace page says text and voice sent to the Azure Translator API are not written to persistent storage and are not used for training.

Limitations

The official Azure pricing pages we could read showed placeholders instead of dollar amounts, so the per-character rates below come from third-party pages (Reported); only the free quota, meters and billing units were readable on Microsoft's page.
Third-party pages disagree on document and custom pricing: one lists document translation at $15 per million characters, another lists custom/document translation at $40 per million characters. Microsoft's page caps custom model training at $300 per run and bills hosting per model, per region, per month.
Microsoft's no-trace page says the free consumer products (Translator apps, Bing, Edge, Web Translator) record voice clips and text translations for service improvement; the pages we read do not say whether consumer content trains models. The App Store privacy labels list user content, usage and diagnostics data collected.
Microsoft's own app pages disagree: the Microsoft Store listing says over 60 languages and real-time conversations with up to 100 people, while the App Store listing says 100+ languages and that the multi-device conversation feature has been retired; the App Store page does not mention offline use. The App Store version requires iOS 17 or later.
A Microsoft FAQ says Translator Pro, the enterprise speech-to-speech iOS app, begins retirement on September 15, 2026 with no new customers onboarded and maintenance mode until September 15, 2027; the Azure what's-new page we read shows no retirement notice.

Plans and pricing

Consumer app: Free. Microsoft Translator app for Windows, iOS and Android; the App Store page lists no in-app purchases. Language count and offline support vary by listing.
Azure Translator F0 (free): $0. 2 million characters a month, shared across standard translation and custom translation training; includes text translation, language detection, bilingual dictionary and transliteration.
Azure Translator S1 pay as you go: Reported $10 per million characters (text). Billed per million characters; document translation is billed per million characters and image documents per thousand images (up to 500 characters each). Reported document rate: $15 per million characters, but another page lists $40 (see limits).
Azure commitment tiers: Reported example: $2,055 a month for 250 million characters. Monthly blocks of 250 million, 1 billion or 4,000 million characters with per-million overage; an S1 tier covers text only, a connected-container tier covers text and documents. S2 to S4 are deprecated.
Azure custom translation: Reported $40 per million characters. Custom translation requests are billed per million characters; training is billed per million characters with a $300 maximum per run, plus hosting per model, per region, per month.
Azure disconnected containers: Annual, price not shown. Two annual options listed: up to 120B billed units a year (about 10B a month) or up to 48B a year (about 4B a month); text and document translation.

The consumer app price was read from the App Store and Microsoft Store listings; Azure free quota, meters and tiers were read from Microsoft's pricing page, which showed blank dollar amounts, so the Azure rates are Reported from third-party pages. Azure prices are calculated in US dollars and converted to local currencies, and Azure plans are billed monthly on usage. Confirm on the live pricing page.

Details checked October 2026 against the vendor's own pages. Prices and limits change, so confirm before you buy. Official pricing page ↗

Sources

This profile was compiled from these public pages. We have not run hands-on tests.

Summary