Writing and content decision
Weglot
A capable developer can build a useful, narrower replacement (automatic translation + serving under language URLs and a basic editor) in about a week; the paid product’s polished dashboard, enterprise features, and brand-backed services are the main reasons to keep the commercial option for larger teams.
Visit website↗No open-source build does this yet
Nothing published replaces this one, so a replacement starts from an empty file. Here is what it would have to cover.
What a replacement has to do
- Detect site content → send strings to a translation API → store translated HTML/strings → serve language-specific URLs and inject language switcher → provide a simple dashboard for editing translations and exporting
What it still won’t have
- Hosted dashboard with polished visual editor and UX
- Custom-brand translation model and training tuned by provider
- Managed uptime, SLA, and enterprise features (SSO, dedicated proxy)
- Built-in multilingual SEO automation and integrations across many platforms
- Professional support, managed translators, and premium workflows
What remains hard
- Brand trust
111,368+ global brands rely on Weglot to translate their websites
- Brand trust
Website translation leader on G2 for 4 years in a row
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 4 seats.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a minimal self-hosted website translation service using Node.js (Express), PostgreSQL, and a translation API (DeepL or Google). Include: (1) a crawler to extract translatable strings and metadata from a provided site root; (2) translation jobs that call a configurable MT provider and store results; (3) an HTTP layer that serves translated content under /{lang}/ paths and emits hreflang tags; (4) a lightweight dashboard to list and edit translations (text-only editor), and a language switcher JS snippet to inject into pages; (5) export/import of translations (CSV/JSON). Out of scope: WYSIWYG visual editor, custom model training, enterprise SSO, billing. Require robust error handling, retry/backoff for API calls, tests for crawler, translation job, serving, and DB migrations.How we checked
How the score was reached
- Build verdict base78
- 3 cited sources+3
- Price verified on pricing page+3
- Evidence score84
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time — so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 3
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productWeglot home / product
- official pricingWeglot pricing
- official docsWeglot features / how it works
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
