ConveyThis vs Polylang: the short answer
Polylang is the better choice if you already have translations, or people to write them, and you want every word stored in your own WordPress database. The plugin is free, has no limit on languages, and runs on more than 800,000 WordPress sites, with a 4.7 out of 5 rating from nearly 3,000 reviews on WordPress.org (checked 27 September 2026). It does its job very well, which is keeping track of which post is the French version of which English post.
ConveyThis is the better choice if nobody has translated your site yet. The free Polylang plugin does not translate anything. Its feature list describes managing languages, and machine translation with DeepL is a Pro feature. Every page, menu, widget and product description must be written in each language before it exists there. ConveyThis translates the whole site automatically from $12 a month (free up to 5,000 words), lets you edit any sentence in a visual editor and translates new pages as you publish them.
To compare the two properly, add the translation work to the licence price. For most sites the work costs far more than the licence. The rest of this page shows how to calculate it for your own site.
ConveyThis vs Polylang at a glance
| Fait (vérifié le 27 septembre 2026) | ConveyThis | Polylang |
|---|---|---|
| Qu'est-ce que c'est | A hosted translation service: JavaScript snippet or plugin (WordPress plugin: 1,000+ active installs, 4.4/5 from 145 ratings) | A WordPress plugin that manages languages; each translation is its own WordPress post (800,000+ active installs, 4.7/5 from 2,993 reviews) |
| Who translates | Automatic machine translation of every page, which you can edit | You, your translators, or DeepL machine translation in Polylang Pro |
| Option gratuite | Forfait gratuit : 5 000 mots, 1 langue, 1 site | Free plugin, unlimited languages, no machine translation |
| Prix d'entrée | Démarreur, 12 $ par mois : 30 000 mots, 1 langue | Polylang Pro, €99 per year (ex VAT) for 1 site |
| WooCommerce | Included; ConveyThis translates the storefront like any page | Polylang for WooCommerce add-on, €99 per year, or Business Pack (Pro + WooCommerce) €139 per year |
| Plateformes | Any website; WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Webflow and others | WordPress uniquement |
| Où vivent les traductions | In the ConveyThis service, served on your language URLs | In your WordPress database |
| Limites d'utilisation | Translated words and monthly translation requests (page loads) per plan | None published; your limit is translation time |
| Renewals | Monthly or yearly (ten times the monthly price) | Yearly licence; polylang.pro lists a 50% renewal discount |
Sources: polylang.pro/pricing, wordpress.org/plugins/polylang, the Business Pack page et conveythis.com/tarification, all read on 27 September 2026. Polylang prices are shown in euros, excluding VAT, as on its site.
Tarification, plan par plan
Polylang sells yearly licences by number of sites. ConveyThis sells monthly or yearly plans by translated words, languages and domains. Here are both ladders as published.
| Polylang product (per year, ex VAT) | 1 site | 3 sites | 5 sites | 25 sites |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Polylang (WordPress.org) | Gratuit | Gratuit | Gratuit | Gratuit |
| Polylang Pro | €99 | €198 | €297 | €495 |
| Polylang for WooCommerce | €99 | €198 | €297 | €495 |
| Business Pack (Pro + WooCommerce) | €139 | €269 | €399 | €649 |
| ConveyThis plan (per month) | Mots | Traduction | Sites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free, $0 | 5,000 | 1 | 1 |
| Starter, $12 | 30,000 | 1 | 1 |
| Business, $24 | 100,000 | 3 | 1 |
| Pro, $64 | 400,000 | 5 | 3 |
| Optimum, $160 | 1,000,000 | 14 | 10 |
ConveyThis lists twelve plans up to Extreme ($960 a month, 10,000,000 words, 100 languages, 50 sites) plus custom Enterprise terms; see the page de tarification for the full ladder. Yearly billing is ten times the monthly price.
On licence price alone, Polylang is cheaper: the plugin is free, and even the Business Pack costs less per year than two months of ConveyThis Business. The next section adds the cost of the translation work.
The total cost, including the translation work
With Polylang, somebody has to produce every translated word. That work costs money whether you pay a translator or spend your own evenings on it. You can estimate it for your site with one line of arithmetic:
Words on your site × number of extra languages × cost per word, plus the same again for every new page you publish.
The example below uses round, illustrative numbers. They are assumptions to show the arithmetic, and they are not quotes. Replace them with your own word count and your own translator's rate.
| Example: a 30,000-word site into 1 language (illustrative assumptions) | Polylang (free plugin) | ConveyThis Starter |
|---|---|---|
| Software, first year | €0 | $144 ($12 × 12), or $120 billed yearly |
| Translating the existing site with a translator charging an assumed $0.10 per word | 30,000 × $0.10 = $3,000 | Included: machine translation of all 30,000 words |
| Or translating it yourself at an assumed 500 words an hour | 60 hours | Review time only: fix the pages that matter in the visual editor |
| Every new 1,000-word page | $100 or two more hours, per language | Translated automatically, counted in your plan's words |
Three things can change the result:
- Polylang Pro can machine-translate with DeepL. That removes most of the labour, at the price of the Pro licence plus DeepL's own usage charges, and Polylang notes the integration is not currently compatible with Elementor and some builders. Check DeepL's pricing for your volume.
- Human translation and machine translation give different results. If some of your content needs a professional translator anyway (legal text, medical claims, marketing copy for an important market), you pay for the translator with either tool. ConveyThis gives you a machine draft to start from and lets you import the professional version as CSV or TMX.
- Each language multiplies the work. Five languages means five times the translation work on Polylang. On ConveyThis it means a plan with five languages: Pro, at $64 a month for 400,000 words.
For a small site that is rarely updated and goes into one language you speak fluently, Polylang's total cost can be close to zero. For a store or a blog that publishes every week in several languages, the labour usually costs far more than any software price on this page.
Comment nous les avons notés
Chaque comparaison sur ce site utilise les mêmes cinq critères pondérés, publiés sur notre méthodologie de comparaison page. Les scores sont sur cinq ; le total pondéré est la somme du score × du poids.
| Critère (poids) | ConveyThis | Polylang | Pourquoi |
|---|---|---|---|
| Déploiement de sites Web (30 %) | 5 | 3 | ConveyThis installs as a plugin or snippet and the site is translated the same day. Polylang installs in minutes too, but a language is only live once every post, page, menu and widget has been created in it, and it works only on WordPress. |
| Flux de travail de localisation (25 %) | 4 | 3 | Polylang offers XLIFF export and import for outside translators, and DeepL with glossaries in Pro. It does not list translation memory. ConveyThis has a visual editor, glossary, translation memory, team roles and CSV/TMX import. |
| SEO multilingue (20 %) | 5 | 4 | Both give each language its own URL. Polylang works with Yoast and other SEO plugins and translates slugs for categories and custom post types in Pro. ConveyThis adds hreflang, translated meta tags and JSON-LD automatically. |
| Modèle de coût (15 %) | 4 | 4 | Polylang's licences are cheap and it publishes no usage limits, but the translation labour is unpriced and grows with every page and language. ConveyThis charges more for software and includes the translation. |
| Gouvernance (10 %) | 4 | 4 | Polylang keeps content in your own database under WordPress user roles. ConveyThis offers team roles and an enterprise tier. The models differ, but the level of control is similar. |
| Total pondéré | 4.50 | 3.45 | 5×0.30 + 4×0.25 + 5×0.20 + 4×0.15 + 4×0.10 against 3×0.30 + 3×0.25 + 4×0.20 + 4×0.15 + 4×0.10. |
Most of the gap comes from deployment, because on a Polylang site a language only exists once someone has written it. If you already have the translations, that criterion matters much less and the two tools are close.
Where Polylang is the better choice
Choose Polylang, or stay on it, if one of these applies to you:
- Your translations must live in your own WordPress database. Some organisations require every word of published content to sit in their own system. Polylang stores each translation as a WordPress post, while ConveyThis serves translations from its service.
- You already have human translators. If a professional writes each language anyway, Polylang is a free and well-tested way to organise their work, with XLIFF export and import for sending files to them.
- Each language is really a separate site. When the French pages are written separately for the French market, with different offers and different posts, Polylang's "one post per language" model fits better than translating one source.
- You write in both languages yourself and publish rarely. A small bilingual site you maintain yourself costs nothing on Polylang.
Où ConveyThis est le meilleur choix
- Nobody has translated the site yet. ConveyThis translates every page, menu, widget and WooCommerce product automatically, and you then fix the parts that matter.
- You publish often. ConveyThis translates new posts and products as they appear, while on Polylang each one is a new translation task in each language.
- You need several languages. On ConveyThis, adding a language is a setting. On Polylang it multiplies the writing.
- Your page builder does not work well with DeepL in Polylang. Polylang notes its DeepL integration is not currently compatible with Elementor and some builders. ConveyThis translates the rendered page, whatever tool built it.
- You run more than WordPress. ConveyThis also works on Shopify, Wix, Webflow and custom sites, with one dashboard for all of them.
Comparaison des fonctionnalités
| Fonctionnalité | ConveyThis | Polylang |
|---|---|---|
| Traduction automatique de l'ensemble du site | Oui, tous les plans | No in the free plugin; DeepL in Pro |
| Éditeur visuel et contextuel | Oui | No; translations are edited as WordPress posts |
| Glossaire | Oui | DeepL glossaries in Pro |
| Mémoire de traduction | Oui | Non répertorié |
| Translation file import | CSV and TMX, every plan | XLIFF export and import |
| Separate URL per language | Yes: subfolders, subdomains or ?lang | Yes: directory, subdomain or separate domain |
| hreflang and translated meta tags | Automatic | Through WordPress and your SEO plugin |
| Limites d'URL traduites | Non répertorié sur notre page de tarification | Pro, for categories, author bases and custom post types |
| WooCommerce | Inclus | Paid add-on |
| Works outside WordPress | Oui | Non |
| Nombre de langues | 210 supported; per plan from 1 to 100 | Unlimited |
The feature rows come from each vendor's public pages on 27 September 2026. "Not listed" means we could not find the feature on Polylang's own pages, which does not prove it is missing.
Switching from Polylang to ConveyThis
A Polylang site already has language URLs that Google knows, and a switch should keep them.
- List your language URLs. Note whether Polylang uses directories (/fr/), subdomains or separate domains, and whether you translated slugs with Pro.
- Decide which human translations to keep. Export the ones you want as source-and-translation pairs in a CSV (two columns: original text, translated text) or a TMX file.
- Set up ConveyThis with the same structure and the same languages, and let it translate the site from your source language.
- Import your file in Translation Management → CSV/TMX so your human translations replace the machine draft where they match.
- Redirect changed URLs. If a translated Polylang slug will not exist on ConveyThis, add a 301 redirect from the old address to the new one.
- Deactivate Polylang last, after the ConveyThis pages are live and you have checked them in a private window.
Le Article d'aide à l'importation CSV/TMX shows the exact file format, and our WordPress integration guide covers installing the plugin.
Questions fréquemment posées
Is Polylang free?
The Polylang plugin on WordPress.org is free and has no limit on the number of languages. Polylang Pro starts at €99 a year for one site (ex VAT), Polylang for WooCommerce at €99 a year, and the Business Pack that bundles both at €139 a year, according to polylang.pro on 27 September 2026. The translations themselves are not included: you write them, pay someone to, or use Pro's DeepL integration.
Does Polylang translate automatically?
Not the free plugin. Its feature list on WordPress.org describes managing languages, not machine translation. Machine translation with DeepL is listed as a Polylang Pro feature, and Polylang says to check that your languages are supported by DeepL. ConveyThis translates every page automatically on all plans, including Free, and lets you edit the result.
What does a multilingual site on Polylang really cost?
The licence is €0 to €139 a year; the translation work is the larger cost. Multiply your site's word count by the number of languages and by your translator's per-word rate, or by the hours you will spend yourself, and add the time to translate every new page. For comparison, ConveyThis covers 30,000 translated words in one language for $12 a month and 100,000 words in three languages for $24.
Is Polylang better than ConveyThis for SEO?
Both give each language its own URL. Polylang sets the language by a directory, subdomain or separate domain and stores each translation as its own WordPress post, which works with Yoast and other SEO plugins; translated slugs for categories and custom post types are a Pro feature. ConveyThis adds hreflang, translated meta tags and translated JSON-LD automatically. The bigger SEO difference is coverage: a page nobody has translated in Polylang does not exist in that language.
Can I switch from Polylang to ConveyThis without losing rankings?
Yes, if you keep your language URLs. Set ConveyThis to the same structure (for example /fr/), import any human translations you want to keep as a CSV or TMX file, check the translated pages, and add 301 redirects for any Polylang URLs whose translated slugs change. Deactivate Polylang only after the ConveyThis pages are live.
Work out your own number
Count the words on your site, multiply by your languages, and put that next to the ConveyThis plan that covers it. If you would rather see the result than calculate it, create a free ConveyThis account and translate your first 5,000 words; paid plans start at $12 a month.
Comment cette comparaison a été faite
Prices, licences and features were read from polylang.pro/pricing and its Pro, WooCommerce and Business Pack pages, the Polylang listing on WordPress.org, et conveythis.com/tarification on 27 September 2026. The labour figures are illustrative assumptions, labelled as such, not market data. Scores follow the weights on our page méthodologie. Our politique éditoriale explique comment les comparaisons sont recherchées et examinées, et notre politique correctionnelle commits us to fixing a reported error within 10 business days; write to [email protégé].
Pour d'autres options WordPress, voir ConveyThis contre WPML, ConveyThis contre TranslatePress, the older Weglot vs Polylang vs ConveyThis post, or the hub d'alternatives for all ten tools.
