TranslatePress vs Polylang
TranslatePress and Polylang take different routes to a multilingual site. TranslatePress lets you translate by clicking text in a front-end visual editor, with machine translation you can refine by hand. Polylang has you assign a language to each post, page and taxonomy term while writing as usual, and adds language switchers, translated menus and string translation. Both have a free version and machine translation. TranslatePress offers the visual editor, and its free version covers one extra language. Polylang is confirmed for SEO-friendly URLs, WooCommerce support and an unlimited number of languages.
| Feature | TranslatePress checked 23 Oct 2026 Free + paid Visit Details | Polylang v3.9.1 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free + paid · ★ 4.7/5 Visit Details |
|---|---|---|
| At a glance | ||
| Active installs | — | 900,000+ |
| Last updated | — | October 21, 2026 |
| Editions | — | Polylang · Polylang Pro ($) |
| Pros | — | Unlimited languages with WordPress language packs; Language switcher widget and block; Language-specific URLs and multilingual sitemaps |
| Cons | — | Translation is manual in the free version; Machine translation and translated slugs need Pro; WooCommerce support is a separate add-on |
| Mentioned in our posts | 2 | 1 |
| Features (Translation plugins checklist) | ||
| Machine translation | Yes | Paid |
| Visual editor | Yes | — |
| SEO-friendly URLs | — | Yes |
| WooCommerce | — | No |
| Languages limit | — | unlimited |
| Free version | Yes | Yes |
| More features | ||
| Other features | — | Language switcher widget and block, Multilingual sitemaps, Language-specific URLs, Translated slugs (preview, Pro) ($), Shared slugs (preview, Pro) ($), DeepL machine translation (preview, Pro) ($) |
| Integrations | ||
| Storage | — | WP Offload Media Lite |
| Plugins | — | Yoast SEO, Jetpack |
| Other | — | polylang.pro licence server ($) |
| Requires WordPress | — | 6.8 |
| Requires PHP | — | 7.4 |
| Tested up to | — | 7.1 |
| Phones home | — | No |
| External services | — | polylang.pro |
| Blocks | — | 2 |
Verdict
TranslatePress suits site owners who like to translate in context on the live page. Polylang suits people who prefer managing translations as separate content in the editor, across many languages.