WPML vs Polylang
WPML vs Polylang: which one should you actually buy
Neither of these is our product, so there is nothing for us to defend here. Polylang has a real free version and WPML does not. WPML does more of the work for you, and it is the cheaper option for a WooCommerce shop and for an agency. Below are the actual prices and the four or five differences that decide it.
The short answer
- Budget is zero. Polylang, free, and it is a good plugin rather than a teaser.
- You have a WooCommerce shop. WPML Multilingual CMS at 99 euro. E-commerce is included there, whereas Polylang needs a second paid add-on and lands at 139 euro.
- You want the translating done for you. WPML Multilingual CMS. It ships 90,000 AI translation credits and a side-by-side editor. Polylang expects you to bring your own machine translation account or to type the translations yourself.
- Your theme or plugins have a lot of hard-coded text. WPML, for String Translation. Polylang's free feature list does not cover theme and plugin strings, and its pricing table puts string translation export in the paid tiers.
- You build client sites. WPML Multilingual Agency, 199 euro for unlimited production sites. Polylang's largest licence is 25 sites at 495 euro.
- You want the lighter install and full control. Polylang. Fewer moving parts, no external translation service in the path unless you add one.
What WPML costs, and what the cheap tier leaves out
| Plan | Price | Sites | AI translation | Editor, String Translation, Translation Management, page builders, menus, e-commerce |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Multilingual Blog | 39 euro / year | 1 production, 3 development | Not included | None of them |
| Multilingual CMS | 99 euro / year | 3 production, 9 development | 90,000 credits | All included |
| Multilingual Agency | 199 euro / year | Unlimited | 180,000 credits | All included |
Read from wpml.org/purchase on 21 August 2026, annual prices excluding VAT. Every plan includes one year of support and updates and a 30 day money-back guarantee. WPML notes that development sites show a WPML banner on the front end while production sites do not.
The 39 euro tier is the trap on this price list. It gives you "standard translation controls", meaning you translate content in the ordinary WordPress editor, and that is genuinely all. No Advanced Translation Editor, no AI credits, no String Translation, no Translation Management, no page builder support, no menu translation and no e-commerce support. If you have an Elementor site, a shop, or a theme full of English button labels, your real WPML price is 99 euro rather than 39.
What Polylang costs, and what the free version really does
| Product | Price | Licence tiers | What it adds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Polylang (free) | 0 euro | Unlimited sites | Posts, pages, media, categories, tags, custom post types and taxonomies, RSS feeds, RTL, classic menus and classic widgets, language switcher blocks and widgets, a directory or subdomain or domain per language, Yoast SEO compatibility |
| Polylang Pro | from 99 euro / year | 1 site 99, 3 sites 198, 5 sites 297, 25 sites 495 | Machine translation, translated slugs, string translation export, duplicate and sync content, premium support |
| Polylang for WooCommerce | from 99 euro / year | Multi-site options exist, tiers not listed on the pricing page | Shop translation. Sold separately, not part of Pro |
| Polylang Business Pack | from 139 euro / year | Multi-site options exist, tiers not listed on the pricing page | Pro and the WooCommerce add-on together, down from 198 euro |
Read from polylang.pro/pricing and polylang.pro/downloads/polylang-pro on 21 August 2026, annual prices excluding VAT, all with a 50 percent renewal discount. Free-version capabilities are quoted from the plugin's own listing on wordpress.org.
Give Polylang its due: the free plugin reports over 800,000 active installs and 2,979 reviews at 4.7 out of 5. It is not a lead magnet with the useful parts removed. A bilingual brochure site or a blog can run on it for years without paying anyone, and that is a claim no WPML tier can make at any price.
The differences that actually decide it
1. The free tier
Polylang has one and WPML has none. If the decision is being made on cash, it is already over. Install the free Polylang plugin, translate a post, and only reach for a licence when you hit something it does not do.
2. Who does the translating
This is the real split. WPML Multilingual CMS bundles 90,000 AI translation credits and an Advanced Translation Editor built around them, so the flow is "press translate, then review". Polylang Pro integrates with an external machine translation service, but you register with that service, hold your own API key and pay its bill separately, and Polylang's pricing page flags the integration as currently not compatible with Elementor. On free Polylang there is no automatic translation at all, so every word is yours to write or to hire.
3. Theme and plugin text
A lot of the visible words on a WordPress site are not in any post at all: button labels, form errors, widget titles and checkout strings, all baked into the theme and its plugins. WPML calls this String Translation and includes it from 99 euro. Polylang's free feature list does not cover it, and its pricing table lists string translation export as a paid row. If your theme is chatty, budget for a paid tier on either side.
4. WooCommerce, where the price ordering flips
Everyone assumes Polylang is the cheap one. For a shop it is not. WPML puts e-commerce support inside the 99 euro Multilingual CMS tier. Polylang sells WooCommerce as a separate add-on, so a shop needs the 139 euro Business Pack. Forty euros a year is not decisive on its own, but it is worth knowing before you assume.
5. SEO and translated slugs
Close to a tie, and both are good. Each gives every language its own crawlable URL and lets you pick a directory, a subdomain or a separate domain per language. Translating the structural slugs that WordPress generates, such as a category or custom post type base, is a paid feature on both sides. On free Polylang your translated posts still get their own editable slugs, because each one is a real post, but those structural prefixes stay in the original language.
6. Sites per licence
WPML wins at the top and Polylang wins at the bottom. One site costs 39 euro on WPML against 0 on Polylang. Unlimited production sites cost 199 euro on WPML, while Polylang's largest tier is 25 sites at 495 euro. Agencies should look hard at Multilingual Agency.
7. Multisite
Polylang documents multisite as fully tested when activated per site, and says network activation should also work but is less well tested. If you are running a network, read each vendor's own multisite documentation before buying rather than trusting a comparison table, ours included.
8. Performance
We are not going to quote you millisecond figures, because we have not benchmarked either plugin and neither has anyone else who publishes a number without a method. What is structurally true: both store one post per language, so a visitor loads an ordinary WordPress page with nothing extra happening at request time. WPML simply does more, and its plan table lists String Translation, Translation Management and Translation Services Integration as separate line items, so a full WPML install has more parts than a free Polylang install.
Pick WPML if
- You want automatic translation included rather than assembled from a third-party account and an API key.
- You run a WooCommerce shop and want one licence to cover it.
- Your theme or plugins contain a lot of untranslated interface text.
- You use Elementor or another page builder, or the block-based site editor.
- You manage many client sites and want unlimited production sites for 199 euro.
- You want commercial support with published hours rather than a forum.
Pick Polylang if
- Your budget is zero and you are willing to write or paste the translations.
- You want the smaller install, with no external translation service in the path unless you choose to add one.
- You have one site and one translator, and a plain post-per-language workflow suits you.
- You want a long public track record: over 800,000 active installs and 2,979 reviews at 4.7 out of 5.
- You already hold a machine translation account and would rather pay that provider directly than buy credits.
- You want to keep total control of the URL structure per language without a licence gate on the basics.
A third option, and the honest limits of it
This is the part where we talk about our own product. Skip it if the two plugins above already fit, because for a lot of sites they do.
Both WPML and Polylang solve the problem the same way: one post per language. That is the correct model when your languages should hold different content, and it is the reason both can give you translated slugs. It also means every edit you make to your source page is an edit you now owe to one duplicate per language, forever. That maintenance cost is invisible on launch day and it is the thing people actually complain about two years in.
WeLocale removes the duplicates instead of managing them. You add one script tag, or install our plugin from the WordPress directory, and the page is translated as it is served. Nothing is copied, so nothing falls out of sync when you change a sentence.
Read this before you consider us. If translated slugs matter to you, or you want each language to carry genuinely different content, then WPML or Polylang is the right answer and we are not. We do not translate URL slugs and we do not give a language its own separate content, and no amount of the rest makes up for that if those are your requirements. Our full WPML comparison goes through that tradeoff properly, and the WordPress install walkthrough shows exactly what the plugin does to your site.
On price we are also not the cheap option. WPML Multilingual CMS is 99 euro a year and free Polylang is nothing at all, while our Starter plan is $15 a month for 2 sites, 10 languages and 120,000 translated words. Over a year we cost more than either. What you are buying with the difference is the absence of duplicate posts and the absence of manual re-translation. If that is not a problem you have, do not pay for it.
Free
Try it on a real page
- 10,000 translated words
- 3 languages
- 3,000 source words
- 1 website
- Widget scan (visited pages only)
- Language detection
- Support: community
- No auto-crawl
- WeLocale badge on your site
Starter
Launch your first translated site
- 120,000 translated words
- 10 languages
- 60,000 source words
- 2 websites
- Auto-crawl (depth 2)
- Customizable switcher
- Support: email (48h)
- WeLocale badge on your site
Pro
For serious global teams
- 600,000 translated words
- 20 languages
- 150,000 source words
- 5 websites
- Auto-crawl (depth 3)
- Page-specific translations
- All switcher styles
- SEO hreflang tags
- No badge
- Support: email (24h)
Scale
Large sites and agencies
- 2,000,000 translated words
- 50 languages
- 400,000 source words
- 8 websites
- Auto-crawl (depth 5, 500 pages)
- Page-specific translations
- All switcher styles
- SEO hreflang tags
- No badge
- Support: priority (4h)
Words are bought once. Nothing resets monthly, and editing a page you already translated does not spend your allowance again, so "translated words" means how much translated content you have, not how much you have ever generated.
How to try both without committing
- Install free Polylang, add one language, translate one page. If nothing annoys you, you are finished and you have spent nothing.
- If you hit theme strings, a shop, a page builder or the sheer volume of typing, buy WPML Multilingual CMS. Its 30 day money-back guarantee is what makes that a cheap test rather than a commitment.
- If what annoys you is maintaining duplicate posts rather than any missing feature, that is the case where a runtime widget is worth a look, and you can run one alongside either plugin while you compare.
Whichever way you go, keep a database backup before you switch plugins. Translations made by WPML or Polylang live in your own database as posts, so uninstalling does not delete them, but plugin migrations between the two are their own project and should not be attempted on a live site.
Questions people ask
Is WPML or Polylang better?
Neither, in general. Polylang is better if you want to spend nothing, because its free plugin on wordpress.org genuinely translates posts, pages, media, taxonomies, classic menus and classic widgets, and gives each language its own URL. WPML is better if you want the translating done for you, because its 99 euro Multilingual CMS tier includes the Advanced Translation Editor, 90,000 AI translation credits and String Translation for theme and plugin text, none of which Polylang bundles.
Is Polylang really free?
Yes, and it is not a crippled demo. The free plugin reports over 800,000 active installs and 2,979 reviews at 4.7 out of 5 on wordpress.org. What it leaves out, per Polylang's own pricing table, is machine translation, translated slugs, string translation export and premium support. Those need Polylang Pro, which starts at 99 euro a year for one site.
Which is cheaper for a WooCommerce shop?
WPML, and this catches people out. E-commerce support is included in WPML Multilingual CMS at 99 euro a year. With Polylang, WooCommerce is a separate add-on, so you need the Business Pack at 139 euro a year, which bundles Polylang Pro and Polylang for WooCommerce. The free Polylang plugin does not translate a WooCommerce shop at all.
Does WPML have a free version?
No. The cheapest WPML licence is Multilingual Blog at 39 euro a year, and that tier excludes most of what people buy WPML for: no Advanced Translation Editor, no AI translation, no String Translation, no Translation Management, no page builder support, no menu translation and no e-commerce support. For anything past a plain blog the real entry price is 99 euro.
Can Polylang translate automatically?
Polylang Pro can, through an integration with an external machine translation service. You supply your own API key and pay that service separately, it runs inside the post editor rather than sweeping the whole site, and Polylang's own pricing page flags the integration as currently not compatible with Elementor. The free version has no machine translation at all.
Which one is better for multilingual SEO?
They are close, and both are fine. Each gives every language its own crawlable URL, which is the part that matters, and each lets you choose a directory, a subdomain or a separate domain per language. Translated slugs, meaning the structural prefixes WordPress generates such as a category base, are a paid feature on both sides: WPML Multilingual CMS and Polylang Pro. On the free Polylang plugin your translated posts still have their own editable slugs, but those structural prefixes stay in the original language.
How many sites does each licence cover?
WPML: 1 production site at 39 euro, 3 at 99 euro, unlimited at 199 euro. Polylang Pro: 1 site at 99 euro, 3 at 198 euro, 5 at 297 euro, 25 at 495 euro. If you run a lot of client sites, WPML Multilingual Agency at 199 euro for unlimited production sites is the cheapest line on either price list.
Where does WeLocale fit in this comparison?
In one narrow case. WPML and Polylang both work by creating a separate post per language, which you then keep in sync forever. WeLocale translates the page as it is served, so there is no duplicate to maintain, but there is also no translated slug and no way to give a language different content. If translated slugs or genuinely different content per language matter to you, pick WPML or Polylang. We are not the answer to that.
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