What does church translation cost?

Church translation does not have one price. For a typical month (including four Sunday services, two hours of speaking, and translating into two languages), live AI sermon translation costs about €28 to €427, based on public list prices in October 2026. The low end is a newer monthly plan. The high end is an older platform that still charges by the minute for each language.

A congregation that owns a rack of receivers is paying for something different from a congregation that hires interpreters twice a year, and both are paying for something different from a church that runs live AI-translation every Sunday. The useful comparison is what you are actually buying: hardware that sits in a cupboard, a person’s time, or software that listens to the service and speaks it again in another language.

What churches usually pay for translation equipment and interpreters

For a long time, church translation had two costs. The first was the equipment. The church bought a small radio system: a microphone for the interpreter, a sender, and a set of headphones that listeners borrowed and gave back at the door. That was a large payment once. After that, the church mostly paid when batteries died or headphones went missing. The second cost was people. Volunteer interpreters are not a bill you pay. They cost time, training, and someone to find a replacement when a person is ill.

Those prices were set when interpretation meant a volunteer in real time. They still make sense when that is what you need. They are a poor guide to what software translation costs now.

Why AI sermon translation prices differ so much

The cost of running AI translation has fallen sharply over the last few years. Speech recognition, translation, and a listenable voice are cheaper to produce per hour than they were when the first AI-translation products appeared. That does not mean every vendor changed their price list.

Longer-established live interpretation companies have, in many cases, kept prices close to where they were a few years ago. A church can still be quoted on the order of tens of euros per hour per AI-translation language, sometimes with a separate platform fee, or a higher rate once you leave a short list of common languages. Less common languages, extra voice quality, and longer services are where the prices have big differences. For older, more established platforms, the price often reflects the company’s older cost structure and existing contracts more than what the translation itself costs to generate this year.

Newer providers do not carry that history. They can offer a comparable live translation — captions, a spoken voice, many languages, listeners on their own phones — at a small fraction of the older hourly rate. The gap is large enough that it is worth putting real list prices next to each other, for the same ordinary month.

How much does live church translation cost per month?

The same month, priced from public lists in October 2026: four services, two hours of speaking each, two languages, and about twenty people listening. That is eight hours of translation. Sanalive’s own plans are on the pricing page. Taxes differ: Streamlingo’s church price below includes VAT, Sanalive’s does not.

Sanalive and Breeze include both languages in the hours. Glossa, Streamlingo, and LiveVoice bill each language, so this month is sixteen language-hours, not eight.

Sanalive church translation price: €29 a month

€29 is the Basic plan before VAT. This plan includes eight hours of live-time and two translation languages. While captions are always the same, the user can decide on when they want to use the faster Flash audio (4h included) and when to use the phone's local audio. Switching between them is easy, but for those churches who prefer using Flash audio for both languages throughout the sermon, they can top-up Flash credits for 2€/h/language. To run both languages on Flash for the duration of 8h each will bring the bill for the month to about 53€. Sanalive maintains a Church glossary, in addition to which churches can add their own terms or translation preferences.

Breeze Translate church translation price: €28 a month

€28 is the Basic plan shown after sign-up: about ninety minutes a week, with two languages. That is roughly six hours a month, so it is the closest published plan to this comparison, not a full eight hours. The audio for Breeze Translate is provided locally, by the listener's phone, resulting in slower audio. They do not provide the option for churches to choose a faster cloud audio, such as Sanalive's Flash. While they maintain a Church glossary, users cannot add their own terms or translation preferences for words.

Glossa church translation price: $80 a month

No monthly fee. $5 per language-hour times sixteen hours is $80. Prices are in USD only. Silence and songs are not billed, so a service whose two hours include a long worship set costs less than this. Custom instructions let you set names and how a term should be translated. The voice waits for the whole sentence before translation, which can cause some extra delay in the audio. For European churches, check whether they are GDPR compliant before making your selection.

Streamlingo church translation price: €160 a month

€160 is their church and non-profit price for a typical month with four events, two hours of speaking, two AI languages and twenty listeners. Their calculator puts that level of usage on the Medium plan (fifteen hours at €150) plus one extra hour at €10. Hours are per language, which is why eight hours of preaching in two languages needs sixteen hours of allowance. A built-in church vocabulary is included. A list the church edits itself is not published. Annual billing takes 20% off. Streamlingo provides the fastest audio translation in this comparison, claiming 3-4s behind the speaker.

LiveVoice church translation price: €427 a month

LiveVoice started with providing a platform for human translation to happen via phones, but has expanded to providing AI-translation. They charge €24 a month for the platform, plus €0.42 per minute per language. Eight hours is 480 minutes; two languages make 960 minutes; 960 × €0.42 is €403. When adding the monthly fee, the total is €24 + €403 = €427. As an older provider of translation services, LiveVoice has a solid customer base, which is probably the reason they don't want to lower the prices though the technology development would allow it. Regarding terms, they allow churches to add their own terms to the translation.

What church translation prices leave out

In addition to the price, translation accuracy is a key consideration for churches. While all of the listed service providers have a built-in church glossary, only some of the providers allow the user to add their own terms, and suggestions on how certain words are translated. In the cases where you cannot add your own terms, you are hoping the vendor’s built-in church list includes the terms you use. Learn more about this in our article on how accurate AI sermon translation is.

Faster is not always the better column either. A three second translation delay is not a lot, but it has its downsides. A voice that takes a second more to see how the clause turns out, will be marginally slower, but the translation tends to be more accurate. Listen once in your own room before you treat the smallest delay as the best result.