A three-step solution costs a median of ~$590 per million source characters, mostly for Intento LQA.
Where only a three-step solution meets every Standard requirement, the cheapest such solution costs ~$575 per million characters at the median. Where a one-step solution meets them, the cheapest costs ~$4.70, and where a two-step solution is the cheapest, ~$11. In 8 languages, a two-step solution on a cheaper model costs less than the cheapest one-step solution that meets every requirement.
Icelandic has a solution at every evaluated level of complexity. Its 20 solutions cost from $0.46 to $1,050 per million characters.
Chart data
| Solution | US dollars per million characters | Level |
|---|---|---|
| Multi-agent system · Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $1,050.33 | Multi-agent system |
| Three-step solution · OpenAI GPT-4.1 | $617.50 | Three-step solution |
| Three-step solution · Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $565.76 | Three-step solution |
| Multi-agent system · OpenAI GPT-5.5 | $47.47 | Multi-agent system |
| Two-step solution · OpenAI GPT-5.5 | $44.58 | Two-step solution |
| Two-step solution · Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $32.25 | Two-step solution |
| Off-the-shelf NMT · DeepL Next Gen | $27.50 | Off-the-shelf NMT |
| Adjusted NMT · Google Translation LLM | $20.30 | Adjusted NMT |
| Adjusted LLM · Anthropic Claude Opus 4.8 | $14.95 | Adjusted LLM |
| Adjusted LLM · OpenAI GPT-5.5 | $11.40 | Adjusted LLM |
| Off-the-shelf NMT · Microsoft Translator | $10.00 | Off-the-shelf NMT |
| Off-the-shelf LLM · Widn AI Tower Sugarloaf | $10.00 | Off-the-shelf LLM |
| Adjusted LLM · Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.6 | $7.26 | Adjusted LLM |
| Two-step solution · OpenAI GPT-4.1 | $6.99 | Two-step solution |
| Adjusted LLM · Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 | $5.99 | Adjusted LLM |
| Adjusted LLM · Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $5.28 | Adjusted LLM |
| Adjusted LLM · OpenAI GPT-4.1 | $3.11 | Adjusted LLM |
| Adjusted LLM · z.ai GLM-5 | $2.20 | Adjusted LLM |
| Adjusted LLM · Mistral Large 3 | $0.85 | Adjusted LLM |
| Adjusted LLM · OpenAI GPT-5.6 Luna | $0.46 | Adjusted LLM |
Cost of the solutions per million characters, by level of solution complexity
| Level of solution complexity | Lowest | Lower quartile | Median | Upper quartile | Highest | Languages | Models |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Off-the-shelf NMT | $3.94 | $10.00 | $27.50 | $27.50 | $100.00 | 94 | 8 |
| Adjusted NMT | $18.66 | $21.16 | $21.70 | $27.50 | $27.50 | 48 | 2 |
| Off-the-shelf LLM | $1.05 | $1.84 | $3.34 | $4.26 | $10.00 | 5 | 8 |
| Adjusted LLM | $0.11 | $2.78 | $5.23 | $12.49 | $50.70 | 96 | 25 |
| Two-step solution | $0.28 | $9.10 | $18.28 | $35.35 | $107.12 | 64 | 20 |
| Three-step solution | $489.93 | $567.07 | $593.44 | $629.73 | $767.96 | 44 | 21 |
| Multi-agent system | $0.40 | $17.76 | $56.78 | $994.12 | $1,194.39 | 52 | 10 |
US dollars per million characters, at the list prices of August 2026. Three-step solutions and multi-agent systems: the Intento LQA step is an estimate from the token counts of its requests. Fine-tuned models, the fifth level, are outside the report.
The cheapest solution that meets every Standard requirement, by language, with its number of steps
| Language | Steps | Model of the first step | Cost per million characters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indonesian | one | Google Gemma 4 | $0.11 |
| Portuguese (European) | two | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Luna | $0.38 |
| Malay | one | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Luna | $0.39 |
| Norwegian | one | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Luna | $0.40 |
| Italian | two | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Luna | $0.41 |
| German | two | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Luna | $0.91 |
| Galician | one | Google Gemini 3.5 Flash | $3.01 |
| Russian | two | Google Gemini 3.5 Flash | $3.05 |
| Spanish (European) | one | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Terra | $3.74 |
| Danish | one | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Terra | $4.09 |
| Swedish | one | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $4.23 |
| Turkish | one | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $4.23 |
| Bosnian | one | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $4.40 |
| Farsi | one | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $4.41 |
| Croatian | one | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $4.46 |
| Czech | one | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Terra | $4.49 |
| Catalan | one | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $4.50 |
| Ukrainian | one | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $4.61 |
| Slovak | one | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $4.66 |
| Bulgarian | one | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Terra | $4.67 |
| Macedonian | one | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Terra | $4.84 |
| Lithuanian | two | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $4.91 |
| Welsh | two | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $5.23 |
| Belarusian | one | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $5.41 |
| Greek | one | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $5.66 |
| Dutch | one | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Sol | $6.44 |
| Hindi | two | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Sol | $7.45 |
| Estonian | one | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Sol | $7.53 |
| Finnish | one | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Sol | $7.60 |
| Azerbaijani | two | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Sol | $7.78 |
| Tamil | two | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Sol | $9.10 |
| Arabic (MSA) | one | OpenAI GPT-5.5 | $10.27 |
| Polish | two | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Terra | $10.51 |
| Slovenian | one | OpenAI GPT-5.5 | $10.61 |
| Punjabi | two | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Sol | $10.88 |
| Nepali | one | OpenAI GPT-5.5 | $11.09 |
| Kazakh | two | OpenAI GPT-5.5 | $11.19 |
| Urdu | two | OpenAI GPT-5.5 | $11.28 |
| Albanian | two | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Terra | $11.46 |
| Bengali | one | OpenAI GPT-5.5 | $11.55 |
| Georgian | two | OpenAI GPT-5.5 | $11.71 |
| Latvian | two | OpenAI GPT-5.5 | $11.77 |
| Vietnamese | one | Anthropic Claude Opus 4.8 | $16.82 |
| Serbian | two | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Sol | $16.90 |
| Khmer | one | OpenAI GPT-5.5 | $17.75 |
| Romanian | two | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Sol | $19.29 |
| Lao | two | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Sol | $27.98 |
| Malayalam | two | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $28.94 |
| Telugu | two | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $29.87 |
| Hungarian | one | Anthropic Claude Fable 5 | $30.64 |
| Hebrew | one | Anthropic Claude Fable 5 | $30.72 |
| Gujarati | two | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $30.80 |
| Uzbek | two | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $37.87 |
| Icelandic | two | OpenAI GPT-5.5 | $44.58 |
| Sinhala | two | Anthropic Claude Fable 5 | $46.00 |
| Chinese Traditional | three | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Sol | $489.93 |
| Tagalog | three | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Terra | $541.10 |
| Swahili | three | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Luna | $542.99 |
| Marathi | three | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Sol | $547.09 |
| Irish | three | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Luna | $548.20 |
| Kyrgyz | three | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Terra | $552.80 |
| Thai | three | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Sol | $554.00 |
| Armenian | three | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Terra | $556.47 |
| Frisian | three | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $560.49 |
| Afrikaans | three | Anthropic Claude Fable 5 | $562.26 |
| Kannada | three | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Terra | $570.48 |
| Basque | three | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Sol | $573.57 |
| French | three | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $575.73 |
| Tajik | three | OpenAI GPT-5.6 Sol | $577.05 |
| Korean | three | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $577.23 |
| Japanese | three | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $577.70 |
| Assamese | three | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $587.92 |
| Chinese Simplified | three | z.ai GLM-5 | $588.60 |
| Cebuano | three | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $604.20 |
| Mongolian | three | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $608.82 |
| Amharic | three | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $612.38 |
| Pashto | three | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $631.59 |
| Tatar | three | Anthropic Claude Fable 5 | $645.04 |
| Odia (Oriya) | three | Google Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $647.02 |
| Yiddish | three | OpenAI GPT-5.5 | $652.67 |
Units — Cost per million characters: US$ per million characters
Two-step: translation and a post-edit or a repair by code. Three-step: translation, Intento LQA and a repair with its findings. The Intento LQA cost is an estimate.