100% Self-Hosted. No Limits. No Ties to Proprietary Services.
LibreTranslate
Official website libretranslate.com
Our take
The only fully self-hosted, machine-learning translator in this group, which means with your own instance no text ever touches a proprietary service, a real privacy win. The honest trade is quality: its open models don’t match DeepL or Google on nuance, especially for less common languages. Pick LibreTranslate when independence and not leaking text to a third party outrank polish, and you can run the server. If you need the most accurate translation and privacy is secondary, this is not the one.
GitHub at a glance
LibreTranslate/LibreTranslate
Stars
15,137
+ 611 this week
Last commit
2d ago
healthy
License
AGPL-3.0
Latest release
v1.9.6
24d ago
Stars, last 10d
Listed in
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LibreTranslate license, in plain English
AGPL-3.0 Strong copyleft · network
Free to use, even commercially. Changes must be published under the same license, and running a modified version as a network service counts as distributing it.
Permits
- Commercial use
- Modification
- Distribution
- Patent use
- Private use
Requires
- Disclose source
- Network use is distribution
- Same license
- State changes
- License and copyright notice
Does not provide
- Liability cover
- Warranty
Why it matters: The network clause is the point. Anyone who runs a modified version as a hosted service has to publish those changes, so the code handling your data stays inspectable. This is why privacy-first projects reach for AGPL.
Plain-language summary of the project's license, not legal advice. Read the full text for the exact terms.