Selling abroad, or localizing a foreign store for your market, always starts at the same question: how do we translate this?

The Shopify Help Center states that every plan except Lite lets you sell in up to 20 languages from a single store. Shopify also ships a free first-party app, Shopify Translate & Adapt. Read that far and the answer looks like: 20 languages, no cost.

It isn't. A different Help Center page says:

You can automatically translate a maximum of 2 languages.

"Sells in 20 languages" and "auto-translates 2 languages" are separate claims. Languages three through twenty are yours to supply. Merchants routinely discover this after building, and App Store reviews reflect it.

This article covers what Translate & Adapt actually does, what Shopify will not translate at all, and why the three leading paid apps cannot be compared on monthly price. Research date: August 31, 2026.

The short version

• Sellable languages (20) and free auto-translated languages (2) are different numbers. Language three onward requires manual translation, CSV import, or a paid app.
• Auto-translation does not refresh itself. Add a product and you must return to the app and re-run Auto-translate for each language.
• Some content cannot be translated at all — tags, collection filters, product images, and forms built with Shopify Forms among them.
• The three paid apps bill on three different units. Weglot on translated words × languages, langify on language count plus an AI word allowance, Transcy on languages × currencies × monthly AI tokens.
• Only the native app and Transcy offer a localized admin. Weglot is English-only; langify covers German, English, Italian, French, and Spanish.

What Shopify does without any app

Before comparing apps, separate out what already works. From the Help Center:

Language-specific URLs, generated automatically. Publishing a language creates unique URLs for every translated page. With example.com as your primary domain, publishing French and German gives you example.com/fr and example.com/de. Subdomains and separate international domains are both supported.

Automatic hreflang tags and sitemap inclusion. Shopify adds hreflang tags to language URLs and includes all published languages in your sitemaps. The structural half of multilingual SEO needs no app.

Checkout pre-translated into 33 languages. Checkout, the cookie banner, privacy policy, the data sales opt-out page, and default theme copy ship with professional translations in 33 languages. Customers check out in the language they're browsing, and order notifications arrive in the language the order was placed in.

CSV import and export of translations. You can manage translations entirely without a third-party app. But the Help Center is explicit: you supply the translated content — exporting and importing does not generate translations for you.

Translated URL slugs. /products/chair can become /produkte/stuhl. The word products cannot be translated, and slugs cannot be customized per market.

Requirements: Basic plan or above, a multilingual-compatible theme (all free Shopify themes qualify), and a language selector in that theme. Note that the language selector is a theme feature, not part of Translate & Adapt. If your theme lacks one, you need a separate app for it.

What Translate & Adapt does and doesn't do

As of August 31, 2026, Shopify Translate & Adapt is rated 4.5 across 1,397 reviews on the App Store. Developer: Shopify. Price: free. Admin available in 21 languages. No Built for Shopify badge.

Auto-translation caps at two languages

The Help Center says "a maximum of 2 languages." The App Store listing describes it as "Auto-translate 2 languages with Google Translate," and adds that you can manually add as many translations as you wish.

Worth flagging: the two official sources disagree about the translation engine. The App Store listing says Google Translate; the Help Center says "Automatic translations are provided by AI translations from Shopify." Public information doesn't resolve which is current. If translation quality matters to your decision, judge it on actual output rather than either statement.

An August 2, 2026 review (Made Without, Latvia, about 2 years using the app) makes the practical complaint: auto-translation stops at two languages, there's no visible way to go further, and nothing tells you until you hit the limit.

Auto-translation does not refresh itself

This is the line item that shows up in your operating cost. The Help Center states that when you add new content — a new product, for instance — you must return to the app and click Auto-translate again, per language.

Every product launch triggers manual work. For a store publishing several new SKUs a week, that compounds. For a store with a stable catalog, it never comes up. This, more than the language count, decides whether the free app is enough.

One useful behavior: manually added or edited translations are not overwritten by Auto-translate. Fix a critical string by hand and re-running auto-translation leaves it alone.

Content that cannot be translated

Explicitly listed in the Help Center:

• Tags (product tags, article tags, blog tags)
• Collection filters
• Forms created with Shopify Forms
• Descriptions of manual payment methods
• Product images
• Third-party app content not hosted as a Shopify translatable resource type or storefront locale file
• Policies — excluded from auto-translation; manual translation only

The tag and collection filter exclusions have a direct design consequence: filters built on tags break on every translated version of your store. That interaction is covered in Shopify Search & Discovery Is Free and Rated 2.7. If multilingual is on the roadmap, build filters on metafields from day one.

On SEO: if a product's meta title and description are on default settings, they aren't translatable — Shopify generates them from the product title and description and automatically uses the translated versions. Customize those fields and they become individually translatable.

Behaviors that cause accidents

• Changing your default language deletes all existing translations for the language you switch to. Switch the default from English to French and existing French translations are gone. The Help Center recommends exporting first
• Unpublishing a language makes its URLs return 404. The Help Center recommends creating redirects
• Deleting a language permanently deletes its translations
• Uninstalling the app does not delete translation data — it lives on Shopify's side
• 14 languages are incompatible with the Translate & Adapt app entirely: Bengali, Cebuano, Corsican, Frisian, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hmong, Latin, Nyanja (Chichewa), Odia (Oriya), Samoan, Scots Gaelic, Sesotho, and Tagalog (Filipino)

Where the paid line sits

You've outgrown the free app if:

1. You need auto-translation in three or more languages
2. You launch products often and don't want to re-run translation by hand
3. You need to translate strings output by third-party apps
4. You need a glossary to keep product and brand terms consistent
5. You need to localize text inside images
6. You want to choose your own translation engine

If none of these apply — one or two languages, a stable catalog — the free app costs nothing and does the job.

The three paid apps

Based on Shopify App Store listings as of August 31, 2026. Confirm current pricing before installing.

	Weglot: AI Translation & SEO	langify ‑ translate your store	Transcy: AI Language Translate
Developer	Weglot (France)	langify GmbH & Co. KG (Germany)	FireGroup (Vietnam)
Rating (reviews)	4.5 (788)	4.7 (680)	4.5 (2,488)
Built for Shopify	No	No	Yes
Admin languages	English only	DE, EN, IT, FR, ES	13 including Japanese
Billing unit	Translated words × languages	Language count + AI word allowance	Languages × currencies × monthly AI tokens
Free plan	Yes (1 language / 2,000 words)	Yes (to 5 languages, unlimited manual translations)	Yes (1 language / 1 currency, no word or pageview cap)
Entry paid tier	$17/mo (1 language / 10,000 words)	$17.50/mo (to 20 languages / 10,000 words)	$14.90/mo (1 language / 150 AI tokens)
Middle tier	$32/mo (3 languages / 50,000 words)	$29.95/mo (50,000 words)	$29/mo (3 languages / 3 currencies / 300 tokens)
Upper tier	$87/mo (5 languages / 200,000 words)	$59.95/mo (200,000 words)	$69/mo (15 languages / 15 currencies / 500 tokens)
Free trial	14 days	Not stated	7 days

What the table actually says

First, only Weglot caps you on word count, which scales with content rather than catalog. An August 6, 2026 review (DVM International, Netherlands, 5 months using the app) describes exactly that path: technical pages, blog posts, and multilingual content grew until the store outgrew its plan, the standard next tier was substantially more expensive, and a custom Pro+ plan had to be negotiated. The same review mentions receiving advice on optimizing translated word count. If you run a blog, word-count billing behaves very differently from product-count billing.

Weglot's listing also states: "External charges may be billed by Weglot separately from your Shopify invoice." That means charges outside your Shopify billing statement — easy to lose track of if you reconcile app spend through Shopify. Same structural issue as covered in Why Your Shopify App Bill Doesn't Match the Quote.

Second, langify's free plan covers up to 5 languages with unlimited manual translations. The free tier's listed features are exactly four: unlimited manual translations, up to 5 languages, basic support, and an AI chatbot — the free AI translation word allowance starts at the paid tiers. So the language allowance beats the native app's two, but how far automatic translation goes on the free plan is not something the listing answers. If you have translation capacity in-house or via an agency, five languages at zero cost is real. Paid tiers extend to 20 languages and raise the AI word allowance (10,000 to 200,000) plus the AI discount rate. Per-word overage pricing isn't stated, so confirm with the developer.

Third, Transcy's free plan explicitly states "No word and pageview limit." It gates on languages, currencies, and monthly AI tokens instead. Note that this wording appears only on the free tier; the paid tiers do not repeat it. The free plan is one language and one currency with no word cap. The $69 Continental tier reaches 15 languages, 15 currencies, 500 AI tokens, and — uniquely among these three — lets you supply your own DeepL, OpenAI, or Gemini API keys. If engine choice matters, that's the only listed option.

Fourth, Transcy is the only one with a Built for Shopify badge. The native Translate & Adapt doesn't have one either. What the badge does and doesn't certify is a separate topic; here it doesn't narrow the field.

Fifth, admin localization is thin. Weglot's Languages field lists English only; langify covers five European languages. For a team where translation work is handled by non-English speakers, the practical shortlist is the native app or Transcy.

Picking by situation

Adding one language

Use Translate & Adapt. It fits inside the two-language auto-translate allowance at zero cost. Move on when re-running translation after each product launch becomes the bottleneck.

Auto-translating three or more languages

The native app can't. On language count alone, Transcy at $29/mo (3 languages) or $69/mo (15) is the cleanest fit. Weglot's $32/mo tier also covers 3 languages but adds a 50,000-word ceiling.

Content-heavy store with an active blog

Word-count billing works against you, because text volume feeds straight into the cap. langify and Transcy both tie cost to something other than content volume.

In-house translation capacity, minimal budget

langify's free plan covers up to 5 languages with unlimited manual translation. Alternatively, the native app plus CSV import achieves the same thing with no extra app at all — export from Settings > Languages, fill in the Translated content column, import.

A localized admin is required

Translate & Adapt or Transcy. There is no third option.

You want to choose the translation engine

Transcy's Continental plan ($69/mo) lists API key support for DeepL, OpenAI, and Gemini. Neither of the other two lists an equivalent.

Pre-install checklist

• Count sellable languages and auto-translated languages as two separate numbers
• Decide who supplies translations for language three onward
• Estimate how often you add products, and the cost of re-running translation each time
• Design collection filters on metafields, since tags and filters are untranslatable
• Check whether product meta titles and descriptions are customized (defaults don't need translating)
• Confirm your theme has a language selector
• Export existing translations before changing your default language
• Determine whether third-party app strings need translating
• Estimate your store's total word count before evaluating word-billed apps
• Check whether any app bills outside your Shopify invoice

Wrapping up

Going multilingual is decided less by how many languages you can sell in than by how you keep translating, month after month.

1. Internalize the 20 versus 2 gap. Twenty sellable, two auto-translated for free.
2. Decide how translations get refreshed. Auto-translation doesn't update itself; whether manual re-runs are sustainable is the real fork.
3. Design around what can't be translated. Tags and collection filters never translate — build filters on metafields.
4. Choose paid apps on billing unit. Words, languages, or AI tokens produce very different annual costs for the same store.
5. Run one or two languages natively first. Measuring the real workload makes the requirements concrete.

All figures reflect the Shopify Help Center and Shopify App Store listings as of August 31, 2026. Behavior and pricing both change; verify against primary sources before installing.