DeepL API Free Tier Walkthrough: 500K Characters a Month, Properly Used

DeepL’s API Free plan gives every account 500,000 characters per month — roughly 80,000 words — of arguably the best machine translation available for European languages. Here is the clean path from signup to translated site.

Signup specifics

deepl.com → Products → DeepL API → Free signup. Card verification may be required to deter abuse, but Free-tier usage is never charged; requests beyond the quota simply fail until the month resets — no surprise bills by design.

Stretching 500K characters

Cache-first translation means the quota burns only on new sentences. Strategy for bigger sites: enable one language at a time, let a month’s quota translate it fully, then add the next. Three languages roll out across a quarter at $0.

When to upgrade

API Pro (~$5.49/month + ~$25/1M chars) removes the cap and unlocks higher rate limits. The math still embarrasses word-quota plans: see the per-word billing breakdown. Formality-capable languages are listed on each of our language guides.