How to Get a Google Cloud Translation API Key (2026 Walkthrough)

Your own Google key is the gateway to wholesale translation pricing: ~$20 per million characters, with the first 500,000 characters free every month. The console looks intimidating; the actual path is ten minutes.

The steps

1) console.cloud.google.com → create project. 2) APIs & Services → Library → search “Cloud Translation API” → Enable. 3) Attach billing (card required; you control limits). 4) APIs & Services → Credentials → Create credentials → API key. 5) Edit the key: under API restrictions choose “Cloud Translation API”.

Cost control that actually works

Set a Cloud Billing budget with email alerts. Then relax: with cache-first plugins each sentence is translated once ever, so spend correlates with new content, not traffic. A typical 20,000-word site across three languages costs about $7 total — check your numbers in the calculator.

Plugging it in

Paste the key in Transxlate’s setup wizard, pick languages, enable auto-translate. The first visit to each page populates your local translation memory; subsequent visits are free and instant.