What Thai translation costs in 2026: agency, freelancer, API

This guide lays the two side by side. The human figures come from public listings retrieved on 7 September 2026 and linked beside each number. The generated figures come from the published per-character rate, and they move when it moves.

Human translation is priced by the page, by the word, or by the document. A freelancer on a marketplace sells a package, which is a word or page ceiling, a turnaround, and a number of revision rounds. An agency prints a per-page range and marks every figure as a starting price that depends on the content. A certified translator prices by document type, with the certification and the legalization run as separate lines.

The headline figure is rarely the whole invoice. Specialized content moves a page up a tier, and a rush turnaround has its own fee. A document bound for a government office needs a certification stamp and sometimes a trip to the consular office, each priced on its own.

The page is the unit most Thai listings price in, and no two define it the same way. an agency's rate page defines it by typesetting, as an A4 sheet at Angsana New 16 with images and charts excluded. an agency's rate page counts 350 Thai words a page at the same font. a certified translator's rate page allows 250 to 300 words an A4. a language institute's price page fixes 300 words whatever the font, and a freelance listing on a marketplace counts 500.

A page of 500 words at one price and a page of 250 at the same price are a factor of two apart. Ask what the page is before comparing two page rates, or ask for the per-word rate, which two of the agency pages below print beside the page rate. The comparison in this guide uses a 300-word page throughout.

The table holds every figure found on nine public pages on 7 September 2026. Each row is one page's own price, and a listing is the opening position in a negotiation. Read the spread as the range a buyer meets on the first day of looking.

Two of the pages price the same 300 words six times apart. A general page is ฿250 on the freelance listing and ฿800 at the institute, and the technical tier on the same institute page reaches ฿1,500. The difference is the translator, the subject, and the review the fee includes, and each page states all three.

A birth certificate, a house registration, or a court judgement translated for a visa or a government filing is priced per document, and the translation is the smaller line. an agency's rate page lists the consular legalization run from ฿500 on top of the form, and a certified translator's rate page prints an express fee of ฿250 beside its per-document prices. The stamp, the signed statement, and the trip are what the buyer pays for.

Generated translation does none of that. A certified document needs a named translator who signs for the text, and this guide leaves that column out of every comparison below.

Generated translation is priced per character of source text, at 25 credits per thousand characters, where 1,000 credits are one dollar. English runs about 6 characters a word with the space, which makes a 300-word page about 1,800 characters. One page therefore costs about 45 credits, which is $0.05.

There is no per-page tier, no rush fee, and no minimum order. The one floor is 2 credits per request, which is what a single product name costs. Context, a glossary, and instructions bill at a lower reference rate on top, and the credits guide walks through how a request is charged and refunded.

The freelance column applies one listing's page rate to the whole job, and a real contract quote is negotiated at the specialized tier. The generated column is the published rate times the characters, with no rounding beyond the per-request floor.

The gap grows with length. On a letter the two sit a few hundred baht apart. On the contract the generated translation costs less than one page of the specialized rate. A contract of that length is sent in parts, because one request accepts 20,000 characters of text. The parts share a glossary, and a defined term reads the same in clause 3 and clause 41.

The letter is translated once. The catalogue is translated every month. Take the 2,000-product catalogue above, where a tenth of the descriptions change each month with a new variant, a price line, or a reworded claim.

With a human translator each month's batch is 4,000 words, and 48,000 words a year. That is ฿48,000 at the per-word rate above, plus the review that keeps a term consistent with what was translated last month. A month with fewer changes still meets the minimum order, ฿3,600 a year at that page's minimum.

With generated translation the changed descriptions are sent as one batch of up to 200 segments with the same glossary as last month, and the unchanged ones are never sent. That is 7,200 credits a year, or $7.20. The translation guide shows how a glossary holds a product name across batches.

A new account starts with 100 credits. At the published rate that is about 4,000 characters of source text, about 666 English words, or 2 pages of the size used above. It covers a letter, a set of interface strings, or the first batch of a catalogue, which is enough to read the output against a human draft before deciding.

The free grant is for personal and evaluation use, and any purchase unlocks commercial use for the account, including the free credits.

• Any document that needs a signature. Certified, sworn, and notarized translation is a named person's liability, and no rate above for generated text applies.
• A campaign line, a slogan, or a brand name, where the job is to write a Thai line that lands and the source is a brief.
• Literary text, where voice is the product and a second draft by the same translator is the point.
• The final read of a contract that binds the reader. A generated draft plus a lawyer's review is a common split, and the lawyer's hour is the larger line.

The rate is one line. The turnaround is the request. A batch of 200 product descriptions returns in one call, and the register, the pronoun pair, and the fixed terms are set once in the request and hold across every segment. The politeness post covers the register choices, and Paxa Translate Lite documents the fields that carry them.

The cost the generated column hides is review. A translator reads their own draft back. A generated draft needs a reader who knows the product, and a glossary written by that reader is what stops the same review from repeating every month.

• Read the pricing page for the plans and what a month of translation costs.
• Open the translate tool to run a page with a glossary and read the result.
• Read the translation guide for batching, segments, and the two billing rates.
• Compare the priced examples for support, ecommerce, and contracts.