LLM Reference

The translation leaderboard · for knowledge workers

Best for translation

4 editor picks · 5 eligible models · Idiomatic across the long tail of languages.

Editorial pick plus benchmark and API pricing context.

See raw /best
EDITOR'S CHOICEResearched 186d ago

Gemini 3 Pro

Google DeepMind · 1m context
Excellent

Idiomatic across the long tail of languages.

Best coverage of lower-resource languages with strong idiom handling and a huge context for document-level consistency.

Open model
The numbers
$/1M out
$5.00
$1.25 input
Context
1m
max window
Pros
  • +Broadest language coverage
  • +Strong idioms & register
  • +Document-level context
Cons
  • −Pricier than open MT options

Also worth picking

The runners-up

ranked by editorial pick orderEditorial tiersExcellentStrongSolid
#2
GPT-5.4
OpenAI · 1.05m
$15.00 / 1M out
Matches GPT-5.5's multilingual quality at half the output price ($15 vs $30) — the right call for high-volume translation.
#3
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B
Alibaba · 262k
$2.34 / 1M out
The best open-weights translator, especially for CJK languages.
#4
Claude Sonnet 4.6
Anthropic · 1m
$15.00 / 1M out
Best register for marketing and legal — the tone usually lands first time.

Eligibility

5 models are eligible for this board

Eligibility means tagged with useCases: [translation]. Pins must come from this pool.

All picks