Starting free, and what happens next

Church Translation does not ask for a card before you have seen whether it works. Every new church gets a real allowance of free translation first, and nothing is charged until you have used it.

This page explains the allowance, the warnings, what happens when it runs out, and where to see what you are spending.

Your free allowance

50,000 characters of translation — one allowance for your whole church, shared across every language you activate.

A one-hour service is roughly 50,000 characters of speech. Translated into one language that is about 50,000 characters of translation, so your first full service in one language is free. Every extra language translates the same speech again and draws on the same allowance — with two languages active it goes half as far, with three a third as far.

No payment method is needed to sign up. The last step of registration is a button reading Start using the app, and you can run a real service the same day.

💡 This is why it is worth being a little careful with languages during your trial. The allowance is shared, and every language you switch on is translated on every sentence — so a trial run with eight languages uses it up eight times as fast. Start with the one or two you actually need.

Watching where you are

Look at the top of your dashboard. While you are on the free allowance you will see a small bar and a count:

32,410 of 50,000 free left

Beside it is Add payment method — you can use it at any time, and it costs you nothing to do so.

The warnings

As you approach the end of the allowance, a banner appears:

You're at 80% of your free 50,000 characters
Add a card to keep translating — you won't be charged until you pass your free allowance.

You can dismiss it early on. As you get closer it stops offering that, on purpose — this is the one message you should not be able to wave away and then be surprised by on a Sunday morning.

When the allowance runs out

Translation stops, and the dashboard shows:

You've used all 50,000 free characters
Add a payment method to keep translating

Click it, add a card or IBAN, and translation resumes immediately. Nothing is lost — your settings, languages, keywords and archive are all exactly as you left them.

⚠️ Do not let this be a surprise mid-service. If your counter is getting low during the week, add a payment method before Sunday. Adding one while you are still inside the allowance changes nothing and charges nothing — it simply means translation keeps running instead of stopping when you cross the line.

What happens after that

You move onto ordinary usage-based pricing: €0.01 per 150 characters, per language. No monthly fee, nothing to cancel, and €0 in a month you do not use it.

Pricing & What's included has the full rate card, worked examples and the list of accepted payment methods.

If a payment fails

Sometimes a card expires or a direct debit bounces. When that happens you will see:

Your last payment failed
Update your payment details and settle the open invoice to keep your access — your subscription is cancelled if it stays unpaid.

Click Pay invoice, settle it and update the card.

Your access continues in the meantime, so a failed payment will not interrupt a service you are in the middle of. But it is not indefinite — if the invoice stays unpaid, the subscription is cancelled. Deal with it in the week rather than leaving it.

You can also reach your invoices, receipts and payment details any time from Settings → Account information.

Seeing what you are spending

Click Statistics in the sidebar.

Cost to date is what you have spent so far, including taxes. It is the number to take to a treasurer.

Cost by day is a chart of your daily spend, rounded up to the nearest cent. Sundays stand out as spikes; a flat weekday line means something is translating when nobody is there, which is worth investigating.

💡 Look at this once a month, not once a week. Compare the height of your Sunday spikes against the languages people are actually reading, which you will find under User Management. If those two do not match, Stewardship: Making the Most of Your Resources is the page you want.

Questions people ask

Do we get charged during the free allowance?
No. Nothing, whether or not you have added a card.

Does the allowance expire?
It is counted in characters, not days. Take a month to use it if you like.

What if 50,000 characters is not enough to decide?
Talk to us in the chat. We would rather you had a fair trial than an anxious one, and we can extend it.

Can we pay by invoice instead of a card?
Yes, on request. Ask in the chat and we will set it up.

What if the cost is genuinely a barrier for our church?
Please talk to us. We have reduced the rate for churches, and waived it entirely. Language should not be a barrier to the Gospel, and neither should money.