Two suppliers. Two invoices. No margin in the middle.
Your translation supplier bills you for translation. We bill you for the platform. You can see exactly what each one costs.
How the bill works
Taiwa runs on a translation engine you choose — DeepL, OpenAI or Google Gemini. Rather than buy that wholesale and mark it up, we ask you to hold the contract yourself and bring us the key.
Your supplier bills you for translation.
Your own agreement, your own rate, your own data terms. Translation is metered by your supplier and invoiced by your supplier.
We bill you for the platform.
£2 per active user a month, £150 minimum. It is flat — it doesn't move with how many minutes you translate. That covers the extension, the desktop app, the portal, terminology, single sign-on, reporting and standard support.
You will see what translation costs, because your supplier tells you. We have no interest in that number being unclear.
What your supplier charges
That depends on whose key you bring. Each one prices differently, and none of it passes through us.
DeepL
DeepL Voice is priced per hour of call. Both sides of the conversation are translated and that counts once — a ten-minute call is ten minutes, not twenty.
| Agreement | Per hour of call | Per minute |
|---|---|---|
| Committed volume | €6 | 10.00c |
| No commitment | €6.50 | 10.83c |
These are the figures we see in the market, in euro, because that is how DeepL sells. Your rate comes from your agreement with DeepL, not from us.
OpenAI and Google Gemini
Both price by usage, on rate cards they publish and change more often than we could keep a table here honest. Read theirs rather than ours. Before you sign anything, we will tell you which engine we would put your languages and your volume on.
Why not just resell it? Because a reseller's margin has to go somewhere, and the honest place to put it is a line you can see. You also get your supplier's terms directly rather than ours restated — and you can change supplier without changing us.
What a call costs you today
A seven-minute call in a language your agents don't speak, priced two ways.
| Per minute | A 7-minute call | |
|---|---|---|
| Telephone interpreter, typical UK rate | £1–£3 | £7–£21 |
| Telephone interpreter, high-volume agreement | ~45p | £3.15 |
| DeepL Voice, committed volume | 10.00c | €0.70 |
DeepL's row is in euro because that is DeepL's price on your contract with them — we have not converted it at a rate we picked. Our platform fee is monthly rather than per call, so it isn't in this table; the calculator puts the two together at your volume.
Interpreting rates from published UK provider pricing, July 2026.
What we charge
£2 per active user a month.
An active user is someone who actually translated something that month. Not a seat, not a licence, not a login.
Forty agents on the team and six who used Taiwa in March means you pay for six in March. Nobody has to manage a seat count, and nobody pays for the agent who left in February.
That is the whole fee.
There is no minutes allowance to track and no overage past it. An agent who takes one translated call and an agent who takes four hundred each cost £2. Minutes are your supplier's bill, never ours.
There is a £150 monthly minimum.
Below 75 active users you pay the minimum. From 75 you pay per user. We would rather say that plainly than bury a minimum in a contract you find later.
Every account is set up by a person, so the smallest sensible customer is still a real piece of work. If £150 a month is the wrong shape for you, tell us — it is a conversation, not a wall.
What counts as an active user
One translated call, or one translated message, in the calendar month. That is the whole test.
Someone who logged in and translated nothing does not count. Someone who took one call on the 3rd counts the same as someone who took four hundred — the fee is per person, not per minute. Your minutes are your supplier's bill, and they are metered separately.
The portal shows you the count as the month runs, so the invoice is never the first time you see it.
What your supplier meters
Translation is metered while it is switched on.
If an agent leaves it running through hold, or through five minutes of silence, that is metered — the same as leaving a meter running. On DeepL a minute is a minute of call: both sides are translated and that counts once. OpenAI and Gemini meter the audio they process, in their own units. None of it changes our fee.
This is the number on your supplier's invoice, not ours.
Premium Support
Standard support comes with the platform fee. Premium Support is an overlay for teams that run translated calls as a core queue rather than an occasional one.
£500 a month, flat — per account, not per user — on a 12-month term.
Service levels.
A first response within one hour, round the clock, when translation is down. A named contact and a shared channel.
Translation quality.
Your terminology set up and kept current, the right engine chosen for each language, and a quality review every quarter.
Customer experience.
What your callers are told, coaching for agents on translated calls, and a service review every quarter.
Trying it first
Sixty minutes, on our key.
Every new account starts with 60 minutes of translation on our own DeepL account — enough to try it on real calls before you talk to anyone about a contract.
Then you need your own key.
When the trial is used up, translation stops until your own supplier key is loaded — DeepL, OpenAI or Gemini. Nothing is charged automatically and no call is cut off mid-sentence.
Seats are still free.
Add every agent you have. You are billed for the ones who use it, in the month they use it.
Getting set up
This is not a self-serve product yet, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
Every account goes through onboarding with us. We help you choose a supplier and get an agreement at the right volume, load your key, set your languages and terminology, and check it on real calls before anyone depends on it. It takes days, not months.
Start that conversation →Early access is approved one account at a time.
Tell us your platform, your languages, and roughly how many calls need one. We will tell you what it costs, or that it isn't worth it.