Proxylang Guide

Set up in four steps

1. 1

   Add your site

   Go to Setup and type your website address. Pick the platform it runs on.

2. 2

   Pick languages

   Choose your site's own language, then the languages you want to add. Your plan sets how many.

3. 3

   Install

   Pick how the script tag gets onto your site. Let AI do it: paste our message into ChatGPT, Claude or Cursor. Do it yourself: copy one line and publish. Or send it to your developer: we write the email. WordPress sites use the plugin.

4. 4

   Check your site

   The wizard confirms the script is live. A language switcher appears on your site.

Install guides by platform:

Choose how Proxylang connects

The script tag is the default and works everywhere. The other modes add search-engine visibility in other languages. You change modes later on the domain's Setup tab; nothing goes offline when you switch.

How a page gets translated

With the script tag, the page loads from your server as usual. The script then asks Proxylang for the translation of each sentence and swaps it in. The first visit to a page translates as you watch. Every later visit is instant, because the translation is saved.

With DNS Proxy or Hybrid mode, Proxylang sits between the visitor (or the search engine) and your server:

1. 1

   A visitor opens a translated addressyourdomain.com/es-es/page

2. 2

   Proxylang fetches the original page from your server

3. 3

   AI translates the visible text

   Layout and code stay exactly as they were.

4. 4

   The translated page is saved and served

   The next visitor gets it instantly.

5. 5

   SEO tags are added

   Language links, canonical address and more.

Short addresses also work. /es/about and /mx/about both redirect to /es-es/about.

What to fill in

• Brand Name. Your name in your site's language and in English. It is kept exactly as written in every language.
• Site Description. Two or three sentences: what you sell, who reads the site, the tone you want. Example: "Online shop for Korean skincare. Customers are women 25 to 40. Friendly, not formal." This also helps translate visitors' search queries.
• Landing Pages. Pick up to 20 pages (your home page, pricing) where headlines and calls to action should read like native marketing copy rather than a word-for-word translation.
• Translation Formality. Formal, casual or automatic. This one is chosen when you add the domain and cannot be changed later, because every saved translation depends on it.

Your terms

• A term is a word or phrase in your site's language, its translation, and the language it applies to. Add one with Add Term . Tick case sensitive if "Apple" and "apple" should be treated differently.
• Terms apply everywhere the phrase appears. Up to 5,000 terms per domain.
• Have a list already? Use Import with a CSV file. Columns: source_text, target_text, source_lang, target_lang, case_sensitive, notes . Export gives you the same format back.
• Tick rows and click Delete Selected to remove many at once.

Never translate

The Never Translate card at the top of the glossary holds words that must stay exactly as written in every language: your brand, a product name, a hashtag. Up to 100 entries of 60 characters each. Matching is case sensitive, so add "iPhone", not "iphone".

Edit a translation

1. Go to Live Editor , pick the domain and click Start editing . Your site opens in a new tab with the editor bar on it. Shortcut: on any page of your site, press Esc twice and click Open editor .
2. Switch the site to the language you want to fix.
3. Click any text. A panel shows the Original and the Translation . Change the translation and click Save .

• You see your change at once. Other visitors see it within about five minutes.
• Your edit always wins. Proxylang will not overwrite it, and neither will AI improvements.
• Changed your mind? Open the same text and click Reset to automatic translation .
• Some text has placeholders like {0} for a link or bold word. Keep them in your translation, in any order.
• Only verified domains you own appear in the Live Editor.

Keep something in the original language

Some text should never change: a brand name, a coupon code, a quote, reviews written by customers. You have three tools, from no code to some code.

• A single word or name, everywhere. Add it to the Never Translate list in the glossary. No code.
• A block on a page. Add the proxylang-no-translate class to the element. Everything inside it is skipped. See below.
• A whole file or region. Wrap it in the comment markers. See below.

Skip a block with a class

Add the class proxylang-no-translate to any element. The attribute data-proxylang-no-translate does the same thing. Works in every mode.

<!-- Everything inside is left in the original language -->
<div class="proxylang-no-translate">
  <h2>Brand Name™</h2>
  <p>SAVE20 is your coupon code.</p>
</div>

<!-- The attribute form does the same -->
<span data-proxylang-no-translate>Acme Corp</span>

Skip a region with comments

Useful when you cannot add a class, or for text inside JavaScript files. Everything between the two markers is skipped.

<!-- @proxylang-do-not-translate-start -->
<div class="testimonial">
  Customer reviews stay exactly as written.
</div>
<!-- @proxylang-do-not-translate-end -->

// @proxylang-do-not-translate-start
const message = "This string is never translated"
// @proxylang-do-not-translate-end

Skipped for you

• Code samples inside <pre> and <code> , in every mode. Syntax highlighters that render into those tags (Shiki, highlight.js, Prism) are covered. Code editors that render into a plain <div> (CodeMirror, Monaco) are not; add the class to their wrapper.
• <kbd>, <var> and <samp> when Proxylang translates on the server (DNS Proxy and Hybrid).
• Legal pages at standard addresses. See the Legal pages section.
• Email addresses, URLs, numbers and prices.

Skip for search engines only

Sometimes you want search engines to index the original wording (a tagline, a slogan you rank for) while visitors still read it translated. Use the bot-only markers. They only apply where Proxylang serves pages to bots, so DNS Proxy and Hybrid mode. On the script tag alone they do nothing.

<!-- Search engines index the original wording.
     Visitors still see it translated. -->
<h2 class="proxylang-bot-only-no-translate">Our Brand Tagline</h2>

<!-- Attribute form -->
<p data-proxylang-bot-only-no-translate>Ranked slogan</p>

<!-- Comment form, for a larger region -->
<!-- @proxylang-bot-only-do-not-translate-start -->
<section>...</section>
<!-- @proxylang-bot-only-do-not-translate-end -->

Keep legal pages in your own language

A machine translation of a contract may not hold up in court, and a long legal page would use a lot of your word balance for nothing. So Proxylang skips these pages unless you say otherwise.

Pages skipped without any setup

Proxylang goes by the page address. These are skipped on every plan and in every mode:

• /privacy, /privacy-policy, /cookie-policy, /cookies, /gdpr
• /terms, /tos, /terms-of-service, /terms-and-conditions, /legal, /eula
• /disclaimer, /dmca, /copyright, /refund, /refund-policy, /return-policy, /shipping-policy
• German: /agb, /datenschutz, /impressum, /nutzungsbedingungen

Only the main text of the page is skipped. The header, menu and footer still translate, so your visitors can still find their way around.

Legal pages at other addresses

If your legal page lives somewhere else (for example /about/policies), mark it yourself. Add the proxylang-no-translate class to the element that wraps the legal text. On a site builder, put the legal text in a code block or custom HTML element and add the class there.

<!-- Wrap the legal text, not the whole page -->
<main class="proxylang-no-translate">
  <h1>Privacy Policy</h1>
  <p>Last updated ...</p>
</main>

The SEO page

Open SEO and pick a site. It needs the Lite plan or above. The Keywords and Page Titles tabs also need Hybrid or DNS Proxy mode, because on the script tag alone search engines never see translated titles.

Health

A score from 0 to 100 and a to-do list. It checks that search engines can reach your translated pages, that the right tags are on them, and that setup is finished.

Keywords

Type up to 20 phrases your customers search for, in your own language. Proxylang writes a matching set for every other language and uses them for your home page title and description. You can give a pricing or campaign page its own set.

Page Titles & Descriptions

See the title and description each language really shows in search results, and pin your own wording for any page. A pin is exact and final for that page and language. Too long? Click Shorten.

Settings

Bot translation budget, which pages go in the sitemap, and a switch to stop SEO tags while you test.

• Google Search Console. The Health checklist has a "Connect Google Search Console" step. It pulls Google's own indexing data into the Health tab. Available once Hybrid or DNS Proxy is on.
• Naver and Daum. If Korean is one of your languages, a card lists the four manual steps those engines need. Tick each one off as you go.
• AI answers. A second checklist covers listings that help ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity recommend you: Wikidata, Google Business Profile and, for software, G2 and Product Hunt.

Tags added to every translated page

• Language links (hreflang) that tell search engines which page is which language.
• A canonical address per language, so translations are not seen as duplicates.
• The page's language tag, for Bing and Baidu.
• Social preview locale, so shared links show the right language.

Applies in Hybrid and DNS Proxy mode, where search engines get pages from Proxylang. On the script tag alone, they read your original site.

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-US" href="https://example.com/page" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es-ES" href="https://example.com/es-es/page" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-FR" href="https://example.com/fr-fr/page" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://example.com/page" />
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/es-es/page" />
<meta property="og:locale" content="es_ES" />

Titles, descriptions and image text

The page title, meta description, social preview title and description, and keywords are translated. So are image alt texts, button tooltips and form placeholders. Pin your own wording for any page on the Page Titles & Descriptions tab.

Rich results

If your pages carry structured data (the hidden product, article, FAQ or event details that power rich results in Google), the text fields are translated and the language field updated. Prices, dates, URLs and identifiers are left alone.

Sitemaps

Proxylang builds a sitemap per language and lists them all at /sitemap.xml on your domain. Pages come from your own sitemap, plus pages Proxylang has seen. Each language also has its own file, such as /es-es/sitemap.xml . They refresh daily; click Regenerate sitemap on the SEO Settings tab to rebuild now.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <sitemap><loc>https://example.com/sitemap-1.xml</loc></sitemap>
  <sitemap><loc>https://example.com/es-es/sitemap.xml</loc></sitemap>
  <sitemap><loc>https://example.com/fr-fr/sitemap.xml</loc></sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

Choose which pages are in the sitemap

On the SEO Settings tab, under Sitemap Pages :

• All pages. The default.
• Only specific paths. Start with a few pages, add more later.
• Exclude paths. Hide a section, such as /internal/*.

One path per line. * matches anything, so /blog/* covers every blog post. The home page is always included. Subdomains use their root domain's setting.

Telling search engines about new pages

• Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam and Yep are told the moment a translated page is saved. DuckDuckGo, Ecosia and Qwant use Bing's index. Nothing to set up.
• Google does not take pings. It finds your pages through the sitemap and the language links. Connecting Search Console lets you watch it happen.
• Your robots.txt is served with the sitemap lines added. Your own rules are kept.

AI search engines

• robots.txt allows GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended.
• A /llms.txt file describes your site and lists its languages and sitemaps for AI tools that look for one.
• AI bots get translated pages only in Hybrid or DNS Proxy mode. They are counted under the bot budget like any other crawler.

What it does

The script tag translates pages in the visitor's browser. Search engines do not run that script, so they only see your original language. Hybrid mode fixes that.

Sites on Wix, Squarespace, Webflow and similar builders cannot change DNS this way, so they stay on the script tag.

How to turn it on

There is no "Hybrid" switch. Hybrid is what you get when DNS Proxy and Script Tag are both on for the same domain.

1. 1

   Open your domain, then the Setup tab

   Domains → your domain → Setup.

2. 2

   Turn on DNS Proxy

   Add the DNS records we show you at your domain registrar, then verify. This is the step that lets search engines reach Proxylang.

3. 3

   Keep Script Tag on

   Your visitors keep using the script tag you already installed.

4. 4

   Done

   With both on, the domain badge reads "Hybrid (SEO)". Turn either off and the site drops back to the other mode with no downtime.

What it costs

Bot visits use words from your balance, at a quarter of the normal rate. Three limits keep a runaway crawl from draining it. You can lower each one on the SEO page under Settings.

What you can add

• Subdomains of a site you already added (app.yourdomain.com, shop.yourdomain.com). Free on every plan. They do not count toward your domain limit.
• Separate root domains (yourdomain.com and yourapp.io). Needs the Start plan or above, which carries as many as you like. Test Drive and Lite cover one site.

All your sites share one word balance. A second site does not add words; it draws from the same pool.

If you move to a smaller plan later, nothing goes offline. You keep every site you already added. You just cannot add more until you are back under the limit.

What a subdomain inherits

A subdomain follows its root domain. It gets the same connection mode, languages, sitemap settings and Advanced-tab switches. You set those once on the root.

If the root uses DNS Proxy or Hybrid mode, each subdomain also needs its own DNS records. The app shows the exact records to add: four for a root domain (the bare domain, www, and two verification records), two for a subdomain.

What it does

A chat bubble on your site. Visitors write in their language. You read and answer in yours. Both sides are translated as they go. One subscription covers every site on your account, with as many agents as you like.

Turn it on

Open the domain, go to the Live Chat tab and flip the switch. The bubble appears on your site and the site shows up in your chat console at Chat .

• On Start and above, chat is already included with your plan. Nothing to buy and no trial to start.
• On Test Drive and Lite, every account gets one 14-day trial with 2,000 translated messages. No card needed. The trial is per account, not per site.
• When nobody is online, visitors see "We are away" and can leave their email. You answer by email from the console. Turn this off in widget settings if you prefer.

Add your team

1. On the Live Chat tab, in the Agents card, type a teammate's email and click Invite . Seats are free and unlimited.
2. They get a link, good for seven days. They enter the name visitors will see and the language they want to read chats in.
3. They see that site's conversations only, marked "Shared". No settings, no billing.

Remove someone with the Remove button on their row.

Answering chats

• The console has three panes: conversations, the open chat, and visitor details (page they are on, country, past chats).
• Having the console open makes you "Online". Click the pill to go "Away"; visitors then get the offline form.
• Type / in the reply box for quick replies (hello, order, refund, shipping).
• You can send images up to 10 MB. Edit a sent message and the visitor's translation is redone.
• If a teammate is already answering, your reply box locks so the visitor never gets two answers.
• Under Chat settings → Widget , set the bubble colour, position, greeting and the name visitors see. The greeting is shown as written and is not translated yet.

Desktop and mobile apps

The Downloads page has the desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux. It gives you alerts and unread badges with the browser closed, and updates itself. iPhone and Android apps are listed as coming soon.

Signing in opens your normal browser for a moment, then returns to the app. That is expected.

Setup

1. Buy credits

Image translation is on for every domain. Your credit balance is the only gate. Buy a pack from Billing . Packs are valid for 12 months.

10 images

$5 / ₩7,000

$0.50 per image

50 images

$20 / ₩28,000

$0.40 per image

100 images

$35 / ₩49,000

$0.35 per image

2. Choose which images to translate

Only images you pick are translated. Three ways, easiest first:

• Live Editor. Open your site, press Escape twice, sign in, click Image Translation in the editor bar and tap the images. Works on any platform.
• Paste image addresses. On the domain's Image Translations tab, use Auto-Translate Images by URL . Good for site builders where you cannot edit HTML.
• Tag the HTML. Add data-pl-translate-image to the image tag.

<!-- Only tagged images are translated -->
<img src="/hero-banner.png" data-pl-translate-image alt="Welcome" />

<!-- Any image source works -->
<img src="https://cdn.example.com/promo.jpg" data-pl-translate-image />

What happens and what it costs

• The first visitor in a language sees the original image. Translation runs in the background, usually under two minutes, then the translated image replaces it on the page without a refresh.
• Every visitor after that gets the translated image instantly. It is kept forever.
• One credit per image, per language. The same banner in Korean and Japanese costs two credits.
• Images whose longer side is over 2000px cost two credits per language. Tall product detail images usually fall in this group.
• Visitors reading your site in its own language never use credits.

Works in every mode. With the "paste image addresses" method, the matching runs in the visitor's browser, so it needs the script tag (script tag or Hybrid mode).

Setup

1. Buy searches

Paid with prepaid search credits. Buy a pack from Billing . Packs never expire.

10,000 searches

$9.99 / ₩13,900

50,000 searches

$39.99 / ₩55,900

200,000 searches

$139.99 / ₩194,000

2. Turn it on per domain

Open the domain, go to the Advanced tab and switch on Translate Search Queries . The switch stays off until you have credits. It can take up to five minutes to reach your live site, so wait before testing.

How it works

If your search box is a normal form, or its field is named q, query, search, keyword, term or s, it works with no changes. When the visitor presses Enter, Proxylang translates the query and your search receives the translated text.

<form action="/search" method="GET">
  <input type="search" name="q" />
  <button type="submit">Search</button>
</form>

• Runs from the script tag, so it works in script tag and Hybrid mode. Not on DNS Proxy-only sites.
• Visitors reading your site in its own language are not affected and use no credits.
• Each search uses one credit, including repeats. Translated queries are remembered per domain, so repeats are instant.
• If translation takes longer than 4.5 seconds, the original query is sent through instead. Visitors never wait on a spinner.

Search boxes that filter a list on the page

Some search boxes never send anything to a server. They filter a list already on the page (a FAQ, a product grid). Those need one attribute on the input:

<!-- Translate when the visitor presses Enter (default) -->
<input type="text" placeholder="Search..." data-proxylang-reverse-search />

<!-- Translate as they type, after a short pause -->
<input type="text" placeholder="Search..." data-proxylang-reverse-search="live" />

By default the query is translated when the visitor presses Enter. Add ="live" to translate as they type, after a short pause. Live mode uses more credits, one per pause.

Help the translation with context

A one-word query can mean many things. Proxylang uses the Site Description from your Brand & Context tab to pick the right meaning. For one specific search box you can override it with data-proxylang-search-context="..." on the input (up to 240 characters).

Tips

• Keep Enter mode unless your search really needs results while typing. It costs a fraction of live mode.
• Write a clear Site Description. "Korean skincare shop" gives better query translations than "our website".
• Test in a private window with the site switched to another language.

What you can change

Activate Switcher

The on/off switch for the widget on this site. Also holds a test key for trying the script on your own computer.

Layout

Floating in a corner, or inline where you place it. Starting corner. Whether visitors can drag it.

Appearance

Button size, menu size, corner shape, shadow, and whether languages show as "EN", "English" or both.

Colors

Six ready-made themes, or your own colours for light and dark mode.

Behavior

Shrink to an icon after a few seconds, menu animation, and a soft fade when translated text appears.

Branding

Hide the "Translation by Proxylang" line in the menu. Start plan and above.

Loading Indicators

A spinner, a thin bar at the top, both, or nothing while a page translates.

Dark Mode Detection

Follow the visitor's system setting, or tell Proxylang which CSS class your site uses for dark mode.

Advanced

Stacking order, the width at which the mobile layout kicks in, and the right-to-left auto-flip switch.

Changes reach your site within seconds, five minutes at most. If you do not see them, refresh the page.

Which language a visitor gets first

There is nothing to set. On the first visit, Proxylang looks at the languages the visitor's browser prefers and picks the best match among the languages you enabled. If none match, it uses the visitor's country, and then your site's own language. After that, the visitor's choice is remembered for a year.

To test another language, open your site in a private window, or add ?lang=ko-KR to the address.

Who visits, in which language

The Analytics tab on your dashboard shows visitors, visits, pages, where people came from, their country and device, and the share who read a translated version. No cookies are used; visitors are counted from a scrambled fingerprint that cannot be turned back into an address.

• A visit ends after 30 minutes without activity.
• Bots are hidden by default, and so is your own traffic from a development machine. Use the Filter button to show them.
• Detailed records are kept for 90 days.
• The Visitor Map shows the same data on a world map.

What a plan gives you

Every plan has a word allowance, a monthly page-view allowance, a number of languages and a number of sites. The word allowance is a total, not a monthly amount: a sentence is only counted the first time it is translated, and it stays translated after that. Each language counts separately: a 500-word page opened in three languages uses 1,500 words. On Start and above, visitors can pick any of the 77 languages, and the plan sets how many of them search engines index. Crawlers fetch every indexed language, so those are the languages that spend words without a visitor.

• Global, Enterprise and Custom plans are arranged through the Custom card on the pricing page.
• Lite and above add per-language SEO and Hybrid mode. Pro and above add DNS Proxy mode.
• Words used up. New text stays in the original language until you upgrade. Text already translated keeps showing, and the language switcher keeps working. There is no overage charge.
• Page views used up. The same happens for one month, then the whole site is served in its original language until the next month or an upgrade.
• Bot visits in Hybrid and DNS Proxy mode count at a quarter of the rate.
• Yearly billing is ten months for twelve.
• Moving to a smaller plan never takes a site offline. You keep what you have and cannot add more until you fit.

Changing or cancelling

• Open Billing and pick a plan under Available Plans . A change takes effect at once. The price difference is settled on your next invoice.
• New subscriptions on Start or Pro (monthly, paid in USD, outside Korea) start with a 14-day free trial.
• Korean customers pay in KRW through KG이니시스, with VAT shown separately. Yearly Korean plans are a one-time payment you renew by hand. Cancel with the 해지 button; you keep access to the end of the period.
• Every charge and receipt is under Payment History at the top of the Billing page.

Image and search credits

Paid plans include a one-time batch of credits the first time you subscribe: Lite 2 images and 500 searches, Start 10 images and 2,000 searches, Pro 30 images and 2,000 searches, Business and Global 100 images and 2,000 searches. Moving up a plan adds only the difference. Included credits never expire and are granted once per account, not once per upgrade.

If you run out, buy more as prepaid packs on the Billing page, on the Image Translation page, or on the Reverse Search page. Packs are shared across your sites. Purchased image packs are valid for 12 months and you get an email 30 days before one expires; purchased search packs never expire.

The purchase opens in a new tab. Your balance on the Billing page refreshes when you come back to it.

Promo codes

• Outside Korea there is no code box. Your discount is attached to your account and applied at checkout on its own.
• In Korea, the code box is on the Billing page while you are on the free plan. Codes apply to the first payment only.
• Discounts do not stack. The largest one wins.