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Character Pool: Extra Usage and Additional Costs

Every Lara Translate plan includes a monthly Character Pool. This article explains how the Character Pool works, how different features consume it at different rates, and what it costs when you go beyond it, including API usage, which is billed separately from your plan's pool.

How your Character Pool works

Each plan (Free, Pro, Team, Enterprise) includes a monthly Character Pool (also referred to as the Usage Quota). This pool covers text translation, document translation, image translation, audio translation, and the voice interpreter within the app and website.

Unused characters in the pool do not carry over to the next month.

Note: API usage is billed separately and does not draw from your Character Pool — see "API costs" below.

How usage is calculated

Lara uses the character as its unit of measurement. Every feature is converted into a character count using the rates below, so actual consumption can be higher than the number of characters you'd expect to see translated.

  • Text: 1 character per character translated (no minimum per request)
  • Documents: 1 character per character, with a minimum of 20,000 characters per file
  • Images (webapp): 10,000 characters per image (flat rate)
  • Images (iOS and Android app): 25,000 characters per image (flat rate)
  • Audio: 40 characters per second of audio
  • Voice interpreter (live): 400 characters per second of conversation

Examples:

  • Translating "Hello" (5 characters) deducts exactly 5 characters.
  • A 12,000-character document deducts 20,000 characters (the minimum). A 35,000-character document deducts exactly 35,000 characters.
  • Translating 2 images deducts 20,000 characters (2 × 10,000), regardless of how much text the images contain.
  • A 15-second voice note deducts 600 characters (15 × 40).
  • A 30-second live voice interpreter exchange deducts 12,000 characters (30 × 400). A full hour of live interpreting deducts 1,440,000 characters — nearly 3 times an entire Pro plan's monthly Character Pool.

Spaces and punctuation count as characters, in line with standard practice across the industry.

 

Extra Usage: going beyond your Character Pool

When you exceed the Character Pool included in your plan, additional characters are billed at the plan's Extra Usage rate. Extra Usage is billed monthly, on your subscription renewal date (or, for annual plans, on your monthly character-reset day).

  • Free: 60,000 characters/month included. Extra Usage not available — translation is paused once you reach the limit.
  • Pro: 500,000 characters/month included (from €8/month, annual billing). Extra Usage: €0.25 per 10,000 characters (€25 per million).
  • Team: 1.5M to 60M shared characters/month included, depending on tier (€25 to €649/month). Extra Usage: €0.20 per 10,000 characters (€20 per million).
  • Enterprise: Custom agreed Character Pool. Extra Usage: custom negotiated rate.

API costs (billed separately from your Character Pool)

API usage does not draw from your plan's Character Pool. It is billed separately, per character, starting from the very first character — even if you still have characters remaining in your pool.

  • Free: 10,000 characters/month included, as a dedicated free API allowance separate from the app's Character Pool.
  • Pro: €20 per 1,000,000 characters (Lara Standard model), pay-per-use from the first character.
  • Team: €15 per 1,000,000 characters (Lara Standard model), pay-per-use from the first character.
  • Enterprise: Negotiated pay-per-use pricing based on volume.

API prices are calculated only on source text characters, never on the translated output.

 

API pricing by model: Standard, Think, and Prosa

The rates above apply to the Lara Standard model. Two additional models are available via API, at different price points:

  • Lara Standard: €20/1M characters (Pro), €15/1M characters (Team)
  • Lara Think: €2,000/1M characters (Pro), €1,500/1M characters (Team)
  • Lara Prosa: €200 add-on, €400 with reasoning (Pro); €150 add-on, €300 with reasoning (Team)

Lara Think is intended for use cases that require advanced reasoning and is priced accordingly — about 100 times the Standard rate for the same volume.

Lara Prosa is an add-on layered on top of Lara Standard, not a replacement for it: using Prosa means paying for Standard plus the Prosa surcharge. For example, on the Pro plan, Prosa costs €20 (Standard) + €200 (Prosa) = €220 per 1M characters, or €20 + €400 = €420 per 1M with reasoning enabled.

 

Other API services

  • Language Identifier: €2/1M characters, Pro (free if bundled with Text Translation); €1.50/1M characters, Team (free if bundled)
  • Profanities Identifier: €2/1M characters, Pro (free if bundled); €1.50/1M characters, Team (free if bundled)
  • Document Translation (API): €20/1M characters, Pro; €15/1M characters, Team (min. 20,000/document)
  • Audio Translation (API): €0.08/minute (both plans)
  • Image – Transcribe & Translate: €0.02/image (both plans)
  • Image – Overlay: €0.15/image (both plans)
  • Image – Inpainting: €0.20/image (both plans)
  • Image – Generative: €0.50/image (both plans)

Image translation via API has four modes with different prices depending on the output you need, from simple transcribe-and-translate to generative reconstruction of the image. This is different from image translation in the web app, which always deducts a flat 10,000 characters per image regardless of mode.

For volumes of several million characters per month, negotiable Translation API volume plans are available by contacting the sales team.

 

Lara for Sheets: LARATRANSLATE and LARAEVAL

The Lara for Sheets extension for Google Sheets requires an active Pro or Team plan and is not available on the Free plan. Its two functions are billed separately from the general Extra Usage rates, and from each other:

  • LARATRANSLATE (translation): €20/1,000,000 input characters (Pro), €15/1,000,000 input characters (Team)
  • LARAEVAL (quality evaluation): €100/1,000,000 input characters (Pro), €75/1,000,000 input characters (Team)

A few things to keep in mind:

  • Google Sheets recalculates formulas every time the sheet is reopened, which can re-run — and re-bill — LARATRANSLATE and LARAEVAL for the same content. Use the Freeze Lara formulas tool to lock in a result and avoid recalculating it.
  • If a sheet is shared with edit permissions, anyone with access can trigger Lara's functions, consuming characters from their own linked Lara account.

Other costs to be aware of

  • Taxes, duties, and government charges are the customer's responsibility and are not included in published prices.
  • Unused characters in the pool do not roll over to the next month.

For custom needs such as professional human validation of translations, custom integrations, or Enterprise-plan features like data residency, guaranteed SLAs, or SSO, contact the sales team for pricing.

For the latest plan prices, visit the pricing page (app.laratranslate.com/pricing?currency=EUR). For full API pricing details, visit the developer documentation (developers.laratranslate.com/docs/pricing-page).

 

This article is about:

  • How the monthly Character Pool works and what counts against it
  • Conversion rates for text, documents, images, audio, and voice interpreter
  • Extra Usage pricing when you exceed your plan's Character Pool
  • How API costs are billed separately from your plan's Character Pool
  • Pricing for Lara Standard, Think, and Prosa models via API
  • Costs for Lara for Sheets (LARATRANSLATE and LARAEVAL)
  • Other costs to consider, such as taxes and unused characters