DeepL only lets me translate one document a month
You dropped a file into DeepL, it translated, and the next one was refused until next month — or you were shown a Pro plan. You are not doing anything wrong and you have not hit a bug. The free plan includes a small, fixed number of document translations per month, the counter resets rather than accumulates, and there is no way to buy one more without taking the subscription. This page explains the limit in plain terms and what your options are when you have one file and no reason to pay monthly for it.
What the limit actually is
DeepL's free tier includes document translation, but only a handful of files — in practice one on the free plan — and the allowance is monthly. DeepL's own support pages put the important part bluntly: "Unused file translations cannot be moved over into the following month." So the allowance is not a balance you build up. It is a tap that opens on the first of the month and closes again as soon as you have used it. Two things follow, and both are what people run into: The counter is per file, not per page. A one-page letter and a forty-page contract cost the same one translation. That sounds generous until you split a long document to get around a size limit — and a reviewer on Trustpilot described exactly that: "I used up my 3 document translation because I had to split the document." The split cost them their month. Pasting the text instead is not the same thing. Text translation has a character limit rather than a file counter, and it hands you back a wall of text with the paragraph structure flattened. For a short note that is fine. For a contract with numbered clauses it is not.
Why a subscription is the wrong shape for one file
The plans are built for people who translate constantly: a monthly fee, an allowance, and a renewal date. That works if translating is part of your week. It does not work if you are the far more common case — someone who has exactly one document. An employment contract before you sign it. A letter from a bank in a language you half-read. A school form for a child. A lease. A medical discharge summary from a hospital abroad. You do not have a translation habit; you have this one file, today. For that person the subscription asks three things that have nothing to do with the document: a recurring charge, a renewal to remember to cancel, and an account before you know whether the output is any good. The reviewer on AlternativeTo who wrote that "translating just one (!!) document per month is a sign of extreme greed" was not really complaining about the number. They were complaining about the shape.
What to do when you have one file
There are three honest routes, and which one is right depends on what the document is for. Wait for the reset. Free, and completely reasonable if the document is not urgent. Note the date the counter turns over and come back. Pay for the one document. Some tools — including this one — charge for what you translate rather than per month. You see the cost before anything is translated, you buy credits once, and nothing renews. That is the right shape when you need the file this week and will not need another for a year. Pay for a human translation. If the document is going to a court, an immigration office, a university admissions department or any authority that asks for an authorised translation, no machine output will do, whichever tool produced it. You need a certified or sworn translator. That costs considerably more and takes days rather than minutes, and it is the only correct answer when a stamp is required. The mistake to avoid is subscribing for a month to translate one file and then forgetting to cancel. If you do take that route, cancel the moment the file is translated, not later.
How TranslateDoc handles the same job
TranslateDoc was built for the third bullet above, so the shape is deliberately the opposite of a subscription. You open your file — PDF, Word (.docx), or plain text — and your browser extracts the text from it; the file itself is never uploaded. You pick the language you want it in, and the opening of your own document is translated for free, with no account and no card, so you can judge the quality on your text rather than on a demo. What the rest will cost is on screen before anything is spent — credits, priced by the length of your document, bought once and shown in your own currency. Nothing renews, nothing expires, and there is no monthly allowance to run out of. What comes back is the text, paragraph by paragraph, as a Word file or plain text. It is a machine translation, for understanding what a document says — not a certified or sworn one.
Frequently asked questions
Do unused DeepL document translations roll over to next month?
No. DeepL's support documentation states that unused file translations cannot be moved into the following month. The allowance resets rather than accumulating.
Does splitting a long document use more of my allowance?
Yes. The counter is per file, so splitting a document into three parts to get under a size limit costs three of your monthly translations rather than one.
Is there a way to buy just one more document translation from DeepL?
Not as a one-off. The paid plans are monthly or annual subscriptions. If you only need one file, a per-document tool or a human translator is a better fit than a plan you would cancel immediately.
Can I just paste the text instead?
You can, and for a short note it works fine. For anything with structure — numbered clauses, tables, headings — you lose the layout, and long documents run into the character limit for pasted text.
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