Tilde
Tilde is a Latvian language-technology platform combining machine translation, speech transcription, multilingual AI assistants and AI data services for European businesses and public bodies, powered by its own open-source TildeOpen LLM and hosted in the EU.
What is Tilde?
Tilde is a language-technology company based in Riga, Latvia, founded in 1991 and operating from offices in Riga, Vilnius and Tallinn. It employs more than 150 people, including a research team of nine PhDs credited with over 260 scientific publications, and reports between 685 and 700 or more customers. The home page sums up its positioning as trusted language AI, built in and for Europe.
The catalogue covers six families. Machine translation is the core: the Tilde MT console at translate.tilde.ai, an Enterprise MT offer, a translation API, the Website Translator, terminology management and a document anonymisation tool. Speech technology adds Transcribe for audio and video with SRT subtitles, Event Assistant for live transcription and translation at conferences, and Voice Synthesis for custom brand voices. Conversational AI covers Customer, Workplace and Learning assistants, with more than 200 assistants, chatbots and workflows built so far. The AI data services handle ethical data sourcing, dataset augmentation, synthetic data, human-in-the-loop cleaning, anonymisation, enrichment and validation, plus RAG and fine-tuning. AI-augmented human translation completes the range.
Underneath sits TildeOpen LLM, an open-source foundation model of more than 30 billion parameters (the same page's counter shows 25+ billion) published on Hugging Face under a permissive licence for commercial and non-commercial use. It was trained on the EuroHPC supercomputers LUMI and Jupiter using two million GPU hours won through the European Commission's Large AI Grand Challenge. Tilde reports Belebele reading-comprehension accuracy of 84.7 per cent and tokenisation 41 per cent more efficient than LLaMA-3 for Latvian, 37 per cent for Lithuanian, 31 per cent for Finnish and 28 per cent for Estonian and Polish.
The stated audience is European: finance and insurance, health and pharmaceuticals, customer support and contact centres, conferences and events, space and Earth observation, e-commerce, and on the public side government and EU institutions, public health, municipalities and the justice system. Deployment can be on-premises, in a private cloud or in trusted European cloud environments. The scope is deliberately regional: the benchmarks and the language coverage target European languages, and the site itself is published in English, Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian.
What it does
- Translate text, documents in more than 30 formats up to 25 MB, and images while preserving the original layout
- Turn a website multilingual automatically, with a visual editor and SEO indexing
- Deploy multilingual AI assistants for customer support, internal knowledge and learning, on the web, on an intranet and in Microsoft Teams
- Transcribe and translate conferences and events live, on screen or on attendees' own devices
- Anonymise sensitive data inside multilingual documents
- Generate synthetic speech from text, including custom brand voices
- Fine-tune and deploy the open-source TildeOpen LLM locally or in the cloud
When to use Tilde / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Tilde is the right fit.
When to use Tilde
- European public administrations and regulated enterprises (government, healthcare, finance, justice) that must keep language processing inside the EU
- Organisations working in Baltic, Slavic and other under-resourced European languages that English-first models handle poorly
- Professional translation and localisation teams that need unlimited glossaries, translation memory and a CAT tool plugin
- Conference and event organisers who require live multilingual transcription, subtitles and translation
- Software vendors and product teams that want to add machine translation through a documented API rather than build the infrastructure
When not to use Tilde
- Individuals looking for an occasional free translator: no permanent free plan is published and the cheapest paid entry point is EUR 9.99 per month
- Buyers whose language needs sit outside Europe: the positioning and the published benchmarks target European languages
- Teams expecting a fully self-service purchase: Website Translator, Enterprise MT and the data services all go through a contact form
- Companies shopping for a broad catalogue of ready-made integrations: only Microsoft Teams is named on the site
- Users who need a native mobile experience: there is no iOS or Android application
How to use Tilde
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Start the 14-day free trial: no bank card is required, and it includes 30 minutes of transcription
- Create an account and sign in to the Tilde MT console at translate.tilde.ai
- Paste text or upload files in any of the 30+ supported formats, within the size limit of your plan
- Configure unlimited glossaries and translation memory to lock down terminology
- Assign a Superuser administrator, who creates and manages the individual user accounts
- For developers, request an API key through the Start your free trial form (name, organisation, business email, phone); the key arrives by email with 250,000 free characters
- Follow the API documentation on help.tilde.ai to wire translation into your own product
- For a multilingual website, add the Website Translator plugin or iFrame to your site or e-commerce platform and pick the target languages, with no code and no duplicated pages
- For Enterprise MT, AI assistants, data services or TildeOpen, start with the contact form, where a reply is promised within one working day
- Browse the public TildeOpen repository on Hugging Face for the model files and technical documentation
Pros & Cons
Pros
- A complete language stack from a single supplier: translation, speech, assistants, data services and human localisation
- Specialisation in under-resourced European languages, Baltic and Slavic in particular, where English-first models lose ground
- An in-house open-source foundation model, TildeOpen 30B on Hugging Face, rather than a dependency on a third-party LLM
- An explicit commitment not to train on customer data, text and audio alike
- Hosting and processing inside the EU, with on-premises and private-cloud options
- An Article 28 processing agreement written directly into the terms, named sub-processors and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification
- A 14-day trial with no bank card, 250,000 free API characters, and readable per-unit API pricing at EUR 17.50 per million characters
Cons
- No unified pricing page: the figures sit on three different product pages, and part of the catalogue is not priced publicly at all
- No permanent free plan is published; clause 2.14 of the terms contemplates free anonymous use, but the pricing tables show no trace of it
- Website Translator, Enterprise MT, AI assistants, TildeOpen and the data services cannot be bought online, and all go through a contact form
- The offer is deliberately Europe-centred, so coverage is less relevant for Asian or African languages
- A single named third-party integration (Microsoft Teams); the CAT tool plugin and CMS compatibility are mentioned without naming a product, and there is no iOS or Android app
- No documented training opt-out and no minimum age stated in the contractual documents: the site says it does not train on customer data, but offers no verifiable setting
- Clause 7.5 caps liability at 100 per cent of the amounts paid over the previous 12 months and excludes indirect damages, and a fair-use clause allows temporary limits on file processing
Pricing & Plans
There is no permanent free plan in the published pricing tables, but Tilde offers a 14-day free trial that requires no bank card and includes 30 minutes of transcription, together with 250,000 free characters on the translation API. The lowest paid entry point is the Tilde Machine Translation Starter plan at EUR 9.99 per month on monthly billing, falling to EUR 6.99 per month on an annual commitment (EUR 83.88 plus tax, an advertised saving of 30 per cent). Displayed prices exclude VAT. The API is billed on usage at EUR 17.50 per million characters plus EUR 0.02 per image, the Website Translator starts at EUR 69.00 per month, and Custom or Enterprise tiers are quoted on request. Subscriptions renew automatically, monthly or annually, and can be cancelled at any time.
- EUR 9.99 per month
- or EUR 6.99 per month billed annually (EUR 83.88 plus tax)
- unlimited text
- 5 files per month
- 10 MB uploads
- unlimited glossaries
- EUR 39.99 per month
- or EUR 29.99 per month billed annually (EUR 359.88 plus tax)
- 50 files per month
- 15 MB uploads
- EUR 79.99 per month
- or EUR 59.99 per month billed annually (EUR 719.88 plus tax)
- 200 files per month
- 25 MB uploads
- on quotation
- unlimited text and files
- flexible upload size
- CAT tool plugin
- account manager
- API
- user statistics
- custom integrations
- EUR 17.50 per million characters plus EUR 0.02 per image
- files up to 25 MB
- EUR 69.00 per month
- up to 250
- 000 translated words per month
- EUR 109.99 per month
- up to 500
- 000 words
- EUR 189.99 per month
- up to 1
- 000
- 000 words
- EUR 349.99 per month
- up to 2
- 000
- 000 words
- EUR 829.99 per month
- up to 5
- 000
- 000 words
- Every Website Translator tier includes 130+ languages
- unlimited language pairs
- analytics
- the visual editor and SEO indexing
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Tilde handles your data.
GDPR overview
GDPR compliance is claimed explicitly: the privacy policy in force since 25 February 2026 promises full compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation. The controller is SIA Tilde, Vienibas gatve 75A, Riga, Latvia. A data protection officer is reachable at dpo@tilde.lv in sections 1 and 12, and at dpo@tilde.ai in section 15. Rights listed include access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability, objection, withdrawal of consent and complaint to the Latvian Data State Inspectorate. Section 9 of the terms is a complete Article 28 processing agreement: documented instructions, confidentiality, sub-processors with 14 days' notice, assistance under Articles 32 to 36, deletion and audits. Tilde is certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and claims NIS2 alignment, with TLS in transit and AES-256 at rest. No Article 27 representative is named, and none is required for an EU-established company.
Who owns the data?
The documents draw a clear line between two roles. For website and account data, SIA Tilde is the controller within the meaning of Article 4(7) GDPR. For Client Data submitted to the services, section 9.4 of the terms makes Tilde a processor acting on the customer's instructions, with the customer as controller. The privacy policy states that content sent for translation or anonymisation is not used to train Tilde's public AI models and that intellectual property in that content remains with the customer. Clause 9.4.13 commits Tilde to deleting all Client Data, copies included, once it is no longer needed to deliver the service.
Reuse rights
Because Tilde acts only as a processor for Client Data and states that intellectual property in submitted content remains with the customer, the customer keeps control of what it uploads and of the results, and can reuse translations, transcripts and synthesised audio in its own work without a separate authorisation. Tilde's own use of the data is limited to the purposes enumerated in section 4 of the privacy policy: delivering the service, real-time transcription and translation, support, security and fraud prevention, and legal obligations. The legal bases cited are Article 6(1)(b) contract, 6(1)(f) legitimate interest, 6(1)(c) legal obligation and 6(1)(a) consent for marketing. The categories processed cover content (text, documents, audio streams), identification and contact details, account data, technical and usage data such as IP addresses, device identifiers and logs, cookies, and support exchanges. Clause 9.4.7 of the terms states that Tilde treats Client Data as formal data and does not examine its content, and the company states plainly that customer text and audio are never used to improve or train its public models. Recruitment is handled separately: CVs are processed on consent, kept for six months, never transferred outside the EU and never subject to automated decision-making.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Section 6 of the privacy policy states that all data is processed and stored on secure servers located within the European Union, primarily in Microsoft Azure EU regions, and section 8 confirms that all personal data is processed inside the EU. The AI Assistant pages repeat the commitment for the EU and EEA. No individual host country is ever named, only the EU region, so the jurisdiction to plan around is EU law, with Latvian law governing the contract. Four sub-processors are named in the privacy policy: Microsoft Azure and Verda for cloud, Chargebee for payments, and Odoo for support and the knowledge base. Section 12.4 rules out any transfer to third countries or international organisations in the recruitment context. Beyond the shared cloud, Tilde offers on-premises deployment, a private cloud or trusted European cloud environments for organisations that need tighter control. One detail is worth separating out: the public IP of the tilde.ai website resolves to Frankfurt, Germany (Hostinger), which is the hosting of the marketing site and not necessarily the hosting of service data.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Tilde.
- Clause 7.3 of the terms states that translation and transcription are produced automatically, without human review, and Tilde does not warrant their accuracy: publishing or acting on raw output without a human check is the customer's risk, and habitual reliance on it erodes the reviewing reflex that regulated work depends on
- Clause 9.4.10 lets Tilde appoint further sub-processors at its own discretion, with 14 days' notice to the customer
- Clause 7.5 caps Tilde's liability at 100 per cent of the amounts paid over the previous 12 months and excludes indirect damages; Latvian law applies, with the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of the Republic of Latvia
- Displayed prices exclude VAT, and subscriptions renew automatically on a monthly or annual cycle
- Moving up a tier during the 14-day trial has to go through support, and additional transcription minutes can only be bought once the trial has ended
- A fair-use clause allows Tilde to contact the customer, temporarily limit file processing or propose a different plan where usage is judged excessive
- Two inconsistencies are worth checking before signing: the contact form selector quotes the Website Translator tiers at EUR 109.00, 189.00, 349.00 and 829.00 while the product page quotes 109.99, 189.99, 349.99 and 829.99, and the published support address sits on the publisher's legacy tilde.com domain rather than on the site's own
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Difficulty depends on the product. Self-service translation is trivial: create an account, sign in to translate.tilde.ai and start working, with no technical skill required. The Website Translator is a plugin or iFrame added to any CMS, with no code and no duplicated pages, and is announced as live within minutes. The API is a standard developer integration, with the key sent by email and public documentation on help.tilde.ai. Enterprise MT, AI assistants, TildeOpen and the data services are scoped projects run with Tilde. Account management is handled by a Superuser administrator who creates the individual user accounts.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Tilde
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Tilde.
Frequently asked questions
What is TildeOpen LLM?
Does Tilde train its models on customer data?
Where is customer data hosted?
Is there a free trial?
How much does Tilde cost?
Does Tilde offer an API?
How many languages does Tilde support?
What certifications does Tilde hold, and is a DPA available?
Can Tilde be deployed on-premises?
Who publishes Tilde?
Should you pick Tilde?
Tilde is one of the few European vendors that owns the whole language chain instead of reselling someone else's model. Three decades of research in Riga, an in-house open-source foundation model trained on European supercomputers, and measured gains on Baltic and Slavic languages give it a real advantage exactly where English-first systems degrade. Add processing inside the EU, an Article 28 agreement written into the terms, named sub-processors and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification, and the compliance case largely writes itself for public bodies and regulated industries.
The reservations are commercial rather than technical. There is no unified pricing page: the figures live on three separate product pages, and a large part of the catalogue - Enterprise MT, AI assistants, data services, TildeOpen - carries no public price at all. No permanent free plan is published, even though the terms contemplate free anonymous use. Only one third-party integration is named, and buying anything beyond the entry-level translation plans means filling in a contact form and waiting for a reply.
That makes Tilde a poor fit for an individual after a quick free translator, or for a team shopping for a plug-and-play product with a large integration marketplace. It is a strong fit for public administrations, healthcare, finance, justice and enterprises across Northern, Central and Baltic Europe that work in languages the large models handle badly, and that have to prove where their data is processed. Start with the 14-day trial or the 250,000 free API characters to test quality on your own material; for anything larger, expect a scoped project rather than a self-service purchase.
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
- Opens in a new window.