Frequently asked questions

Four plans, all priced in hours of live service — the wall-clock time from when you press Start to when you press Stop, counted once no matter how many languages translate simultaneously. Starter is $39/mo for 6 hours and 2 translated languages. Growth is $89/mo for 12 hours and 4 translated languages — the plan most churches pick. Pro is $199/mo for 30 hours and 6 translated languages (+$9.99/mo per extra language). VIP is $499/mo for 30 hours with every language we support unlocked. On every plan, time past your included hours bills at $4.50/hr. Each plan also includes free live captions in your speaker's own language, which never count against your translated-language allowance.

Starter covers a church running one Sunday service a week — 4 Sundays at ~75 minutes each is 5 hours, inside the 6 included (a longer month simply bills $4.50 for each extra hour). Growth adds hours and languages for multi-service Sundays plus midweek gatherings. Pro is the big bundle — 30 hours and 6 languages — for churches running daily services, conferences, or multiple long events. VIP exists for the one thing the other three can't do: open every language at once (up to 25 simultaneously) for a conference or a genuinely multi-ethnic congregation. Both engines — the default Natural Voice (V2) and Live Interpreter (V1) — are available on every plan. You can switch plans at any time from the Billing page.

A language-hour is one translated language, with someone actually listening to it, live for one hour. Six languages running for a 90-minute service is 9 language-hours — but still only 1.5 service hours.

Only VIP counts them, and only because of what VIP sells. Every other plan caps the number of languages (2, 4 or 6), which is what keeps a flat price honest. VIP removes that cap entirely, and 97 languages running for 30 hours is a genuinely different amount of work — so VIP includes 150 language-hours a month and bills $3.00 per language-hour past that. In practice 150 goes a long way: it covers all 30 service hours with 5 languages live throughout, and most conferences run far fewer languages than they enable, because you only pay for the ones people are actually listening to.

Yes — every new church gets its first 4 hours of live service time free, with full platform access and nothing charged. That's typically two to four full Sunday services to validate the platform against your real congregation before money changes hands. The trial ends when you've used the 4 hours or after 14 days, whichever comes first — then your plan's normal monthly billing begins. Stripe collects a payment method at signup; the card-on-file is what lets billing start seamlessly when the trial ends, with no interruption mid-service. Running out of trial hours never cuts off a live service — it simply asks you to start your plan before the next one.

Take a typical small-to-mid church on Growth: two Sunday services — about 2.5 hours of service time a week — with 4 translated languages live during each service.

Monthly bill:
• $89 base (12 hours + 4 languages included) → $89.00
• Service time: 2.5 hrs × 4 weeks = 10 hrs — inside the 12 included → $0.00
• Captions in the speaker's own language → $0.00
Total: $89.00/mo

Note: all 4 languages translate at the same time and the hours count once — a 90-minute service uses 1.5 hours whether one language is live or all of them. A fifth Sunday in the month would push you to 12.5 hrs and add a single half-hour of overage: $2.25.

Pick Pro for the languages, not the hours — we'd rather say so than let you work it out after the fact. Growth is hard-capped at 4 translated languages; if your congregation needs 5 or 6, Pro is the only plan that fits, and each language beyond its 6 is $9.99/mo.

On hours alone the arithmetic favours Growth: Pro costs $110 more and includes 18 more hours, which at the $4.50 overage rate are worth $81. Past 30 hours both plans bill the same $4.50/hr, so Growth-plus-overage stays the cheaper line item at any volume. What Pro buys you there is predictability — 30 hours is more than any church on the platform has ever used in a month, so in practice the bill is $199 and never moves. If a stable number matters more to your treasurer than $29, that's a fair reason to take it. You can switch either way from the Billing page.

Nothing dramatic — translation never stops mid-service. Hitting your cap is a billing event, not an interruption: time past your included hours simply bills at $4.50/hr, prorated to the minute, on your next invoice, and we email you so you know it happened. On every plan with an hour bundle — Starter, Growth, Pro and VIP — you also get a heads-up email at about 80% of your bundle, and the Billing page shows your hours in real time on every plan. If you're regularly going over, moving up a plan is usually cheaper — one click from the dashboard.

No. Captions in your speaker's language (your source language) are free and always included on every plan — they're generated as a side-effect of the translation pipeline anyway. When a plan says it "includes N translated languages," that counts the output languages — so a Russian-source church translating to English + Spanish has 2 translated languages; an English-source church translating to Russian + Spanish also has 2. The source-language captions are bundled free on top.

Yes. Any listener can select the original language on their phone and get live captions of the service in the speaker's own words — no translation has to be involved at all. For the room, the on-screen captions page puts the same live text on a lobby TV, an in-room monitor, or a ProPresenter slide. Source-language captions are included on every plan, so this works even if nobody in your congregation needs a second language.

That's fine — pick any of 98 languages as your source during signup. Whatever your speaker preaches in becomes the "original": listeners see captions in that language and can pick from any translation languages you've enabled (English, Spanish, Mandarin — whatever your congregation needs). Common patterns we already support: Russian-speaking congregations needing English / Ukrainian for second-gen attendees; Spanish-speaking congregations needing English for non-Hispanic guests; Korean-speaking congregations with English-only spouses. The AI auto-detects your speaker's words — you just tell us once during onboarding which language they preach in, so we label the captions correctly and bill the right languages as "translations."

98 languages with Natural Voice (V2) — our default and the engine most churches use — each one fully supported as both a source and a target, from Spanish, Korean, and Mandarin to Amharic, Punjabi, and Zulu. On any plan you can also switch to our Live Interpreter (V1) engine with its 13 officially supported languages — English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Russian, Hindi, Indonesian, Vietnamese. Add or drop any language from the dashboard at any time.

How many you can run is set by your plan: 2 on Starter, 4 on Growth, 6 on Pro (+$9.99/mo each beyond), and on VIP all 97 — every language in the roster except the one your speaker is already preaching in — with up to 25 live simultaneously.

Accuracy on doctrinal speech is generally very good. The default Natural Voice (V2) engine offers all 98 languages. Accuracy varies by language pair, audio conditions and content; test your service languages before relying on them. On the optional Live Interpreter (V1) engine, quality is strongest across its 13 officially supported languages. The model handles scriptural references (book chapter:verse), proper nouns (your pastor's name), and church-specific terminology ("the elders," "communion," "the body of Christ") better than older cascade translators. Like all current AI, it sometimes chooses imperfect words on edge cases — listeners can toggle a secondary subtitle that shows the speaker's original language alongside the translation for cross-reference.

On our newest engine, yes. Studio Voice — currently in beta with select churches — follows a per-church Keywords list: boost the names, places, and terms the translator should get right (your pastor's name, ministry names, uncommon Scripture references), block words you never want to appear, and pin the exact wording your church uses for a term in a given language (in Russian, "service" as служение rather than служба). The Natural Voice and Live Interpreter engines translate speech directly and can't apply written guidance, though in practice they already handle names, places, and Scripture references well. Want in on the Studio Voice beta, or a term keeps coming out wrong? Email help@churchtranslator.ai.

Translation follows the speaker with a delay. It varies by engine, language, speech pace, pauses, and the listener's connection and device. Natural Voice (V2) is the default; Live Interpreter (V1) mirrors the speaker's voice. Studio Voice and the Steady voice option use a fixed voice and can add delay while processing phrases. We do not guarantee a fixed number of seconds or instant speech at startup. Test your chosen engine and languages with your church's audio and phones before a service.

The listener stays close to live rather than building an ever-growing backlog. On a slow phone connection, older audio chunks may be skipped while final captions and current audio are prioritized. If the capture device disconnects, the listener page switches to a waiting state; delivery resumes after the capture app reconnects. A separate "temporarily unavailable" notice appears when the selected language's translation engine is unavailable.

Both words describe what listeners experience: the speaker preaches, and a few seconds later each phone hears and reads the message in its own language — the job a simultaneous interpreter in a booth used to do. There is no human interpreter, no interpretation equipment to rent, and no FM receivers or headsets to hand out and collect: the AI engines translate the live audio, and listeners use the phones already in their pockets. Churches that have a volunteer interpreter keep them — many use us for the languages the volunteer doesn't speak.

Start from the dashboard and choose the Mac app, Windows app (beta), or browser capture. Sign in or open the secure browser-capture link, select the audio source from your booth, and print the QR code from the dashboard. Your listeners scan it, pick a language, and start listening. The exact setup time depends mostly on how your sound system exposes its audio output.

A Mac or Windows booth computer for the desktop capture app, or a computer with a supported browser for browser capture. You also need a clean sermon-audio source — commonly a USB audio interface or line output from the sound system — and a stable internet connection.

No. The listener experience is a web page — they scan the QR code, pick their language, tap play. Works on every iPhone and Android made in the last 5 years, plus iPads and laptops. No app store install, no permissions besides audio playback, no account creation.

Translation audio is processed in real time and not retained by default — once a segment is delivered to listeners it's discarded server-side. We keep aggregate usage metrics (service hours, listener counts) for billing. The Mac capture app can optionally save translated-audio recordings to a folder the operator chooses on that Mac. Those local files are controlled by the church and are not uploaded to a ChurchTranslator.AI recording archive.

No. The listener page asks nothing beyond which language to play.

Audio flows through our infrastructure on Fly.io (translation, capture endpoints) and our real-time translation engine (Translation V1, Translation V2, or the Translation V3 Studio Voice beta, your church's choice). All of them operate under terms that don't train on this audio. See our privacy policy for the full picture.

Yes, any time from the dashboard's Languages page. Starter includes 2 translated languages and Growth 4 — swap them freely, no charge. Pro includes 6, and each language beyond that is $9.99/mo; adding or removing one mid-cycle is prorated automatically by Stripe, and you see the credit/charge on your next invoice. VIP has no language cap at all. No support ticket needed.

None of these counts include captions in your speaker's own language — those are free on every plan and never take a slot.

Yes — one click from the Billing page. The dashboard shows the exact changes + projected new monthly cost before you confirm. Upgrades take effect immediately (your included hours bump right away, and Stripe prorates the difference on your next invoice). Downgrades take effect at the end of your current billing period, so you keep the hours and languages you already paid for until then.

Almost certainly not. We raised prices on 12 August 2026, and every church that was already with us keeps the price it signed up at for 12 months from that date — same plan, same included hours, same overage rate. You don't have to do anything. The prices on our pricing page are for churches joining now.

The only exception is a church that has agreed a plan change with us directly. If that's you, we will have talked it through with you first and your Billing page shows the new terms — we never move a church onto different pricing without telling it.

Your Billing page always shows what you actually pay. Staying on the same plan keeps its original price sheet during that 12-month period. A self-service plan switch is a new purchase and the confirmation screen shows the current price sheet before you approve it. When the 12 months are up we'll talk to you before changing an unchanged subscription — no silent re-rating.

Open the Stripe Customer Portal from the Billing page and click Cancel. Translation service stays live until the end of your current billing cycle; after that, listener URLs return a friendly "not active" page. No cancellation fee, no minimum term.

No. ChurchTranslator.AI is only at churchtranslator.ai (the dashboard lives on app.churchtranslator.ai and listener pages on your-church.churchtranslator.ai). Similarly named sites with other endings are unrelated companies; if you reached us through one of them, come back here and email help@churchtranslator.ai with any question.

Yes — Audio Dubbing turns a service recording into one translated audio track per language, timed to your video and spoken in your church's Studio Voice, ready for YouTube's multi-language audio feature. If the service streamed through ChurchTranslator, generate tracks straight from its transcript; otherwise upload the recording. It costs $0.10 per minute of generated audio on your next invoice, and runs on the Studio Voice engine (invite beta — email us to enable it). Details on the Audio Dubbing page.

The listener page changes from live to waiting when the server no longer sees a capture stream. Re-open or reconnect the Mac app, Windows app, or browser capture and translation delivery resumes; listeners do not need to reload their page.

One subscription = one tenant = one set of language slots + one capture stream. Multi-campus typically means multiple tenants. We're working on a multi-campus consolidated billing flow; today, email us if you have this case and we'll set it up by hand.

Yes — Custom Domain is built in. Set the hostname in the dashboard, add a CNAME at your DNS provider, click Verify. Free TLS via Cloudflare. Walkthrough takes about 5 minutes; DNS propagation 1–10 minutes.

Hours are wall-clock time from Start to Stop, so a forgotten stream would keep the clock running — which is exactly why several layers bound the worst case:

1. Mac app 4-hour prompt. After 4 hours of continuous streaming the capture app pops up "Still capturing?" with a Stop button. Services rarely last that long, so this catches the "forgot after the service" case before anything serious happens. This extra reminder is currently specific to the Mac app; the API limit below applies to every capture client.

2. API 5-hour hard stop. If the prompt is dismissed or missed, the API force-closes the stream at exactly 5 hours and tells the Mac app not to reconnect — so a single forgotten session can never run longer than 5 hours, no matter what.

3. 80% bundle warning. On every plan with an hour bundle we email you when you've used about 80% of your included hours, so unusual usage surfaces before it costs anything.

4. Flat service-hour overage. Even past your included service hours, the rate is a flat $4.50/hr — combined with the 5-hour stop, a non-VIP plan adds at most $22.50 in service-hour overage. VIP also has the separate audience-driven language-hour meter described below.

A forgotten stream is force-stopped at 5 hours. Even if all 5 hours landed beyond the included service bundle, service-time overage is 5 × $4.50 = $22.50. Starter, Growth, and Pro have no per-listener or per-language multiplier on that service time.

VIP also meters translated languages that still have an active audience. If nobody remains connected after the service, a forgotten stream adds no VIP language-hours. At the extreme concurrency limit, 25 languages with listeners for all 5 hours use 125 language-hours; if the included 150 were already used, that could add $375 at $3 per language-hour, plus the $22.50 service-hour overage. The dashboard shows both meters separately so this case is visible rather than hidden behind the smaller service-hour number.

A standard macOS alert: "Still capturing? This stream has been running for 4 hours. Most services don't last that long — if your service is over, click Stop to end the session. Otherwise we'll automatically stop at 5 hours to avoid running up charges." Two buttons: Stop streaming (ends the session cleanly) or Yes, keep going (resets the Mac reminder). The server still enforces the five-hour maximum for that ingest session. For an intentional longer event, start a new session after the five-hour stop.

Yes — on every plan with an hour bundle (Starter, Growth, Pro and VIP) you get an email when you've used about 80% of your included hours for the month. The dashboard's Billing page also shows your month-to-date service hours in real time so you can self-check at any moment. A daily usage-summary email ("your church streamed X hrs yesterday") is on the roadmap; email help@churchtranslator.ai if you want that turned on for your tenant in advance of the general release.