What does church translation cost, bought piece by piece?
Bought separately, the pieces of one translated Sunday come to €700–3,300 a month at market rates: interpreter hours, captions, transcription, a writer for the newsletter, receivers for the room. Sanctavo's Starter plan is €97 a month and includes every one of them. The table below shows each row.
One Sunday, priced piece by piece
The table takes a church with one weekly service of about an hour in two languages — the shape most churches start with — and prices each thing it needs the way it is usually bought: an interpreter by the hour, a captioning subscription, a transcription service, a copywriter, receivers for the room. The ranges are the market as we read it in September 2026 for churches in the German-speaking countries and the United States. They are ranges, not quotes; check any vendor's current page before you rely on it.
| What the church needs | Bought separately | In Sanctavo Starter, €97 a month |
|---|---|---|
| A translated voice for the sermon, two languages, one service a week | A human interpreter: around €75–95 an hour per language, so roughly €650–830 a month for two. AI vendors: mostly €50–300 a month, some billed per hour and language. | Included: 10 Live Language Hours, a natural voice that keeps the preacher's tone |
| Live captions beside the voice, right-to-left scripts included | Captioning subscriptions: about €20–100 a month. | Included |
| A clean transcript of every service, in the preacher's language and every translated one | Human transcription €1–2 per audio minute, so €60–120 per sermon hour; automated services €10–30 a month, one language. | Included, every language |
| A summary and study notes after each service | A volunteer's evening, or a writer at €40–80 an hour. | Included |
| Drafts for the blog, the newsletter and social media, per language | A copywriter: €50–150 a piece; three pieces a week is €600–1,800 a month. | Included |
| Questions answered from the sermon itself, for anyone who missed a line | No product sells this. A pastor's Monday. | Included |
| A glossary that learns how your church says its names and phrases, approved by a person | A briefing sheet for every new interpreter, every time. | Included |
| Knowing who you reached without knowing who they are, and visitors who choose to be known | Church engagement tools: about €30–100 a month. | Included |
| Receivers and headsets for the room | €30–60 per receiver; thirty listeners is €900–1,800, once, plus charging, collecting and replacing them. | Nothing to buy: the listener's own phone, no app |
| A teaching series turned into a book or study guide | An editor or ghostwriter: €1,500–5,000 per manuscript. | One Sanctavo Press draft a month included |
| EU hosting, GDPR processing terms, a public list of sub-processors | Usually not priced, and often not offered. | Included, Frankfurt |
Bought separately
€700 – 3,300 a month
€700–2,300 with software, a transcription service and a writer; €1,500–3,300 with a human interpreter. The book and the receivers are extra, once.
Sanctavo Starter
€97 a month
Every row above. Listeners never metered, no per-language fee inside the plan, cancel monthly, set up free on a real service first.
Why the gap is honest
Two of the rows deserve a caveat, and the table would be an advertisement without it. A human interpreter is still better than any machine at irony, reverence and the verse that is only half quoted; what the plan replaces is not that person but the rota that needs them every Sunday, for every language, forever. And the drafts a writer produces are finished; Sanctavo's are drafts, written from the sermon, for your team to read before anything goes out.
What the gap does show is where the money in church translation actually goes. It is not the minute of speech; it is everything a church does with that minute afterwards, once per language, by hand. The plan is priced against that work, which is why it looks the way it does next to a per-hour rate.
When a bigger plan is the cheaper one
Starter carries 10 Live Language Hours and two languages. A ninety-minute service in two languages already spends thirteen a month, and a third language needs Growth or a language block. The calculator on the pricing page takes your real Sunday, with the second service and the conference weekend, and says which plan includes it and what a top-up would cost. A capacity block of 5 more Live Language Hours, with another language allowed alongside it, is €20 a month, so a church rarely has to move up a whole plan for one busy month.
The free demo is the row that is missing from every table: an hour on one of your real services, in your languages, with us listening. After it you know whether the sum above is even a question.