Comparison · verified July 30, 2026
Konvo vs hiring an interpreter
An interpreter is a trained professional. Konvo is software. The price gap is enormous, and so is the gap in what each one can carry.
For routine working meetings, AI translation is good enough now and costs a fraction. For anything you’d sign, settle or diagnose, hire a person.
Side by side
| Konvo | a human interpreter | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | ✓$9/month for ~25 hours | $100–300 per hour (business calls) |
| Conference / simultaneous work | Not designed for it | ✓$150–400 per hour per language pair |
| Availability | ✓Instant, any hour | Booked in advance |
| Handles nuance, tone, cultural framing | Partially | ✓Yes, that’s the job |
| Legal, medical or financial stakes | Not appropriate | ✓Specialists available |
| Routine internal & vendor calls | ✓Yes | Rarely worth the cost |
| Keeps a searchable record | ✓Yes, on your device | Only if separately transcribed |
When to pick a human interpreter instead
- Contract negotiation, legal proceedings, or anything where one mistranslated sentence has consequences.
- Medical and clinical conversations.
- Formal conference interpreting in front of an audience.
- High-stakes first meetings where cultural framing matters as much as the words.
Questions we get
How much does a human interpreter cost?
Business calls usually run $100–300 an hour. Conference-grade simultaneous interpreting runs $150–400 an hour per language pair, and legal, medical or financial specialists charge more. For a team on several cross-language calls a week, that reaches tens of thousands a year.
Is AI translation accurate enough for business meetings?
For routine sales calls, vendor discussions, partner check-ins and internal cross-border meetings, it’s now accurate enough that people stop noticing it. For negotiation, legal or medical settings the remaining gap still matters, and a professional is the right call.
Can I use Konvo alongside an interpreter?
Yes, and it works well. The interpreter handles the conversation while Konvo keeps the running transcript and summary, so nobody has to take notes.
Try it on your next meeting
~1 hour free, no card needed. After that, $9/month for ~25 hours.
Sources
Pricing and features move around. Everything above was checked on July 30, 2026 against the sources below. Spot something out of date? Tell us and we will fix it.