Where these numbers come from
Google Play publishes an install bracket for every app — '100,000,000+' means at least a hundred million installs on Android. It is the only hard, public download number in this industry. Apple publishes nothing, so for iPhone we use the closest public proxy: the number of ratings each app has collected on the US App Store. The two metrics are not comparable with each other, but each is comparable within its own platform — the chart below keeps them in separate colors for exactly that reason. Every figure was read directly from the stores in July 2026.
Caveats worth stating plainly: installs are not active users; a rating count is not a download count; and preinstalled apps break both measures — which matters twice in this category, as you'll see.
The download tiers, from a billion on down
Google Translate sits at 1,000,000,000+ installs — not just the biggest translation app but one of the most installed apps of any kind on Earth, with 9 million Play ratings behind it.
The second-biggest translation app is one most Western readers have never heard of: Hi Translate, at 500 million installs. Its scale comes partly from shipping preinstalled on Tecno, Infinix and itel phones across Africa and South Asia — and it has no real iPhone version at all.
The 100-million tier holds Microsoft Translator and U-Dictionary — the second another app that is enormous in India and Southeast Asia and nearly invisible in the West. iTranslate holds the 50-million tier alone.
The 10-million tier is where the quality names cluster: DeepL, widely considered the accuracy leader for European languages; Papago, the specialist for Korean; Reverso, the context-and-examples champion; and Yandex Translate, the only app here that translates entire websites in place. Instant Translate On Screen, the screen-overlay tool, rounds out the chart at 5 million.
The iPhone side of the ledger
The blue bars rearrange the leaderboard completely. iTranslate is the shock: 527,000 US App Store ratings — six times Google Translate's 83,000. It built its business on the iPhone years before most rivals took iOS seriously, and it shows: the same brand collects a 4.7-star average on iOS and a 3.4 on Android, where its app is visibly neglected.
Microsoft Translator is strong on both platforms (158K iOS ratings). DeepL's 13K looks modest next to its reputation — its audience lives on the desktop and in browsers, not primarily in the phone app. Papago's tiny US number (3.4K) is an artifact of geography: its users rate it on the Korean App Store, not the American one.
And then there is Apple Translate, which breaks the chart's logic twice. It has no install count because it ships preinstalled on every iPhone — hundreds of millions of quiet installations Apple never has to report. And its 9,752 ratings average just 2.3 stars, the lowest of any major translation app — our hands-on review covers why the small language list and minimal results frustrate people, and why the privacy of on-device translation is still worth knowing about.
What the numbers don't tell you
Preinstallation is the invisible force in this category. Hi Translate's half-billion comes partly from phones it arrived on; Apple Translate is on every iPhone whether anyone asked or not. An install that nobody chose tells you about distribution deals, not user love.
Quality and scale are almost unrelated here. DeepL — the app translation professionals recommend most — has one percent of Google Translate's installs. Reverso's example-sentence engine, the best study tool in the category, sits in the same 10M tier as apps a fraction as capable. If you ranked this chart by translation quality per our hands-on testing, it would look very different — which is, of course, why this site exists.
And ratings measure satisfaction, not correctness. U-Dictionary's 1.3 million Android ratings average 4.4 stars from users who tolerate its heavy ads for its excellent Hindi content; Apple Translate's 2.3 comes from iPhone owners expecting Google-level coverage from a deliberately minimal tool. Neither number tells you which app will translate your sentence correctly.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most downloaded translation app?
Google Translate, with over 1 billion installs on Google Play alone — one of the most installed apps of any kind, in any category.
What is the second most downloaded translation app?
Hi Translate, with over 500 million Android installs — largely unknown in the West because its audience is in Africa and South Asia, where it often comes preinstalled on Tecno and Infinix phones. It has no real iPhone version.
Why doesn't Apple Translate appear in download charts?
It ships preinstalled on every iPhone, so there is no download count to report. Its App Store page shows about 9,800 US ratings averaging 2.3 stars — the lowest of any major translation app.
Does more downloads mean better translations?
No. DeepL, widely regarded as the quality leader for European languages, has about one percent of Google Translate's installs. Downloads measure reach and defaults, not accuracy.
Apps with this feature
