A free Shopify translation app that uses your own AI

You already pay OpenAI or ChatGPT. Your Shopify catalog is still one language. Adding a market publishes a locale; it does not invent German titles, French SEO, or theme strings. A free Shopify translation app with your own AI is the gap between those two facts: keep the model you already bill, skip a second “AI inside the app” meter until you actually want one.

OO - Ultimate AI Translations prices that split on the listing. Free is $0. You connect an OpenAI-compatible API. Languages, markets, and translations are unlimited. A storefront language switcher is included. Built-in App AI, scheduled jobs, and backups are not. Those sit on Professional and Plus.

This piece is about that Free path — what Shopify will not do for you, why a chat tab does not scale, and how to run a first job without pretending the unpaid plan has a cron or a restore point.

Publishing a language is not the same as filling it

Shopify’s localization docs are explicit. Each published language gets its own URLs. Missing copy falls back to the default language. Checkout and notifications follow the customer’s locale once the language is live.

Translate & Adapt, a translation CSV, or Shopify’s own AI can write into those fields. Merchants still bounce off three edges:

• The AI invoice already exists at the provider. Another usage line in an app feels like paying twice for the same tokens.

• Product titles move. Theme content, metaobjects, and draft themes often do not.

• A later bulk run can stomp a sentence you edited by hand.

The listing pitch is “open more markets without translating the store by hand.” On Free that hand-off is: your key, your model, jobs you start yourself — not a daily schedule.

Why the usual shortcuts stall

Paste into ChatGPT, paste back into Admin. Fine for a capsule collection. Ugly at 600 SKUs plus pages plus announcements. Brand names drift. Size codes become words. Nobody has a log of what was skipped.

CSV export, agency, CSV import. Shopify documents CSV translations. Useful when a human linguist owns the file. Wasteful when you already have an API key and just need a side-by-side editor plus a run button.

Native AI only. You get machine copy. You do not get Settings → AI connection with a base URL you choose, and you do not get a lock that survives the next automatic pass.

None of that is a reason to avoid Shopify’s tools. It is a reason a free Shopify translation app that accepts your own AI exists.

What “free” covers — and the three things it refuses

From the live listing (USD, usage billed through Shopify):

| Plan | You pay the app | AI | Schedule | Backups | |------|-----------------|----|----------|---------| | Free | $0 | Your own API only | No | No | | Professional | $10/mo + usage | App AI at translation cost or your own | Monthly | 1 manual + 1 automatic | | Plus | $20/mo + usage | Same App AI rule | Daily | 5 + 5 |

App AI, when you want it, is listed at $0.01 per unit — billed at the translation cost, not a marked-up token bundle. Free does not include that meter at all.

Connect AI is three fields: OpenAI-compatible base URL, API key, model. Save. Translate a handful of fields. If a job returns an AI error, the docs point at the key, the model name, and leftover credit at the provider.

The store lists A.I., ChatGPT, CSV, Excel, and LLMs under Works with. Same idea: bring a compatible endpoint.

Glossary and brand voice travel with those AI requests. The pricing table puts Glossary on Professional. Do not treat it as a Free checkbox. Brand voice lives under Settings in the docs; still review paid-plan limits before you promise it to a client on $0.

A first afternoon without a schedule

What is OO Translations? is the map: products, collections, pages, theme content, metaobjects. Side-by-side editor. Jobs aimed at missing or outdated fields. A save in the editor locks that field so later automatic or scheduled runs skip it.

On Free you start the job. Quick start:

1. Languages — enable what you sell in. Unpublished locales can still go into a job so copy is ready before you publish (manage languages).

2. Settings → AI connection — own API, not App AI.

3. Settings → Products to translate — active only until you know the cost on your provider bill. Drafts, archived, and unlisted are a toggle, not a default you should leave wide open.

4. Skip the backup step if you are on Free. The listing says no backups on that plan. Create a named restore point after you upgrade.

5. Home: one target language, one content type. Or open Translate and fix fields one by one.

6. Jobs: translated / skipped / failed.

Jobs leave handles, URLs, IDs, SKUs, barcodes, size codes (S/M/L), JSON, empty sources, and locked fields alone. That is the point. You do not want `/products/linen-curtain` rewritten as a localized slug Shopify will not route.

The language switcher is on Free. Placement, style, languages or markets. App embed or theme block. Preview only after the locale is published, and check the embed if the control is missing on the live theme.

Home shows completeness per locale. Primary language is the source.

Example: a US cookware shop adding Spanish

English is the source. A United States market is live. Mexico is configured in Shopify with almost no translated fields.

On Free, that afternoon looks like this:

• Publish Spanish when you are ready; until then, keep it enabled but unpublished and still send it through a job.

• Paste the OpenAI-compatible URL, key, and model. Run ten product titles as a smoke test.

• Restrict the product scope to active. Leave archived holiday SKUs out.

• Start a products job for Spanish. There is no daily/weekly/monthly cron on this plan — do not look for one.

• In the editor, lock the brand name and the alloy name after you correct them.

• Put the switcher on the live theme for EN + ES once Spanish is published.

When the catalog outgrows “start it from Home,” Professional adds a monthly schedule, glossary, and a 1+1 backup pair. Plus moves the schedule to daily and the backup slots to 5+5. App AI stays optional and listed at $0.01 per unit. Until then the app charge is zero and the only meter is the one you already have at the provider.

Close

Markets without copy are just URLs in the wrong language. Shopify will host the locale. You still have to fill the fields. If the model is already on your card, start with a free Shopify translation app with your own AI: connect the key, translate a thin slice, lock the lines you rewrote, ship the switcher.

That is the Free column on OO - Ultimate AI Translations. No App AI, no schedule, no backups on $0 — the listing says so. Professional and Plus are there when you want restore points and a clock, with pass-through App AI or the same key you connected on day one.

Install it, save the API connection, and run one language. Leave the archive for later.