I have a question regarding the DeepL API billing model and how to handle the costs effectively.
I recently tested the DeepL API in a Power Automate flow. The flow itself works perfectly:
New file in SharePoint → Get file content → DeepL upload + translate → Download result → Save translated file back to SharePoint → Send email with file link
Everything functions as expected.
The main problem: Unexpectedly high character usage
Even though the Word documents I tested contained only 150–200 visible characters, DeepL counts the internal XML structure of the .docx file. Because a Word file includes many hidden XML elements (styles, metadata, formatting, document structure, headers, etc.), the total character count quickly increases to 20,000–50,000 characters per file.
As a result:
My monthly limit of 350,000 characters was already consumed after only seven test translations.
This caused unexpected additional charges of around €12, even though the files were extremely small in terms of visible text.
My question for the community: How can this be solved?
I do not want to be in a situation where I pay for the €4.99 API plan but when someone in our company uploads a large document. for example, a 70-slide PPTX or a long Word file. we end up paying more than a normal DeepL Business subscription for individual users.
Is there any recommended solution for this such as :
A way to reduce character count before uploading?
A different pricing model for companies?
A bulk translation plan?
Any best practices to avoid translating unnecessary XML markup?
Or is the API simply not suitable for document translation at scale?
I would appreciate any tips, advice or alternative approaches ?
Regards,
Mohan