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A buyer in Belgium, Luxembourg or Estonia is about twice as likely to find a local company’s website in a second language as a buyer looking at a French company. This is not an impression: it is what European public statistics measure. The gap long had an excuse, the cost of translation. That excuse has lost much of its force, and what is left to pay is no longer where people expect it.
In short
In 2025, 20.2% of French businesses with 10 or more people had a website in at least two languages, against 29.5% across the EU and 49.2% in Belgium (Eurostat).
The gap widens with size: 25.4% of European businesses with 10 to 49 people, 64.6% of those with 250 or more.
The cost that fell the most is translation itself; what remains is site structure, review of the texts that commit you, and upkeep.
A second language is decided market by market, not on principle: you translate for customers you know how to serve.
What Eurostat measures
Every year, Eurostat surveys European businesses with 10 or more people, excluding agriculture and finance, on their digital practices. Its isoc_ciweb database describes what their websites offer: online ordering, chat, personalised content, and number of languages. The figures below come from the 2025 survey and count the share of businesses that report a website in at least two languages.
Share of businesses with 10 or more people that have a website in at least two languages, 2025
France is the only one of these countries below the EU average, and clearly so. Belgium and Luxembourg have several official languages: a business there speaks two languages to its own customers before it even looks abroad. Estonia has a small home market, and its businesses sell across borders early. France combines the opposite: a single official language and a large home market, where a company can thrive for years without translating a line.
The gap is not about having no website. Still according to Eurostat, 73.8% of French businesses with 10 or more people had a website in 2025, and 90.5% of those with 50 to 249 people. The site exists; it just speaks one language.
Size widens the gap
Across the EU, the multilingual website is a matter of size. These figures count the share of European businesses in each size band that have a website in at least two languages.
of businesses with 10 to 49 people have a website in at least two languages
of businesses with 250 or more people have one
In between sit teams of 20 to 500 people, the ones that already export a little, answer cross-border tenders or hire people who do not read the local language. For them, a single-language website is rarely a deliberate choice: it is often a legacy of the days when translation was expensive and hard to manage.
What changed: translation is no longer the big cost
For a long time, adding a language meant sending every page to a translator, receiving a file, pasting it back, and starting over at every update. Machine translation changed the equation. Our article on machine or reviewed translation explains when a machine first draft is enough and when human review is needed.
Analysts see the shift too. Forrester, which sells research and advisory services, ranks localisation in its AI disruption model among the knowledge-work markets most exposed to AI, alongside software development and creative services. It is an analyst model with no market figure, but it states what everyone observes: the cost per translated word no longer decides on its own.
Translators do not disappear for all that: their work moves to what machines do poorly, the terminology of a sector, the tone of a brand, the sentences that carry legal weight. A good reviewer is worth more than before, because they review more pages.
What a second language really costs
If translation got cheaper, the budget for a second language is split differently. It comes down to four items, detailed with orders of magnitude in our article on website translation cost.
- Structure.
One URL per language, tags that tell Google which page matches which, a language switcher that does not lose the visitor. It is paid once, at design time.
- Translation.
A first draft by an AI model or a translation engine, with a memory that avoids paying twice for the same text.
- Review.
Human, focused on what commits you: prices, guarantees, legal notices, sales pages.
- Upkeep.
Every new page and every edit exists twice. This is the item people forget, and the one that makes a poorly kept language age.
Structure is the least visible item and the most expensive to fix later. A site designed in one language, then translated by a plugin added afterwards, often ends up with mixed URLs and translated pages that Google does not connect. Our article on one language, one URL explains how to avoid this from the start.
From the field
On Palmora Property, a property listings portal published in six languages that we operate, moving from a translation engine to an AI model divided the cost of the translation pipeline by 60, and 95% of segments come out of a cache after the first run, without calling the model again (internal measurement from August 2026, on that pipeline). These figures hold for that site: they show how large an arbitrage can be, not what you will save.
The cache matters as much as the model. Text already translated does not go back to translation: only new or edited segments cost anything. On a site that changes through small edits, this mechanism is what makes upkeep a minor item. It has a name, translation memory, and it is where our translation section starts.
Where to start
Translating the whole site at once is rarely the right idea. The right order starts from customers, not pages.
Adding a language without letting it age
- The market
A country or language where you know how to deliver, invoice and answer.
- The pages that sell
Home, offers, contact, and what reassures (references, guarantees).
- Review
A native speaker reviews what commits you before going live.
- The rest
Articles and secondary pages, at the pace they are read.
Choosing the market is the most decisive step, and it comes before any translation: our article on international SEO shows how to check that demand exists in the target language, and the one on which European market to open first helps decide between several countries.
Key takeaway
One more language is a promise
A visitor who reads your site in their language expects to be served in it: quotes, support, invoices. Translating the site before you can answer creates disappointment rather than a customer.
What the gap does not say
Eurostat counts websites, not sales. A Belgian business that is bilingual because its country is does not necessarily sell abroad, and a monolingual French business may export through distributors who translate for it. The gap describes a habit more than a measured loss of revenue.
It still points to a paradox. The historical brake, the price of translation, is the one that fell the most, while the share of bilingual French websites stays low. For a team of 20 to 500 people that already sells outside its home market, or plans to, the question is no longer “can we afford it?” but “which customers do we want to serve in their language?”. If you are rebuilding your website, our business website offer raises the language question at scoping, when structure costs the least; for an existing site, tell us about it and we will look at what a second language would take.
Frequently asked questions
How many French businesses have a bilingual website?
According to Eurostat’s 2025 survey, 20.2% of French businesses with 10 or more people, excluding agriculture and finance, have a website in at least two languages. The EU average is 29.5%, and Belgium reaches 49.2%. France is clearly below average, even though most of its businesses already have a website.
Is machine translation enough for a business website?
For a first draft, often. For what commits you (prices, terms, legal notices, sales pages), review by a native speaker is still needed. The right level depends on the page, not the whole site: a help page can live with a first draft, a pricing page cannot.
Should you translate the whole site at once?
No. Start with the pages that sell and reassure, in the language of a market you know how to serve. Articles and secondary pages follow at the pace they are read, which spreads the effort and quickly shows whether the language attracts visitors.
What costs the most in a bilingual website?
Structure, if it was not planned from the start, then upkeep: every edit exists in two languages. A translation memory reduces the second item by only retranslating what changed, and by keeping the same terms from one page to the next.
Sources
- Eurostat, isoc_ciweb database (business websites), extracted on 14/10/2026 (new tab)ec.europa.eu
- Forrester, AI Disruption Model, press release of 19/08/2026 (new tab)forrester.com
Eurostat, isoc_ciweb database (business websites), extracted on 14/10/2026
Read on ec.europa.eu(new tab)Jim · founder of Brain Plus AI
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