Pigona vs HephBot

HephBot Translate has the most generous free tier of any bot in this comparison series - genuinely unlimited core machine translation, no caps at all - and is upfront that AI-quality translation, including a bring-your-own-key option, sits above that as a separate, disclosed tier.

1. An unusually generous free tier - for machine translation

HephBot's own site states its core features are "truly unlimited" free: no character limits, no translation caps, unlimited channel mirroring, across 35+ languages. The tradeoff: that free tier is the HephBot Standard translator, which the free-tier list on their docs premium page calls a "self-hosted translation engine" and their plans page describes as "word-for-word," and HephBot is direct that Lite and Premium add a Premium translator that is "better with slang, typos, and context." Pigona's free tier is smaller in raw volume, but it runs the same context-aware Smart Context Engine every tier does.

2. Bring your own key

One of HephBot's most distinctive options is BYOK: on Lite ($5 per server per month) or Premium ($15) a server can supply its own OpenAI or Groq key and get unlimited Premium translator use on that key, paying the model provider directly for that usage (Lite's hosted Premium translator is capped at 1,000,000 characters a month, after which HephBot Standard keeps going). It is a real option worth knowing about if your server already has its own OpenAI billing. Pigona does not offer a BYOK option - every tier's AI usage is included in the plan price, with no separate API key to manage.

Attachment translation - Pigona: Images, PDFs, voice messages and text files on request (right-click Translate Attachment) - every plan, billed in Credits. HephBot: Not stated on their public docs.

Sourced from hbtranslate.com as of October 2026 - plans and prices are as listed on hbtranslate.com/premium, while docs.hbtranslate.com/premium still shows an older price list. The attachment-translation row was last checked in October 2026. Not stated means we found no mention on their public docs or site, not that the feature is absent. Bot pricing and feature sets change - check both sites directly before budgeting against these numbers. From Pigona - the context-aware AI translation bot for Discord.