Does FaceTime or Google Meet already translate your calls?
Both do, and both are narrower than they sound. One shows you subtitles; the other speaks, but only between English and five languages. Here is what each actually does today, what is about to change, and the difference that is not about to change.
Written by the team behind VivaLingua, which is one of the options here. Every claim about Apple's and Google's products comes from their own documentation and announcements, dated at the bottom.
The short answer
FaceTime translates captions. You read the translation rather than hear it. One-to-one calls only, on devices that run Apple Intelligence, across roughly ten languages.
Google Meet does both, at different breadths. Its translated captions cover around 70 spoken languages. Its spoken translation, which keeps the speaker's intonation, covers only English paired with Spanish, French, German, Portuguese or Italian. Both sit behind paid Google plans.
VivaLingua speaks and captions across 41 languages that translate directly to one another, on iPhone and Android, with prepaid minutes instead of a subscription and nothing to pay for the person you called. It also works when you are in the same room. With the optional AI Voice, it can speak your translated words in a voice that sounds like you, in most of those languages, at no extra cost.
What FaceTime does
Translated subtitles on a one-to-one call
Apple delivers Live Translation in FaceTime through the Live Captions accessibility feature: translated text appears on screen as the other person talks. It is a one-to-one feature, it requires Apple Intelligence, and the languages have to be downloaded before the call.
Free, already on the phone, and nothing for either person to install.
Fine when you mostly need the gist and you are both comfortable reading.
You read instead of listening, which is the thing that makes a conversation feel like a transaction.
Both people need recent Apple hardware. There is no Android side to it.
The language list is short: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. No Arabic, Hindi, Thai, Vietnamese, Urdu or Tagalog.
What Google Meet does
Captions broadly, speech narrowly, both on paid plans
Meet has two features that both get called translation. Translated captions have been there for years and cover around 70 spoken languages, on Business Standard plans and above. Speech translation is the newer one: generally available to business customers in January 2026, on Android and iOS that April, speaking the translation aloud and preserving the speaker's tone. It covers English paired with Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and Italian, and needs a Google AI Pro or Ultra plan.
Genuinely spoken translation, not captions — the harder thing to build, and Google has built it.
The right answer for a work meeting that is already happening in Meet.
If captions are enough, the language coverage is genuinely broad — far broader than ours.
Spoken translation is five pairs, all English-paired. A Spanish and a Portuguese speaker route through English; an Arabic speaker can be captioned but not heard.
The host needs a paid plan, and it is a meetings product — you are inviting your partner to a meeting.
What is changing, and what is not
The feature gaps are closing from both directions. Apple will almost certainly speak translations eventually; Google is already heading from five languages to seventy. Any comparison built on "they only do captions" or "we support more languages" has a short shelf life, and this page is not going to make that argument.
Two things are not on that trajectory, because they are decisions about what the product is rather than features waiting to ship.
The questions that actually decide it
1. Who has to pay, and what does the other person need?
FaceTime is free but assumes you both bought an iPhone. Meet needs a paid Google plan for the host, and the other person needs a Google account to join. VivaLingua charges the host prepaid minutes — 30 for $2.99, 60 for $4.99, 120 for $5.99 until October 31, and they never expire — while the guest pays nothing, subscribes to nothing, and can later host on their own account. If you are calling a parent overseas, "they need to open a link", "they need to install an app" and "they need to buy a plan" are three very different asks, and only the first one usually gets a yes.
2. Is this a meeting, a call, or two people in the same room?
Meet is built for meetings and FaceTime for Apple-to-Apple social calls. Neither helps when the language barrier follows you off the call — at the airport, at the dinner table, meeting the family. VivaLingua handles the call and the visit in the same app, including in-person groups. That is not a feature gap anyone is racing to close; it is a different product.
3. Does your language pair work directly?
Worth asking of any tool, and worth asking again in six months. Routing through English compounds errors, and it can only reach languages already on the tool's list — Meet's five, not Arabic or Thai. VivaLingua's 41 call languages translate to each other directly, which is why an Arabic speaker and a Thai speaker can use it today. Google's 70-language model will change this picture when it ships broadly — ask again then.
Where VivaLingua fits
It is a dedicated app on iOS and Android that hosts the call itself and translates speech both ways, with captions on screen. You install it to host; your guest can join from a link in any browser instead. Only the host spends minutes.
It is a good fit if you want to be heard rather than read, you call irregularly enough that a subscription is poor value, only one of you should be paying, your language pair is not one of the handful the big platforms cover, or you will also be together in person.
It is the wrong choice if you need translation inside a meeting that is already running on Meet, Zoom or Teams — VivaLingua hosts its own call and is not a plugin. It is also the wrong choice if you need it to work without a connection.
Side by side
| FaceTime | Google Meet | VivaLingua | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | Translated captions | Spoken (5 pairs) or captions (~70 languages) | Spoken translation with captions |
| Languages | About ten | ~70 captioned; 5 spoken pairs; 70+ spoken in enterprise preview | 41, any to any, over 800 pairs |
| Through English? | No, but the list is short | Yes for speech, today | No — direct between any two |
| Who pays | Nobody; you bought the phone | Paid Workspace plan; AI Pro or Ultra for speech | Host only, prepaid minutes, no subscription |
| The other person needs | A recent Apple device | A Google account | Nothing — a link opens in their browser; pays nothing |
| Works in person | No | No | Yes — face to face and in groups |
| Platforms | Apple devices with Apple Intelligence | Web, Android, iOS | iOS and Android |
Related reading
English and Arabic, spoken both ways — the pair where FaceTime offers nothing and Meet can only caption.
Video call translation: how the options compare — the wider view, including link-based tools, translator earbuds and typing.
The FAQ covers how VivaLingua's translation works and what happens to your audio. The languages page lists all 41 with native names.
Try it on your next call
Pay as you go. Guests always join free.