AKOOL AI: Video Translation Review – Is It Any Good?
Video content rules the digital world, and AI tools are storming the scene, promising to revolutionize how we dub and translate. Enter the AKOOL video translator—a very hyped new tool that caught our eye at Voquent.
In this blog, our engineer Graham Blair puts it to the test, stacking it up against our human-led, professional dubbing and translation process.
Wondering if this AI can keep pace with the pros or save you time and cash? Let’s find out.
What Is AKOOL AI?
For the uninitiated, AKOOL AI is a cutting-edge tool that takes the grunt work out of video dubbing and translation. Dubbed the AKOOL video translator, it uses artificial intelligence to swap audio into different languages and sync it seamlessly with your footage—no tedious editing required. Targeting creators, filmmakers, and businesses, it runs on a credit-based subscription model that scales with your needs. But does it deliver? Let’s dig into Graham’s findings.
AKOOL AI Pricing: Credits and Tiers
The AKOOL video translator runs on a subscription model with three plans—Pro, Pro Max, and Studio—each tied to a credit system that dictates how much content you can dub. Here’s how it breaks down:
- Pro Plan: Limited to 30 minutes of content per project.
- $30/month for 600 credits
- $58/month for 1,200 credits
- $109/month for 2,400 credits
- Pro Max Plan: Also caps at 30 minutes per video.
- $119/month for 2,400 credits
- $229/month for 4,800 credits
- $449/month for 9,600 credits
- Studio Plan: Handles up to 60 minutes per project.
- $500/month for 12,000 credits
- $1,000/month for 25,000 credits
- $3,000/month for 80,000 credits
Prices correct as of March 2025.
Credits are universal across plans, but there’s a quirk: you can’t download translated scripts separately—they’re embedded in the final video. For teams needing standalone translations, this might be an issue. It is also incredibly difficult to work out how much it will cost to translate your film. Here’s an example.
Cost Breakdown: Translating a 90-Minute Film
To test the AKOOL video translator, Graham fed it a 90-minute film (1 hour and 30 minutes exactly). Annoyingly it breaks the film into 3 x 30 minute sections which meant he had to recombine the files after the auto dubbing was finished. It took 1,080 credits, costing $58 under the Pro plan’s $58/1,200-credit tier.
Insanely cheap, but bear in mind this is an annual subscription and this didn’t include any quality checks. If you’ve used AI transcription, and translation tools before you’ll know they rarely offer above 85% accuracy. The AKOOL video translator offers an automated “proofread” feature, but it’s not human-reviewed, so extra polishing might be needed.
How Does AKOOL’s Translation and Auto-Dubbing Stack Up?
Graham didn’t delve into the specifics of translation quality, but our Voquent translators did—and the results were mixed.
AKOOL’s AI, built on advanced neural networks and large language models, is trained on vast datasets, aiming to handle grammar and idioms with finesse. In practice, though, our team found many translations nonsensical, often missing the mark on character context or scene intent—think awkward phrasing that clashes with the story.
The auto-dubbing, powered by lip-sync tech, tries to align audio with mouth movements for a natural look, and it can impress with simple content. But many users note, and we agree, that complex dialogue or rapid speech throws it off, with syncing glitches and stilted delivery.
The other limitation is the number of speaker variations – there is a hard limit at 10 voices. Not great if your film or series has dozens of characters.
It’s a promising tool, and in a few years maybe it will be great, but right now it’s no match for human translators and dubbing artists.
Fine-Tuning for Quality
If you already have a professional translation (and we’d recommend this for quality) you’ll need to pay for the Pro Max Plan to add your SRT to AKOOL increasing your subscription cost to a minimum of $119 per month.
However, if you care about the quality of your video and don’t want it encoded at a low quality you’ll also need to upgrade to the Studio Plan – starting from $500 / month. Ouch.
On the “Create Translation” page, AKOOL provides options to tweak the output. Our engineer found these adjustments crucial for decent results—think of it as calibrating the AI to your specific needs. It’s not a set-it-and-forget-it tool, but it gets the job done with some effort.
The Bottom Line
So, is the AKOOL video translator any good? For quick dubbing jobs on low-quality videos, e.g. social media posts, perhaps. If you and your audience can stomach the translation errors and glitching. The credit system is fair, but the lack of downloadable scripts and reliance on automated proofreading mean it’s not a full replacement for human dubbing services like ours.
We think it will be great for prototyping or smaller projects, but we’d recommend using the Pro plan at minimum so you can handle the translations yourself, but remember the output won’t be perfect.
Curious about human dubbing? Book a free consultation with Voquent to learn more.
Learn about Voquent’s Dubbing Translation Services
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