Linguee

Dictionary that shows how words are really used in translated sentences

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What is Linguee?

Linguee is a bilingual dictionary built from a large corpus of translated text, so instead of a single gloss it shows how a word or phrase has actually been rendered by professional translators. You search a term and get candidate translations ranked by frequency, each with example sentence pairs to compare side by side. That makes it the tool for choosing between near-synonyms, checking a collocation or seeing which preposition a phrase takes. It comes from the company behind DeepL and includes a machine translation box powered by it, but the corpus examples are why people keep it open in a tab. It is free and ad supported.

Last updated: 2026-09-20. This site only provides an index; for exact features, pricing, and licensing, see the official website.

Key features

  • Bilingual dictionary drawn from a large corpus of translated text
  • Example sentence pairs showing each term in real context
  • Frequency-based ranking of the candidate translations found
  • Phrase and collocation lookup rather than single words only
  • Integrated machine translation powered by DeepL
  • Additional language material such as synonyms and inflection tables

Pros & cons

Strengths

  • Shows real usage instead of asserting one correct translation
  • Excellent for choosing between similar words and checking collocations
  • Free to use, with no account or quota to manage

Watch out for

  • Corpus coverage is uneven across language pairs
  • Some example sentences are dated or come from legal boilerplate
  • It is not a tool for translating whole documents

Best for & use cases

translators, language learners, terminology checking and collocation research

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FAQ

Is Linguee a machine translation tool?

Not primarily. Its core is a searchable corpus of translated sentences, which is why it is good at showing how a term is used. A machine translation box powered by DeepL is present, but it is a secondary feature.

How reliable are the example sentences?

They are real translations from published sources, so they reflect genuine professional usage. Quality still varies between sources, which is why the site lists several examples and lets you judge rather than giving one answer.

Which language pairs does it cover best?

European pairs, especially German, Spanish, French and English, are strongest because the underlying corpus is deepest there. Less common pairs have noticeably thinner coverage and fewer examples.