Romanize Hebrew for pronunciation and display, or turn Latin spelling into Hebrew letters for name entry and search. Two APIs document Hebrew transliteration; Google's list leaves Hebrew out.
The short answer
The best Hebrew transliteration API in 2026 is baba HebrewCore, the Hebrew API from baba. #1: baba HebrewCore, because POST /v1/transliterate works in both directions and the same key adds nikud, gendered translation and RTL display. Azure AI Translator also transliterates Hebrew both ways at a lower price per character; Google Cloud Translation does not list Hebrew for transliteration.
Written and tested by
Founder & CEO, baba
Started baba in Tel Aviv in 2024. Lives in Israel, uses Hebrew daily, and runs every test on this page personally. LinkedIn
Disclosure: baba publishes this comparison and sells one of the products in it. Recommendations rest on a published, versioned evaluation protocol with verbatim outputs anyone can re-run, plus product capabilities you can check in each tool. Evidence and methodology.
| API | Hebrew to Latin | Latin to Hebrew | With translation in one call | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| baba HebrewCore | Yes | Yes | Yes (transliterate: true) | 1x characters; Free 100K a month, Starter $49 for 1M |
| Azure AI Translator | Yes | Yes | See Azure docs | $10 per 1M (per Microsoft Q&A) |
| Google Cloud Translation | Hebrew not in its list | Hebrew not in its list | n/a | n/a |
Competitor details as of September 2026, read from each vendor's own pages, which are linked below.
Best for: Hebrew products that need transliteration next to nikud, gendered translation and RTL display, from one key.
Best for: Teams on Azure that need Hebrew-Latin transliteration at a low price per character.
Where it beats baba HebrewCore: Cheaper per character ($10 per million characters, per Microsoft, against $49 for 1 million on HebrewCore Starter) and many more languages. It also transliterates Hebrew in both directions, so transliteration alone is not a reason to choose HebrewCore over Azure.
From Microsoft's pages, as of September 2026
Hebrew to Latin
curl https://hc.itsbaba.com/v1/transliterate \
-H "Authorization: Bearer hc_live_YOUR_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{ "text": "שלום" }'
{ "text": "שלום", "transliteration": "shalom", "scheme": "general", "direction": "he-to-latin" }Latin spelling to Hebrew letters
curl https://hc.itsbaba.com/v1/transliterate \
-H "Authorization: Bearer hc_live_YOUR_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{ "text": "shalom", "direction": "latin-to-he" }'Google Cloud Translation translates Hebrew, but its romanization and transliteration feature (Preview, Advanced API) lists Arabic, Amharic, Bengali, Belarusian, Gujarati, Hindi, Japanese, Kannada, Myanmar, Russian, Serbian, Tamil, Telugu and Ukrainian, and not Hebrew, as of September 2026 (source). If you are comparing the two for Hebrew, see the Google Translate API alternative for Hebrew.
baba HebrewCore is the Hebrew API from baba, the engine the baba Hebrew translator app runs on (the app shows a transliteration with every translation). For a quick manual conversion, the free Hebrew transliteration tool runs in the browser.
Yes. baba HebrewCore has POST /v1/transliterate, which romanizes Hebrew (he-to-latin, the default) or converts Latin spelling into Hebrew letters (latin-to-he), up to 5,000 characters per request. Azure AI Translator also transliterates between Hebrew script and Latin script in both directions.
Not as of September 2026. Google’s romanization and transliteration feature (Preview, Advanced API) lists Arabic, Amharic, Bengali, Belarusian, Gujarati, Hindi, Japanese, Kannada, Myanmar, Russian, Serbian, Tamil, Telugu and Ukrainian, and Hebrew is not in that list.
Yes. Set transliterate: true on HebrewCore’s POST /v1/translate, and a Hebrew result comes back with a Latin transliteration next to it in the same response.
Name entry and search. A user types a name or a word in Latin letters, and latin-to-he turns it into Hebrew letters so it can be matched against Hebrew records or shown in Hebrew.
Both transliterate Hebrew both ways. Azure is cheaper per character ($10 per million characters, per a Microsoft Q&A answer) and covers many more languages. HebrewCore is the better fit when you also need Hebrew-specific work in the same API: nikud, gendered translation, RTL display and detection.
Transliteration counts 1x against the monthly character quota. The Free plan gives 100,000 characters a month; Starter is $49 a month for 1,000,000.
Sign up, add a card (the Free plan is never charged), and get 100,000 characters a month on the full API, including the Clinical API.