Detect Text Language in Python — Free API, 55 Languages & Confidence Score

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How to Detect Text Language in Python — 55 Languages, Free API

Language detection sounds simple until you try to build it yourself. Rule-based heuristics fail on short text. Running a full NLP model on your server is overkill for a lookup operation. And most free libraries top out at 20–30 languages.

This tutorial shows how to detect the language of any text in Python and JavaScript using a free API that supports 55+ languages and returns a confidence score so you can decide what to do with low-confidence results.

The API: Language Detector Pro

👉 Language Detector Pro on RapidAPI

55+ languages detected
Confidence score (0.0 – 1.0)
ISO 639-1 language codes
Works on short strings (tweets, user inputs, form fields)
Batch detection endpoint

Sample Response

\json { \"text\": \"Bonjour le monde\", \"language\": \"French\", \"language_code\": \"fr\", \"confidence\": 0.98 } \\

Python Example

\`python
import requests

def detect_language(text):
url = \"https://language-detector-pro.p.rapidapi.com/detect\"
headers = {
\"X-RapidAPI-Key\": \"YOUR_KEY\",
\"Content-Type\": \"application/json\"
}
r = requests.post(url, json={\"text\": text}, headers=headers)
data = r.json()
return {
\"language\": data[\"language\"],
\"code\": data[\"language_code\"],
\"confidence\": data[\"confidence\"]
}

print(detect_language(\"Bonjour le monde\"))

{\"language\": \"French\", \"code\": \"fr\", \"confidence\": 0.98}

print(detect_language(\"Привет мир\"))

{\"language\": \"Russian\", \"code\": \"ru\", \"confidence\": 0.99}

print(detect_language(\"こんにちは世界\"))

{\"language\": \"Japanese\", \"code\": \"ja\", \"confidence\": 0.97}

`\

JavaScript Example

\javascript async function detectLanguage(text) { const res = await fetch(\"https://language-detector-pro.p.rapidapi.com/detect\", { method: \"POST\", headers: { \"X-RapidAPI-Key\": \"YOUR_KEY\", \"Content-Type\": \"application/json\" }, body: JSON.stringify({ text }) }); const data = await res.json(); console.log(\\${data.language} (\${data.language_code}) — confidence: \${data.confidence}`);
return data;
}

detectLanguage(\"Hola mundo\");
// Spanish (es) — confidence: 0.99
`\

Batch Detection

\`python
texts = [\"Bonjour le monde\", \"Привет мир\", \"Hello world\", \"مرحبا بالعالم\"]

r = requests.post(
\"https://language-detector-pro.p.rapidapi.com/batch\",
json={\"texts\": texts},
headers={\"X-RapidAPI-Key\": \"YOUR_KEY\", \"Content-Type\": \"application/json\"}
)

for item in r.json():
print(f\"{item['language_code']}: {item['text'][:30]:<30} conf:{item['confidence']:.2f}\")
`\

Supported Languages (55+)

English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Hebrew, Hindi, Bengali, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, and more.