Joomla multilingual management: Speedy Translate vs Falang

Speedy Translate and Falang work the same way underneath: an article stays one article, and its translations are stored beside it. So the choice comes down to four things: how fast your pages are, what the free edition puts on your site, which database setups it runs on, and where you do the translating. This comparison was updated on 2 October 2026, for Speedy Translate 3.0.0 and Falang 6.9.

Speed: the benchmark

We built one Joomla 6 site, filled it with the same translated content for each product, and timed six pages at 100, 1,000 and 10,000 articles.

• Up to 5.8 times as fast as Falang. A translated article on a 10,000-article site: 68 ms with Speedy Translate, 393 ms with Falang.
• 2.6 to 3.5 times as fast on category pages, 3.0 to 5.8 on article pages, 1.6 to 1.8 on the home page, across the three site sizes.
• Close to Joomla's own speed. At 10,000 articles, Speedy Translate adds 2 to 8 ms to five of the six pages; Falang adds 26 to 104 ms.
• 55 to 79% fewer database queries: 40 against 192 on a category blog page.
• Up to 70% less memory on large translated pages: 4.7 MB against 15.5 MB on the translated article at 10,000 articles, where Speedy Translate also reads 98% fewer database rows — 5,853 against 349,147.

The translated article costs both products most: Joomla's previous and next links read all 1,000 articles of its category, and each has to be translated before the page can use it. That is also the page where the gap grows with the site:

Queries are the same at every size, and Speedy Translate sends a fifth to half of Falang's on every page:

Why Speedy Translate does less work

• Only what the page shows. Translations are looked up in one query per table, for the rows the page fetched and the fields that have translations. A field nobody translated is never looked up.
• Queries analysed once. Working out which tables and keys a query touches takes time; Speedy Translate keeps the result in Joomla's cache and reuses it on every later request.
• One database connection, shared with Joomla's own, on every page.
• Nothing extra for visitors. Editing scripts load only for people who can translate; a visitor's page carries the language switcher and nothing else from Speedy Translate.

All the figures

Time per page in ms, median of 10 requests after 3 warm-up requests.

Database load and memory at 10,000 articles. Queries and memory came out the same in every run; rows read nearly so.

Speedy Translate's memory is at or below Falang's on 14 of the 18 pages measured. It is above on four: by 0.09 MB on the French home page at each size, and 0.05 MB on the French article at 100 articles. Joomla alone takes 1.96 to 2.21 MB on these pages.

How it was measured

• Versions. Joomla 6.1.3, PHP 8.4 with OPcache, MySQL 8.4. Speedy Translate 3.0.0. Falang 6.9 free edition, installed from its package with the indexes its control panel adds, so it was not measured at a disadvantage.
• Content. 100, 1,000 and 10,000 articles in ten categories, each translated into French and German, with translated categories and menus. English is the default language. "Joomla alone" is the same site with neither extension and Joomla's own language switcher: it shows untranslated content, so it is the floor both products add to.
• Pages. The home page (four featured articles), a category blog (ten articles) and an article, each in English and French, with the main menu, a language switcher and hreflang tags.
• Measures. The median of 10 requests after 3 warm-up requests, one at a time, with no page caching. Time and memory come from PHP; queries and rows read are counted by MySQL itself, the same way for each product. Every page had to answer and show its content in the expected language.
• Repeats. Three runs on the same day gave the same queries, rows and memory at 10,000 articles, and Falang's time over Speedy Translate's moved by at most 0.3: 5.7 to 5.9 on the translated article. The figures here are the middle run's.
• Editions. Only Falang's free edition was measured. Speedy Translate Lite and Pro run the same code on a visitor's page, so the figures hold for both.

All times come from one development machine and one visitor at a time. A live server gives other times; the ratios and the query counts are the part to compare.

The backlink in Falang Free

While Falang's free edition runs, it appends this to the main content of every page your visitors see, in every language. It is what Falang 6.9's code outputs (line breaks added; in the page it is one line):

<div><a title="Faboba : Cr&eacute;ation de composantJoomla"
   style="font-size: 8px;; visibility: visible;display:inline;"
   href="http://www.faboba.com" target="_blank">
   FaLang translation system by Faboba</a></div>

• It is a followed link. There is no rel="nofollow", so search engines count every page of your site as a link to faboba.com.
• It is on every page. Falang adds it under the component's output of each front-end HTML page, so it shows in each language and multiplies with the size of your site.
• It is hard to spot in the code. Falang builds the text from pieces — 'FaLang tra'.'nslation syste'.'m by Faboba' — so searching its files for the sentence finds nothing.
• It goes only when you pay. The free edition adds it; removing it means buying one of Falang's paid plans.

Falang's administrator also carries a footer on its screens: You are using the FREE version of Falang. Upgrade to paid version for the full functionality.

Database drivers

Joomla 6 offers two drivers for MySQL and MariaDB databases, in System → Global Configuration → Server → Database Type: MySQLi and MySQL (PDO). Hosts and installers pick either.

Falang translates only through MySQLi. Its system plugin checks the driver before doing anything, and on any other it stands aside, so visitors get the untranslated site. From Falang 6.9's plg_system_falangdriver:

// We only support mysqli at this time
if (strtolower($dbtype) !== 'mysqli') {
    return;
}

Its control panel then tells you: MySQL (PDO) driver not supported by Falang. Use MySQLi driver in Global Configuration > Server > Database.

Translating an article

Falang's free edition keeps translation in its own screens. Speedy Translate puts it in the form you already use to write the article.

The free editions, feature by feature

The free editions, Speedy Translate Lite against Falang 6.9 Free, as installed from each package. Where Speedy Translate Pro adds something, the table says so.

Falang facts come from the code of its 6.9 free package (7 September 2026). Falang's paid editions were not examined. Where we got something wrong, tell us through Support → Tickets and we will correct it.

Moving from Falang

1. Back up the site, as before any big change.
2. Install Speedy Translate Lite with Joomla's extension installer. Its multilingual mode is Speedy from the start.
3. Open Migrate from Falang on Speedy Translate's dashboard. It lists, per content type, what it will import and what Speedy Translate already has.
4. Import, read the report, check a few pages in each language, then disable or uninstall Falang.

Falang's own tables are not changed, so you can import again. The importer turns Falang's custom field translations into Speedy Translate's, and brings the translations of tables it has no adapter for yet, which show once one is installed. The import in detail · Speedy Translate Lite and Pro.