What Webflow handles and what you own
Webflow's native Localization covers most of the plumbing. The layout, the type and the quality of the Arabic are still your job. You need a paid Localize add-on to publish a secondary locale.
| Job | What Webflow does | What you do | Plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Text direction | Applies right-to-left to Arabic pages on the published site | Fix styles hard-coded to left or right; keep emails and phone numbers left-to-right | All Localize plans |
| Fonts and line height | Lets you change styles per locale | Choose an Arabic typeface, add line height, remove letter spacing | All Localize plans |
| Images with text or arrows | Swaps images per locale | Recreate every image that has English text in it | Advanced and Enterprise |
| URLs and Arabic slugs | Publishes Arabic in its own subdirectory, such as /ar; localized slugs on higher plans | Decide whether slugs stay in English or move to Arabic | Localized URLs: Advanced and Enterprise |
| hreflang and lang | Adds hreflang tags to page heads and the sitemap, sets the language code per locale | Check the page source and make sure every /ar page is actually in Arabic | All Localize plans |
| Translation | AI translation for pages, elements and CMS items, with tone and formality per language | Have an Arabic speaker review every page in context | All Localize plans; custom glossaries on Enterprise |
| Visitor routing | Sends visitors to a locale based on browser language | Decide whether to turn it on (see the SEO section) | Advanced and Enterprise |
Our recommendation: Essential fits a text-led site. Move to Advanced when your images carry English text or you want Arabic URLs.
Decide these before design starts
The first locale you set is your primary one, and you can't change it later. It also owns the layout: you can't add or remove elements in a secondary locale, and hiding an element in one locale only is an Enterprise feature.
So the Arabic site is the English site, translated and mirrored. If you sell and raise in English, make English primary.
- Pages first: homepage, product, pricing and contact. Anything you haven't translated still appears at /ar, in English, because secondary locales inherit the primary content.
- Which Arabic: Modern Standard Arabic, unless your brand voice is deliberately local.
- Numbers: pick Western (1, 2, 3) or Arabic-Indic (١، ٢، ٣) numerals once, along with currency and phone formats, and use them everywhere.
Right-to-left: what actually breaks
Webflow sets the direction for you. Flex and grid layouts follow it. Anything you hard-coded to the left or right doesn't, and that's where Arabic pages look broken:
- Margins and padding set on one side only
- Decorative shapes and badges absolutely positioned on the left
- Text aligned "left" instead of "start"
- Sliders, carousels and step arrows that move the wrong way
Webflow's own guide recommends logical properties: margin-inline-start instead of margin-left, text-align: start instead of left. Build the English site that way and most of the Arabic layout follows on its own.
Mirror arrows and chevrons. Don't mirror logos, checkmarks, play buttons or product screenshots.
Mixed text needs care. Give email and phone fields a dir="ltr" attribute, which Webflow supports per element. Then read every Arabic line that contains an English brand or product name, because punctuation can land on the wrong side.
For type, pair your Latin font with a dedicated Arabic face as a per-locale style. IBM Plex Sans Arabic, Noto Kufi Arabic and Cairo are free on Google Fonts. Add line height and set letter spacing to zero: spacing breaks the joins between Arabic letters.
Right-to-left is applied on published sites, so review Arabic on the published staging site.
SEO for two languages
Give each language its own URL. Webflow puts Arabic in a subdirectory, and Google lists subdirectories as low maintenance.
Webflow adds hreflang tags to every page head and the sitemap. After you publish, open the page source and check each page lists both versions, itself included. Webflow's docs don't mention an x-default tag, so don't assume you have one.
The trap is fallback. Google reads a page's language from its visible content, not the lang attribute. An /ar page still showing English is an English duplicate with an Arabic label.
Think twice about visitor routing. The same Google guide advises against redirecting visitors automatically by language, and Webflow's routing uses 302 redirects with no native override. A visible language switcher is safer.
Research Arabic keywords on their own. A direct translation of your English keyword is often not what people type.
If you're moving an existing Arabic site, map every old Arabic URL. Webflow's 301 redirects are relative to the root domain and don't apply to localized subdirectories, so /ar/old-page needs its own rule. Our Webflow migration process maps and tests every URL before launch, and we can run SEO and AI search in both languages afterward.
A translation workflow that holds up
- Lock the English copy. Once a CMS field is edited in the Arabic locale, it stops inheriting English changes. Late edits mean manual Arabic updates.
- Write a glossary. Your brand name in Latin or Arabic script, product terms, numerals and tone. Webflow's built-in translation glossary is Enterprise only, so on Essential or Advanced keep it as a shared document.
- Run AI translation as a first pass. Set tone and formality for Arabic first. Webflow translates elements, pages and CMS items.
- Review in context. An Arabic speaker reads every page on the published staging site, including buttons, forms and line breaks.
- Translate the metadata. SEO titles, meta descriptions and Open Graph text, then set Arabic slugs by hand if you use them.
- Name an owner. One person updates the Arabic whenever the English changes.
Our team speaks Arabic, so the Arabic copy we ship is checked by people who read it, not just machine translated. We've worked with startups in the US, UK and UAE, and we schedule calls in your time zone. If you're launching in the Gulf, see how we work with startups in Dubai and the UAE.
What it costs
Webflow's Localize add-on starts at $9 a month for Essential (up to 3 locales, 10,000 words a month) and $29 a month for Advanced (up to 10 locales, 50,000 words a month), priced by number of locales. Enterprise is a custom quote. Prices checked November 2026.
The build is the bigger cost. It depends on how many pages need Arabic, how many images you recreate, how many CMS items you translate and how many review rounds you run. A site built with hard-coded left and right styles takes longer to mirror than one built with logical properties.
Our Webflow websites start from $7,500. Prices are starting points. Your quote depends on scope, not your funding round.
Send us your site and the pages your buyers need in Arabic. We'll tell you what Webflow covers, what needs rework and which plan fits. Start with our Webflow design and development service or contact us.
