Koharu: Free Local AI Manga Translator — Complete 2026 Guide
Koharu is an open-source, local-first manga translator written in Rust. It runs the whole AI pipeline on your own machine — nothing is uploaded to the cloud.
🟢 How it works: staged pipeline — RF-DETR detects text regions and speech bubbles → OCR (PaddleOCR, manga-specific OCR models) reads the text → inpainting models (FLUX.2 Klein, LaMa) remove the original lettering → an LLM translates and re-renders text with vertical CJK and RTL (Arabic) support
🟢 Features: automatic text/bubble detection, OCR, inpainting, translation via local LLMs or cloud APIs (OpenAI, Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek, OpenRouter), layered PSD export with editable text
🟢 Platforms: Windows (winget), macOS (Homebrew: brew install --cask koharu), Linux (GitHub releases). GPU acceleration: CUDA, ROCm/HIP, Metal on Apple Silicon, Vulkan — CPU fallback always available
🟢 Privacy: all models run locally; first launch downloads several GB of models, then works mostly offline
🟢 Project health: 5k+ GitHub stars, hundreds of contributors, very active development — github.com/mayocream/koharu, full docs at koharu.rs
🟢 Best for: manga fans, scanlation groups, publishers and content platforms who need private, fast localization workflows with human review on top
🔴 Limitations: OCR is tuned for Japanese; inpainting needs a decent GPU for a comfortable speed; GPL-3.0 license restricts embedding in closed commercial products; AI translation still needs human review for jokes and cultural context
🟢 UAE business angle: publishers, media and translation offices can use Koharu to speed up internal visual-content workflows. Check the GPL-3.0 terms before commercial use, and test Arabic output quality on your actual content
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