A scanlation app for readers — the whole pipeline, automated.

Scanlation is the fan practice of scanning and translating comics by hand: cleaning the raw page, redrawing art under the text, translating, and typesetting the result back into the bubbles. A scanlation app automates that pipeline. Sumi does exactly this — erase, translate, re-typeset in place — on the chapters you own, for your own reading.

No. Sumi never hosts, crawls, or links to manga — there is nothing to browse. It is a tool that translates the pages you already have the right to read: your purchases, official free chapters, or public-domain titles.

Distributing scanlated chapters of licensed manga is copyright infringement in most countries — that is why release sites live in a legal gray-to-black zone. Translating a page you legally own, for your own reading, is a different activity, and it is the only use Sumi is built for: no hosting, no distribution, just your personal reading copy.

Sumi is built for readers, not for producing releases. The output is your personal reading copy. If you letter fan projects, the etiquette and legality of distribution are on you — Sumi does not add watermark-free export workflows for republishing.

Yes. Korean manhwa and long vertical webtoon strips are supported alongside Japanese manga and Chinese manhua, with a continuous vertical reader built for the format.

Sumi erases the original lettering and re-typesets the translation inside the original bubble shape — vertical Japanese included — so the page keeps looking drawn. A careful human letterer can still beat any tool on tricky sound effects; when a line or placement reads wrong, you fix that one bubble in a tap.

iPhone, iPad, and Apple Silicon Macs through the App Store app; Android (open testing on Google Play); plus any desktop browser through the online translator and the Chrome extension. On an Android phone the browser translator also works with nothing to install.

Your first 5 pages are free (plus one page with no account in the browser), and you can claim 5 more every day after that. After that, Sumi Pro is $6.99/month for 1,500 pages each billing month on the web and in the Chrome extension, and you can cancel in two clicks. Bigger plans go up to 12,000 pages a month. The iPhone app has no subscription — page packs, plus a one-time offline buy-out for unlimited on-device translation.