Nabad vs Mentimeter vs Slido, for Arabic and multilingual rooms
مقارنة موثّقة: نبض مقابل Mentimeter وSlido
If your audience reads right to left, or answers in more than one language at once, these three tools differ in specific ways. Every row below is a checkable fact with a dated source, including the rows where Nabad is behind.
Facts retrieved 8 September 2026 from vendor pricing pages, help centres and public feature boards
The part that actually differs
All three tools run a live session in one language. The differences start when the room does not share a single language.
| Capability | Nabad | Mentimeter | Slido |
|---|---|---|---|
| Languages offered | 86For hosts and participants, and each person picks their own in the same room. | 32For participants. The host side comes in 4, and the whole room shares one.[2] | 40Including regional variants. The host sets one for the whole event.[5] |
| Arabic available as an interface language | YesOne of 86 languages, with Hebrew, Persian, Urdu and Pashto also right to left. Layout direction switches to right to left across the host, presenter and participant views. | NoArabic is not among the 32 languages Mentimeter’s help centre lists.[2] “Enable RTL languages” has been open on Mentimeter’s own feature board since 2 January 2017.[3] | YesArabic and Hebrew are among the 40 languages Slido lists.[5] |
| Each participant picks their own language inside one shared session | YesChosen per participant at join. One room, 86 languages at the same time, with one combined result on the presenter screen. | NoThe host sets one language for the whole audience. Replying to a request for exactly this feature, dated 10 February 2020, Mentimeter said there were no near-term plans and suggested a separate presentation per language.[8] | Interface onlyThe host sets the event language, and a participant given the full slido link can change the Slido interface language in their own profile menu. The host’s question text is not translated: Slido states it “cannot translate the language you input into Slido, only the interface text”.[4] |
| Open-text answers translated so the room can read every response | Yes, on the shared screenThe presenter turns translation on and responses are translated in real time into the language the results screen is set to. They are not translated separately on each participant’s own device. | No“Real-time translation of comments/questions” is an open request on Mentimeter’s board, dated 17 May 2021.[6] | NoSlido support confirms there is no auto-translation for Q&A, and suggests a manual workaround: a co-host, moderation switched on, and an external translation tool.[7] |
Scroll the table sideways on a small screen.
Everything else, side by side
| Nabad | Mentimeter | Slido | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Join without an account or app | YesBrowser, six-digit code or QR scan. | YesBrowser, via menti.com and a code. | YesBrowser, via slido.com and an event code. |
| Question and activity types | Polls, word clouds, open text, Q&A, star ratings, rankings, scales, group formation and a random picker that draws a name from the room. Nine in all, on every plan. | 23 slide types on Free, unlimited on the paid plans.[1] | Polls, quizzes, Q&A and surveys. Free is capped at 3 polls and 1 quiz per slido; surveys start at the Engage plan.[9] |
| Free plan participants | Up to 30 participants per session.[10] | 50 per month, plus unlimited participants once per month.[1] | Up to 100 joined participants per slido, with unlimited slidos and no monthly ceiling.[9] |
| Free plan questions | Unlimited sessions and questions.[10] | No stated cap on the number of questions; the Free plan is limited to 23 slide types.[1] | 3 polls and 1 quiz per slido. Basic Q&A is included.[9] |
| Entry paid plan | Basic, $12 USD per month or $96 billed yearly. Up to 75 participants per session. Monthly billing is a real option.[10] | Basic, $14 USD per presenter per month, billed yearly, excluding tax. Unlimited participants. Mentimeter states Basic and Pro are sold yearly only.[1] | Engage, CA$25 per month billed CA$300 annually, excluding VAT. Up to 200 participants per slido. Slido states it does not accept monthly payments.[9] |
Where Nabad is behind
Our free plan is built for small rooms that meet often: up to 30 people per session, with unlimited sessions and no monthly ceiling. Slido allows up to 100 per slido, and Mentimeter 50 a month. If you are running one large open event and language is not your constraint, both of them will take more people into the room than we will.
Mentimeter’s entry paid plan is also better value on room size: $14 a month billed yearly buys unlimited participants, where our $12 Basic caps a session at 75.
Mentimeter and Slido are far more mature products, with wider integrations into PowerPoint, Teams, Zoom and Google Slides, longer track records and bigger support teams. Nabad is narrower on purpose: it exists for rooms where the language mix is the actual problem.
How prices and participants are counted
Vendors show prices in different currencies by region. Mentimeter’s figures above are in US dollars and exclude tax. Slido’s were displayed in Canadian dollars when retrieved from Canada and exclude VAT. Nabad’s are in US dollars, with a Canadian-dollar option on the pricing page. Check each vendor’s own page for your region before deciding.
Participants are counted differently too. Nabad’s free limit is per session, Mentimeter’s is monthly, and Slido’s limit is the total number of devices that join a single slido, with no monthly limit on top.
Is Nabad only for multilingual rooms?
No. You choose how many languages a session runs in. Pick one and untick the rest, and there is nothing to switch between, so the language picker never appears. The day the room is not all one language, you turn the others on and everyone reads and answers in their own.
Multilingual polls and live captioning are not the same thing
If you asked for a multilingual poll and were pointed at spf.io, Wordly or Interprefy, those are captioning and interpretation platforms. They translate the speaker for the audience. A multilingual poll does the opposite.
They translate the speaker, Nabad translates the room
These platforms put real-time captions and interpretation in dozens of languages onto a stream or into a room, and each attendee picks a subtitle language on their own phone. They carry the stage to the audience. Nabad carries the audience back to the stage.
spf.io does include voting, but it has no open text, so nothing participants write is translated back.
If your problem is that half the room cannot follow the speaker, take one of them. If your problem is that half the room never answers, that is what Nabad is for. The two are complementary, not alternatives.[11][12]
| Nabad | spf.io and similar | |
|---|---|---|
| Direction of translation | The audience to the room | The stage to the audience |
| What actually gets translated | What participants writeplus the questions and the interface | What the speaker saysas captions or interpretation |
| Question types | Tenincluding open text, word cloud, Q&A and ranking | Twomultiple choice and checkboxes, one poll active at a time |
| Price | Publishedfree, then $12 USD a month | By quotesold as minutes, overage per minute per language |
Which one to pick
Pick Slido if your whole audience shares one language, including if that language is Arabic. Slido supports Arabic and 39 others, and 100 participants on the free plan is the most generous free room of the three.
Pick Mentimeter if you want the widest range of question and slide formats, polished presentation design, and unlimited participants on an entry paid plan, and neither Arabic nor right-to-left layout is a requirement.
Pick Nabad if the languages are mixed within the same room. All three can run a session in one language. Only Nabad lets one participant answer in Arabic and another in French in the same session, then translates the open-text answers so everyone reads them together on the shared screen. If your room is monolingual, the other two are more mature and you should use them.
Try it with your own bilingual room
Free to start. No app for your audience, no attendee accounts. Join with a six-digit code or a QR scan.
Questions people ask
Sources
Every claim above traces to one of these, all retrieved 8 September 2026. If a fact here is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will correct it and re-date the page.
- Mentimeter, Plans and pricing. mentimeter.com/plans
- Mentimeter Help Centre, “How can I change the language in Mentimeter?”, listing 32 supported languages, Arabic not among them. help.mentimeter.com
- Mentimeter feature requests, “Enable RTL languages”, posted 2 January 2017, still open. mentimeter.canny.io
- Slido Community, “Can my Slido survey allow participants to choose the language…”, answered by Slido, 13 January 2025. community.slido.com
- Slido Community, “Change the language for your slido”, listing 40 supported languages including Arabic and Hebrew, set per event. community.slido.com
- Mentimeter feature requests, “Real-time translation of comments/questions”, posted 17 May 2021, still open. mentimeter.canny.io
- Slido Community, “Is there any auto translation for Q&A function?”, answered by Slido, 4 September 2025. community.slido.com
- Mentimeter feature requests, “More than one language at a time”, posted 10 February 2020, with a reply from Mentimeter. mentimeter.canny.io
- Slido, Pricing. Retrieved from Canada and displayed in Canadian dollars. slido.com/pricing
- Nabad, Pricing. nabad.live/pricing.html
- spf.io, Frequently Asked Questions, on supported languages and how subscriptions are billed by the minute. Retrieved 16 September 2026. spf.io
- spf.io, Multilingual Polls, on poll types, one active poll at a time, and how the audience joins. Retrieved 16 September 2026. spf.io
Is Nabad only for multilingual rooms?
No. Nabad is your all-in-one: one tool for every room you run.
One language
- Runs in your language, nothing to set up
- Your audience never sees a language menu
- Every question type: polls, word clouds, rankings, Q&A
More than one
- Everyone joins in their own language, automatically
- Open answers are translated live as they arrive
- One screen of results for the whole room