Stringers
Chrome extension · written 11-6
livdub · livdub

Iranians use it to listen to YouTube in Persian: livdub beat Google's new model by six weeks, and reached 60k users in three and a half months

What it is A Chrome extension (also a mobile version). Paste in your own free Gemini key, and it dubs any web video, livestream, or podcast playing in your tab into your language, in real time.

Why it took off In June Google released a new model that translates speech directly into speech. Six weeks later, livdub turned it into a plug-and-play extension, with model costs covered by users' free keys. Iranians without Persian dubbing were brought in by dozens of YouTube tutorials.

CHow you could get in Don't copy the broad multi-language approach. Pick one language that lacks dubbing and subtitles, where a local community of free AI tool tutorial creators exists, make it the best option for that language, and in the first two weeks get it in front of those creators.

Grade C: the traction came from the six-week window after the new model launch and one concentrated spread in Iranian tutorial circles. Both are over. A copycat focused only on Persian has only 1k users, and Google itself could add dubbing to Chrome at any time. Spreading in small circles

60,000 users · rating 4.56 (81)

livdub is a Chrome extension. Users get a free Gemini key from Google and paste it in; it then dubs the sound in the current tab into 75+ languages in real time. Launched 2026 July 23, reached 60k users in three and a half months, mostly appearing to be Iranian; growth has been basically flat since August. Below is why it took off, why it stalled, and where you could still break in.

A comment with 23 likes

2026 August 8, Iranian tech creator rezasaad plus posted a YouTube video titled "Turn any video and podcast into Persian with this Chrome extension | Livdub." The video demonstrates YouTube, Al Jazeera live news, and MasterClass courses, all converted to Persian audio in real time while the original video keeps playing. By Nov 6, the video had 31k views and 257 comments. The top-liked comment (23 likes) read:

"After all these years, YouTube never added Persian subtitles for English videos. livdub did. From now on, we can hear Persian dubbing on any YouTube video 😢"

The day before, another computer tutorial channel, "4rahecomputer," posted "Free real-time dubbing with livdub.com," 20k views; comments said "pretty good, just a bit slower than the original audio," and others pasted the error "Gemini translate failed webSocket." From Jul 25 to Aug 17, searching "livdub" on YouTube turns up about 40 videos, nine in ten in Persian. Digiato, one of Iran's biggest tech media outlets, also wrote two pieces: one on the Chrome version, one on installing it in Yandex Browser on Android.

livdub's 60k users came from those three weeks.

What it actually is

A nicely wrapped shell. In 2026 Jun 9, Google launched Gemini 3.5 Live Translate: speak, and about 2 seconds later it outputs speech in another language, across 70 languages. Developers can call it within the free quota in AI Studio. Google itself only built it into Google Translate and Meet.

What livdub does is hook it into Chrome's "tab audio": install the extension → get a free key from AI Studio → paste it in → open any page with sound, pick a language, press start. The official site says "not just subtitles, spoken in your language" and "if it plays in Chrome, it can be dubbed."

ProjectMetricSources
Chrome users60,000,11-01 to 11-06 unchangedChrome Web Store, 11-06
Rating4.56,81 reviews; only 6 more in 1 daysChrome Web Store, 11-06
Android5K+ downloads, 3.8 starsGoogle Play,11-06
iOSListed 10-15, 1 ratingsApp Store,11-06
Free tier45 min/day on desktop; 90 min/day on mobile (3 segments of 30 min, unlocked by watching ads)livdub.com,11-06
Plus$5/mo or $50/yr, one-month trial; no time limit, no ads, subtitles, export to MP3/VTTlivdub.com,11-06

The developer entity is Samim Ventures L.L.C., and the official site has a full Persian version at livdub.com/fa. Samim is a Persian name; I haven't verified whether the founder is Iranian, but the product catered to Persian users from day one.

Why this one, and why Iran

Timing. It launched six weeks after Google released the model, one of the first "real-time dubbing for any tab" extensions in the Chrome Web Store. Comparable open-source projects and small extensions came 1 to 4 weeks later.

Users bring their own key, so neither side pays. Model costs go on the user's own Gemini key; livdub pays zero inference fees. The official site says the free quota "usually lasts several hours of listening." Persian short videos on Instagram promote it as "free, unlimited Persian-dubbed YouTube." For the developer, 60k people on the free tier can't bankrupt it.

The hungriest audience. Persian dubbing and subtitle resources are scarce; Chrome's built-in live translate only produces subtitles; most "video dubbing" extensions on the market (YouTube Dubbing 200k users, AutoDub 30k users) read subtitles and synthesize speech, only work on YouTube, and can't dub anything without subtitles. livdub listens to the audio itself, so live streams, news, and lectures all work. The Gemini API wasn't available in Iran, but Iranian users routinely run VPNs, so getting a key isn't an extra barrier for them.

A circle that spreads. Iran has a large group of YouTube, Aparat, and Instagram creators who specialize in tutorials on "useful free AI tools," where one video can reach tens of thousands of views. Several side clues point to Iran: the most recent Chrome Store reviews (Aug 13 to 20) are signed almost entirely with Persian names and complain about "some lag" and "please optimize for slow internet"; of the 13 "related extensions" the store suggests, 11 are Persian tools laid out right to left. The store doesn't break down 60k users by country, so the share of Iranian users is unknown, though most of them are likely in Iran (inference).

Where the money comes from

The store lists in-app purchases, and the official site advertises $5/mo for Plus plus a "limited-time early-user founder price." But revenue isn't public, the core users are in Iran, and paying in dollars for a subscription is hard there to begin with. On mobile, rewarded ads trade for listening time, which is probably the path left open for a market that can't pay. Whether subscriptions actually make money can't be seen from the outside. What it does achieve is near-zero cost: no inference fees, and no servers processing audio (the site says "we don't cache any website's audio").

Why it stalled

Over these 6 days the user count sat at 60,000 (the store shows rounded bands, so changes only appear when crossing the next band), ratings rose by 6 over 1 days, and the latest store reviews stop at Aug 20. On YouTube, from 9 to October only a handful of new tutorials appeared, with a few hundred views each. livdub itself posted tutorials in five languages (English, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, German) in Aug 17; the English version got 1,950 views, the others single digits. On X, I couldn't find a single post mentioning it in the last 120 days.

The Iranian wave ran its course, and no other language market picked it up.

Who it's competing with

CompetitorsScaleHow it differs from livdub
Immersive Translate3M usersWeb pages, PDFs, subtitle translation; no voice dubbing
YouTube Dubbing – Translate & Dub200kYouTube only; subtitles plus synthesized speech
Speech Translator100kSpeech recognition to text; no dubbing output
Tofu Dubbing(2026-03)30kReal-time dubbing; the developer runs the service, no user key needed
AutoDub(2025-12)11-01 is 20k, 11-04 to 30kYouTube only, no key needed, no time limit; in Aug 19 it published an "AutoDub vs LivDub" post to capture search traffic
Doblaj, Persian Live Dub (7-27, 8-20)Each 1,000Same user-brings-Gemini-key model, Persian only
Open-source ALAD, Avorythm, Interpretab (August)GitHub 18 to 67 starsSame idea, you install it yourself
Chrome's built-in live captions, YouTube auto-dubbing, Google TranslateEveryoneSubtitles only, or locked inside their own products

The one to study is Doblaj: it appeared four days after livdub launched, with the same technology, the same user-brings-key model, and Persian only, and today it has 1,000 users. The product is the same; four days and those few dozen tutorials account for a sixtyfold difference in results.

If it were you

C: You can learn a playbook, but copying it isn't worth it. Its two keys were the six-week window after Google's new model and the concentrated spread through Iran's tutorial circles over three weeks, and both are gone. If Google ever puts voice dubbing into Chrome, this whole category of extensions disappears with it.

Who it suits: speakers of a language with "little dubbing, few subtitles, and a local crowd of tutorial creators" (for example Vietnamese, Urdu, Bengali, Indonesian, or Turkish; I haven't checked which is emptiest), who either know or already are part of that "free AI tools" tutorial scene. Or anyone who already has an extension or app in that language and can add the feature easily.

Who it doesn't suit: anyone aiming at the English, Spanish, or Chinese main markets (Immersive Translate has 3M users there, plus dozens of YouTube dubbing extensions); anyone hoping to live off subscriptions (users came because it was free, and if Google changes the free quota, your cost advantage is gone); anyone who can code but knows no creators (the same open-source project spawned three copies in a month, and none gained traction).

How to build it: cloning a dubbing extension that uses the user's own Gemini key is a one- or two-week technical job. Don't try to cover "78 languages"; pick one and do it best: an interface and tutorials in that language, a connection that holds up on slow internet (the Iranian complaints were about lag and bandwidth), and step-by-step pictures for getting a key. You could also fill gaps it left: mobile (its Android has about 5K installs and iOS has almost none), or a student version for people listening to foreign-language courses and watching foreign-language livestreams.

How to get users: follow livdub's path. In the first two weeks after launch, get the extension into the hands of tech tutorial creators on YouTube and TikTok in that language, have them film demos of "dubbing any video into X," and title them "free"; pitch local tech media in parallel. Publish the full version on an official site in that language. Don't expect English-speaking X or Reddit to amplify it for you; livdub got zero traction there.

When to move: this is a race against the window before Google moves. The next one worth grabbing is when Google or OpenAI releases a capability model that developers can call for free while the company only ships it inside its own products; list within the first six weeks.

What would mean you read it wrong: (1) if livdub's user count passes 2027k in early 100 and the new users come from outside Iran, the market is still growing and the room for followers is bigger than described here; (2) if a non-Persian copycat passes 10k users within a month or two, "repeat it in another language" works; (3) conversely, if Chrome or YouTube announces real-time voice dubbing for any video, or Gemini tightens its free quota, this whole category will lose users, so don't invest further.

Chrome store page ↗

Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
Competitors
NameWhereLaunchedScaleHow it differs from this one
Immersive TranslateChrome2022-113M usersWeb / video subtitle translation, not speech-to-speech real-time dubbing
YouTube Dubbing – Translate & DubChrome2023-06200k usersYouTube only, subtitles plus TTS
Speech Translator(KappaFlow)Chrome2023-06100k usersSpeech recognition then text translation, no natural dubbing
Tofu DubbingChrome2026-0330k usersThe developer runs the service and no BYOK
AutoDubChrome2025-1220K to 30K usersYouTube only, subtitles plus TTS, no key, no time limit, Firefox support
DubTab / SonicCaptionChrome2026-0110k / 8 thousandAccount-based real-time video translation
Doblaj / Persian Live DubChrome2026-07-27 / 2026-08-20About 1k eachAlso BYOK Gemini, Persian only, launched later
ALAD / Avorythm / InterpretabOpen source2026-08GitHub 18 to 67 starsOpen-source equivalent, you install it yourself, not packaged or multi-platform
Chrome Live Caption + Live TranslateBig-company featuresAlready aroundEvery Chrome userSubtitles only, no dubbing
Gemini 3.5 Live Translate (Google Translate / Meet), YouTube auto-dubbingBig-company features2026-06-09 and othersVery largeLocked inside their own products, can't dub arbitrary web pages
Where users come from
  • Verified Iranian Persian-language YouTube / Aparat creator tutorials: searching YouTube for livdub turns up about 40 Persian videos; rezasaad plus 31k and 4rahecomputer 20k views, concentrated between 07-25 and 08-17
  • Verified Iranian tech outlet Digiato and download sites: two Digiato articles plus an X repost; indexed by yasdl
  • Verified Persian Instagram Reels: DbiV-dSsGFQ and DbuwdHwiKmW promoting "free unlimited Persian dubbing"
  • Verified Official site Persian localization: livdub.com/fa
  • Verified Platform event: Gemini 3.5 Live Translate launches: 2026-06-09 blog.google, livdub listed six weeks later
  • Verified Official multilingual tutorial videos: the official channel's 08-17 English video has 1,950 views; the other language versions are in single digits
  • Verified cross-platform traffic + rewarded ads: 5K+ on Play, live on iOS 10-15, ads shown every 30 minutes on mobile
  • Inferred Paid acquisition: none found

livdub: how it reached 60k Chrome users in 3 and a half months

In short: Google released Gemini 3.5 Live Translate (speech-to-speech real-time translation, usable with AI Studio's free quota) on 2026-06-09. Six weeks later (2026-07-23), livdub was the first to wrap it into a plug-and-play extension that dubs any browser tab in real time, with users bringing their own free Gemini key. Then tech creators and the media outlet Digiato in Iran (Persian) put out dozens of tutorials from late July through August, pitching it as a way to watch foreign-language videos with Persian dubbing. A large share of the 60k users are likely Iranian, and growth basically stalled after August.

1. Data

MetricValueSource
Chrome users60,000 (11-01 to 11-06 it stayed at 60,000)chromestore library item_snap
Rating4.56 / 81 reviews (11-01 was 80, only 1 more in 6 days)chromestore library
Listed / last updated2026-07-23 / 2026-10-30Data card
AndroidGoogle Play: "5K+" downloads, 3.8 stars, 54 reviewsPlay store page (fetched via r.jina.ai, 2026-11-06)
iOSListed 2026-10-15, 1 ratings, developer Samim Ventures L.L.C., Entertainment categoryiTunes lookup id6810897617
PricingFree tier: 45 minutes a day on Chrome/Mac, 90 minutes a day on mobile (3×30 minutes, unlocked by watching rewarded ads); Plus is $5/month or $50/year, with a 1-month trial, unlimited time, no ads, subtitles, and export to MP3/VTT; the site says early users get a limited-time "founding user price"livdub.com
Cost structureModel costs are paid through the user's own Gemini key (BYOK), so livdub pays no inference fees; the free quota usually covers several hours of listeninglivdub.com, terms page

The latest Chrome Web Store reviews (on the /reviews page) all fall between August 13 and 20. The names are almost all Persian (mehr shad, Matin SenPai, Mohammad Mahdi, Mehdi Sghr, Peyman Porrahmani, Hamid Rostami Arshad…), and the content is things like "very useful, but the latency is a bit high" and "please optimize for slow connections." "Please optimize for slow connections" is exactly what Iranian users would ask for.

The store's "related extensions" list for it has 13 entries, 11 of which are Persian / RTL tools (Persian Right, Fontiran, Dastyar, Widgetify, MotmaenBash, AI RTL فارسی, Doblaj, Persian Live Dub…) (from the chromestore library's related table). This suggests the people who install livdub overlap heavily with those who install Persian-language tools.

2. Competitors

ProductWhereLaunchedScaleHow it differs from others
Immersive TranslateChrome2022-113M usersFocuses on web / PDF / video subtitle translation, does not do speech-to-speech real-time dubbing
YouTube Dubbing – Translate & DubChrome2023-06200kYouTube only, uses subtitles for TTS, does not listen to the audio and translate it
Speech Translator(KappaFlow)Chrome2023-06100kRecognizes speech then outputs translated text, using Google/Microsoft recognition, does not produce natural dubbed voices
Video Translator / YouTube Translator(livepolls.app / transmonkey)Chrome2023-07 / 2024-0580k / 70kLeans toward YouTube, subtitles + TTS, account-based pricing
Tofu DubbingChrome2026-0330k, 1,120 ratingsReal-time dubbing; the developer runs the service, no user key needed
AutoDub(Galaxy Edge)Chrome / Firefox2025-1211-01 went from 20k to 11-04k, then up to 30kYouTube only, relies on subtitles + TTS; no key needed, no time limit. It published a comparison page, "AutoDub vs LivDub" (2026-08-19), to capture search traffic
DubTab / SonicCaption(XTCodeTech)Chrome2026-01 / 2025-1110k / 8 thousandReal-time video translation, account-based
Doblaj — Live Persian DubbingChrome2026-07-271,000Persian only, also BYOK Gemini; appeared 4 days after livdub listed
Persian Live DubChrome2026-08-201,000English-to-Persian only, BYOK Gemini
Avorythm(msmahdinejad)Open source + Chrome2026-08-11 / 08-1767 GitHub stars; 633 Chrome usersOpen-source desktop plus browser, also uses gemini-3.5-live-translate
ALAD(navidseyedain)Open source2026-08-04GitHub 34 starsOpen-source version of the livdub approach (MV3, 78 languages, Gemini 3.5 Live Translate)
Interpretab (kazunori279, i.e. Google's Kaz Sato)Open source + Chrome2026-08-13GitHub 18 starsTwo-way interpreting of tab audio plus microphone, BYOK, no server-side component
Chrome's built-in Live Caption + Live TranslateBig-company featuresAlready aroundEvery Chrome userOnly outputs subtitles, no dubbing; on Reddit people complain it translates slowly and stops when speech runs long
Gemini 3.5 Live Translate comes to Google Translate / MeetBig-company features2026-06-09—Only usable inside Google's own products; cannot dub videos on arbitrary web pages
YouTube auto-dubbing, Yandex browser video translationBig-company featuresAlready thereVery largeLimited to the YouTube platform or the Yandex browser (how well they support Persian is unverified)

Conclusion: "AI dubbing for videos" is a crowded lane, with dozens of extensions at least, mostly YouTube subtitle + TTS tools built since 2023. livdub's difference is that it uses the newly released speech-to-speech model and doesn't depend on subtitles, so it can dub any site or livestream; the model cost is borne by users' free keys. Open-source and small extensions using the same method appeared 1–4 weeks later, but none reached its scale.

3. Growth tactics (evidence)

  1. Iranian tech YouTube creators made tutorials on their own, in a cluster (verified, the main channel). Searching "livdub" via the YouTube Data API returns about 40 related videos, ninety percent in Persian. The ones with the most views: rezasaad, "Dub any video and podcast into Persian with this Chrome extension," 31k views (2026-08-08); rahecomputer, 20k views (08-07) 4; mobamoz, 3.5k + 1.8k; Mojtaba Golab, 3.2k; Paran Tech TV, 3.2k; AsrNovin, 2.8k; TheCodepod, 2.1k (07-25, two days after listing). Activity clustered between 07-25 and 08-17; from 9 to October only a handful of videos remained (dicode, ITGoya, Tohidkala), each with only a few hundred views.
  2. Coverage by Iranian tech media (verified). Digiato, a large Iranian tech outlet, published two pieces: "Livdub uses Gemini to dub Chrome tab audio into Persian," and a mobile tutorial (installing the extension on Android via the Yandex or Quetta browser). Digiato's X account also reshared it. Persian download sites such as yasdl.com list it. Persian Reels on Instagram promote it as "free, unlimited YouTube with Persian dubbing" (DbiV-dSsGFQ, DbuwdHwiKmW), and Aparat (the Iranian video site) also hosts several tutorials.
  3. Localized website (verified). livdub.com/fa has a full Persian-language page. The developer entity is Samim Ventures L.L.C. (Samim is a Persian name, and the L.L.C. format is common in the UAE). Whether the founders are Iranian has not been verified, but the product catered to Persian users from the start.
  4. Official multi-language tutorial videos (confirmed, but little reach). The livdub YouTube channel posted English, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, and German versions. The English one has 1,950 views; the other languages have single to low double-digit views, against 08-17 on the channel.
  5. Cross-platform traffic (verified). Chrome, Android and iOS funnel users to each other; mobile trades rewarded ads for extra time. Play is only at 5K+ and iOS has almost no volume, so Chrome is the main channel.
  6. X / Reddit / HN: searching the x-radar corpus for "livdub" returns 120 posts from the past 0 days. On Reddit it appears only once, in a SmartTube GitHub issue cited as an example that the approach is feasible. Almost nobody in the English-speaking world is sharing it.
  7. Paid acquisition: no evidence found. Ad libraries only track products on the watchlist, so not finding ads does not mean none were run.

4. Why it took off

  • Timing: the platform event: Google 2026-06-09 launched Gemini 3.5 Live Translate (blog.google), 70 languages, about 2 seconds of latency, and developers can use it on the free quota in AI Studio. livdub launched six weeks later and is one of the first live any-tab dubbing products in the store; ALAD, Avorythm, Interpretab and Persian Live Dub all came after it.
  • BYOK plus a free quota costs users and developers nothing: users get "free, unlimited" dubbed videos with one free Gemini key (the wording from the Persian Reels); developers pay no inference costs, so they can afford a free tier, and 60k users did not burn it down.
  • It hit the hungriest audience: Iranian users want to watch English YouTube, but Persian dubbing and subtitles are scarce. Chrome's built-in Live Translate only does captions, and tools like AutoDub only cover YouTube and depend on subtitles. Iranian users already run VPNs (the Gemini API is unavailable in Iran, so an IP change is needed), so getting a key is no extra hurdle for them. Iranian tech media also has a large group of creators who make tutorials about "good free AI tools," and one video can bring tens of thousands of views.
  • Product difference versus rivals: dubbing comes from the audio, not subtitles, so livestreams, news, lectures and any website work. The original page keeps playing with the two audio tracks running side by side. This is exactly what the Persian tutorials kept emphasizing: "you can dub without subtitles."
  • Growth has stopped: the user count stayed at 11-01 from 11-06 to 60,000 (a rounded figure from the store, so changes only show up across tiers), ratings grew by just 1 in 6 days, and the most recent review is from Aug 20. This wave came mainly from concentrated spread within the Iranian community in August, and no new channel took over afterward.

5. Differentiation, and whether that's why it broke out

The differentiation has two layers: (1) on tech, it's speech-to-speech and not limited to any one site, while most rivals are subtitles + TTS and only handle YouTube; (2) on business model, it's BYOK, where users' free Gemini quota covers model costs, so the developer's marginal cost is close to zero. Layer 1 gives it something to demo ("it can even dub livestreams"), and layer 2 lets it go free in markets like Iran where paying is hard. What actually drove growth was shipping first in the window after a new model launched, plus getting picked up by Iran's tech crowd as a Persian dubbing tool. Differentiation is necessary but not the whole story: Doblaj, which did the same thing and followed 4 days later and focused only on Persian, has just 1,000 users. Being first and being chosen by creators matter more."

6. Visibility and copycats

  • Visibility: spreading within a niche. Mainly in the Persian-speaking Iranian community (YouTube, Aparat, Instagram, Digiato). In the English-speaking world, only the competitor AutoDub published a comparison page to capture traffic. The X corpus has 0 posts, livdub is absent from TrustMRR (indie library), and its revenue is not public.
  • Copycats: Doblaj — Live Persian Dubbing (07-27), Persian Live Dub (08-20), the open-source ALAD (08-04), Avorythm (08-11), all by developers with Persian names; plus Interpretab (08-13). AutoDub used the livdub name for a comparison SEO page.

7. Takeaways

  • After a big lab releases a new capability model (this time speech-to-speech translation), the first few weeks go to wrapping it in a consumer shell that works right after install, using BYOK plus a free quota to bring marginal cost to zero.
  • Find a language market with the fewest language resources, the strongest demand, and users already willing to get around restrictions (here, Persian), localize the site, and let local tutorial creators spread it on their own. Communities like this spread "free AI tools" very efficiently.
  • The free tier caps time, the paid tier is set at $5/month, and on mobile rewarded ads buy extra time, giving a monetization path for markets with weak willingness to pay.

8. Still unclear

  • How much of the 60k users are Iranian (the store does not publish a country breakdown; the related extensions and reviewer names are only strong indirect evidence).
  • Payments: Iranian users paying a USD subscription is hard, and no one has shared how well Plus sells; revenue isn't public.
  • Paid acquisition: no evidence found, but ad library coverage is limited.
  • Founder identity and Samim Ventures registration: unverified.
  • Google's free-tier limits, the block on Iranian IPs, and Chrome / Google Translate building dubbing themselves could each stall it.

Sources

This article was written by AI from public data and the data we collect daily. Numbers are sourced, and inferences are labeled.