Crowdin vs Smartcat

Crowdin is a localization management platform founded in Ukraine in 2009 and now headquartered in Estonia. It is used by software companies, game studios and a long list of well-known open-source projects to translate apps, websites, documentation and help centers, and it offers both a standard cloud product and Crowdin Enterprise for larger organizations.

The platform supports more than a hundred file formats and syncs source strings automatically from GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket and CI pipelines, from design tools like Figma, and from CMSs and help desks through a marketplace of over 600 apps. Translators work in an editor with translation memory, glossaries, screenshots, in-context preview, QA checks and machine translation from engines such as DeepL and Google, plus AI translation with your own prompts. Crowdsourcing features let volunteers suggest and vote on translations. Pricing combines hosted words and seats, and Crowdin is free for qualifying open-source projects.

Crowdin suits teams with many file types, many integrations or a community that wants to help translate. Its interface can feel dense, and hosted word limits need watching as content grows. Lokalise is the main commercial rival with a cleaner UI for product teams, Phrase is strong in enterprise and agency workflows, and open-source alternatives such as Weblate and Tolgee can be self-hosted. For website-only translation without code, Weglot is simpler.

Smartcat is an AI translation and localization platform founded in 2016 by Ivan Smolnikov, who earlier built the language services firm ABBYY LS; Smartcat was incubated at ABBYY before spinning out. The company is based in Boston and raised a $43M Series C led by Left Lane Capital in September 2024, bringing total funding to about $70M. Its core job is translating websites, documents, software, e-learning and video into 280+ languages with AI first and human review where it matters.

The platform combines machine translation, translation memory and glossaries with AI Coworkers that handle translation, content updates, review and QA. A marketplace of 500,000+ linguists and 5,000+ agencies lets you hire reviewers inside the same workspace and pay them all on one invoice. Connectors cover CMSs such as WordPress, Webflow and Contentful, Figma, GitHub, Zendesk and Google Drive. Plans are annual, include unlimited users and are metered in Smartwords; matches and repetitions from translation memory are not charged.

Smartcat fits marketing, product and L&D teams that need many languages fast and want to buy human post-editing without managing separate vendors. Developer-heavy teams localizing app strings usually prefer Lokalise or Crowdin, and large enterprises with complex workflows often compare it with Phrase and Smartling.

Buying tip: the entry Adapt plan costs $1,200 a year for 100K Smartwords, and the next tier jumps to $24,000, so estimate yearly volume carefully. Use the 15-day trial, which includes API access, to measure how many Smartwords your real content consumes.