Smartcat

Translation platform and freelancer marketplace billed in Smartwords, where every added target language multiplies consumption

As of 31 August 2026, Smartcat starts at $1200/year. A translation platform with a marketplace of freelance linguists attached, sold in annual bundles of a credit called a Smartword. Softwr lists it under Translation. Smartcat is made by Smartcat Platform Inc., available on Web, API.

Visit siteVisit Smartcat

Overview

What Smartcat does

Smartcat combines a translation management system, a browser CAT editor and a marketplace of freelance translators and agencies into one platform. It began as a spin-out from ABBYY Language Solutions and is now run by Smartcat Platform Inc., registered in Wilmington, Delaware, with a European entity in Amsterdam. It has raised venture funding through to a 43 million USD Series C in September 2024. Connectors cover content platforms, repositories, design tools and service desks, and every plan includes unlimited users. Two things distinguish it commercially. The first is the billing unit. Plans are sold as an annual allowance of Smartwords, described by the vendor as a shared pool of credits at organisation level, and consumption is one Smartword per source word multiplied by the number of target languages. AI dubbing costs ten Smartwords per dubbed word. That is the exact inverse of a per-string platform: adding a market multiplies the bill rather than leaving it alone. The second is that Smartcat is the payer of record for the freelancers you hire through it. Clients receive one invoice covering all suppliers, work is auto-approved if a client does not review within fifteen days, and payouts are processed within five business days. The marketplace commission is charged to the client, not the supplier: the vendor states that it does not deduct a platform commission from supplier earnings. Freelancers instead pay withdrawal fees, a fixed charge from one to ten US dollars depending on method plus half a percent, currency conversion at the mid-market rate plus two and a half percent, and intermediary bank fees on international wires that the vendor says typically run from five to forty dollars and does not reimburse. Buyers are companies that want to hire and pay linguists without setting up dozens of supplier accounts. The trade-off is the gap between tiers: the entry plan starts at 1,200 USD a year and the next one starts at 24,000, with nothing in between and no marketplace access below the higher tier.

What people use it for

A company that wants to hire and pay many freelance linguists without opening a supplier account and payment channel for each one
Translation programmes with high volume in a small number of target languages, where the multiplier does the least damage
Teams that need unlimited internal users on the platform without paying per seat for occasional reviewers
Consolidating an existing freelancer roster onto one contract, one invoice and one payment rail

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Smartcat.

Smartwords are consumed as source words multiplied by target languages, so a product going from five to ten locales doubles consumption on identical source content and the plan you sized last year no longer fits.
The gap between the entry tier at 1,200 USD a year and the next at 24,000 is twentyfold with nothing between them, so a team that outgrows Adapt faces a step change rather than an increase.
Subscription Smartwords expire at renewal and monthly plan credits expire each cycle, so unused allowance is lost rather than banked and overbuying is a straight write-off.
Marketplace access, the reason many buyers choose Smartcat at all, does not exist on the entry plan, and API access with single sign-on only appears two tiers up at 60,000 USD a year.
The published commission table in the help centre still names retired plan tiers, so the rates a buyer would use to model marketplace cost cannot be reliably mapped onto the plans actually on sale.

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Smartcat

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

Smartcatvs
Crowdin
Crowdin: Published per-string pricing that does not multiply with target language count, with a free tier to start on
Smartcatvs
Phrase
Phrase: A software-first translation platform if you already have your own translators and do not need a marketplace
Smartcatvs
Transifex
Transifex: A simpler continuous localisation platform for product strings, without the payments and marketplace layer

Pricing

What Smartcat costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Adapt

$1,200 /yr

Starting price, billed annually
100,000 Smartwords
1 workspace
No marketplace access at this tier
Unlimited users

Accelerate

$24,000 /yr

Starting price, billed annually
1 million Smartwords
1 workspace
Marketplace access starts here
Unlimited users

Anticipate

$60,000 /yr

Starting price, billed annually
2 million Smartwords
2 workspaces
API access, single sign-on and two-factor authentication start here

Autonomous

On request

Price not published, tailored to requirements
6 million Smartwords
7 workspaces
Smartwords pool across workspaces only at this tier

Capabilities

Features

Smartword allowance
Annual credit pool consumed at one Smartword per source word per target language
Freelancer marketplace
Access to a large pool of linguists and agencies, available from the Accelerate tier upward
Payer of record
One invoice covers all suppliers, with Smartcat handling individual payouts
Unlimited users
Seats are not metered on any plan; consumption is what is billed
Browser CAT editor
Translation, review and quality checks with translation memory and glossaries
AI agents
Packaged automation for translation, review, content creation and quality assurance

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

What is a Smartword?

A credit. One Smartword is consumed per source word per target language, so 1,000 words into five languages costs 5,000 Smartwords. AI dubbing costs ten Smartwords per dubbed word.

Does Smartcat take a cut from freelancers?

No. The vendor states it does not deduct a platform commission from supplier earnings; the marketplace commission is charged to the client. Freelancers pay withdrawal fees, a fixed one to ten dollars plus half a percent, and a two and a half percent currency conversion markup.

Is there a free plan?

No. There is a fifteen day trial of the full platform. A legacy free tier still appears in help articles but is not on the current pricing page.

What happens if I do not review delivered work?

After fifteen days the system verifies the work automatically and triggers supplier payment, so silence is treated as acceptance.

Keep looking

Where to go from Smartcat

Best Translation software for

Compare Smartcat with

Other Translation software

XTRF
Translation business management system for language service providers, with published pricing starting at $9,000 a year
Pricing on request11 researched notes
Plunet
Business and translation management system for language service providers and in-house translation departments
Pricing on request11 researched notes
Crowdin
Simple, transparent pricing. Start free and scale as you grow.
Free plan12 researched notes
Phrase
A flexible platform with product capacities that scale with your team
9 researched notes
Transifex
Turn localization into a background process, not a resource drain
Free, then $135/mo11 researched notes
Localazy
Localisation platform priced per source string, where adding target languages costs nothing extra
Free, then $34/mo12 researched notes
Smartling
Enterprise translation management sold alongside first-party language services priced per word
Pricing on request12 researched notes
Wordbee
Luxembourg translation management priced at a flat 150 EUR per power user per month, with translators and requesters not counted as seats
From €150/mo12 researched notes
wxrks
Translation platform formerly called Bureau Works, priced by processed words per year with unlimited seats and a real free tier
Free, then $38/mo12 researched notes
XTM Cloud
Enterprise translation management from XTM International, now the centre of a private-equity backed roll-up that also owns Transifex
Pricing on request12 researched notes
POEditor
Localisation management billed by string count with unlimited contributors
Free, then $14.99/mo11 researched notes
Gengo
Human translation marketplace and API, priced per word from $0.06, owned by Lionbridge since 2019
10 researched notes
Pontoon
Mozilla open source localisation platform that you host yourself
Open source11 researched notes
SDL Trados Studio
Windows desktop CAT tool that agencies treat as the default exchange format
Pricing on request11 researched notes
Systran
Enterprise and on-premises machine translation, sold on per-user monthly plans and separate quoted API and installed-server products
Pricing on request10 researched notes
Localazy
Localisation platform priced per source string, where adding target languages costs nothing extra
Free, then $34/mo12 researched notes
Smartling
Enterprise translation management sold alongside first-party language services priced per word
Pricing on request12 researched notes
wxrks
Translation platform formerly called Bureau Works, priced by processed words per year with unlimited seats and a real free tier
Free, then $38/mo12 researched notes

Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Smartcat, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

Best Translation software alternatives

View all Translation software