Smartlingvs
Phrase
Phrase: A software-first platform if you want the tooling without the vendor also selling you the translation work
Smartling
Enterprise translation management sold alongside first-party language services priced per word
As of 31 August 2026, Smartling's pricing is not published; the vendor quotes on request. A translation management platform whose vendor also sells you the translation work, at published per-word rates through a network of about 4,000 linguists. Softwr lists it under Translation. Smartling is made by Smartling, Inc., available on Web, API.
Overview
What Smartling does
Smartling is a cloud translation management system that holds translation memory and glossaries, routes content through configurable workflows, and provides a browser CAT editor with visual context so a translator sees the string in the page it will appear on. Content reaches it through connectors for content management systems, marketing platforms, repositories and design tools, or through the API. The company is Smartling, Inc., founded in 2009 and based in New York with an office in Dublin. The commercial distinction is that Smartling is a language services company with software attached rather than a software vendor. It publishes per-word rates for the work itself, starting at 0.0075 USD per word for machine translation, 0.06 USD for AI translation, 0.12 USD for AI translation with human review and 0.20 USD for human and creative translation. It does not publish the platform subscription. That inversion matters when you build a budget: the number you can look up is the variable cost that scales with your content, and the number you cannot look up is the fixed one. It also means the vendor earns more when more words route through it, which is a different set of incentives from a company that sells you a licence and does not care who translates. Buyers are marketing and product organisations at large companies that want one supplier accountable for both the tooling and the linguistic output, and that would rather hold one contract than manage a platform vendor and three agencies. The trade-off is dependency. Translation memory is retained for 180 days on the entry Core tier and unlimited storage is an Enterprise capability, so the asset that makes switching cheap is itself tiered, and an organisation that lets its memory age out on the cheaper tier has quietly paid the exit cost in advance.
What people use it for
- A company that wants one supplier answerable for both the translation platform and the quality of the translated output
- Marketing sites where a translator needs to see the rendered page, not a spreadsheet of strings, to get tone and length right
- Replacing a platform vendor plus several separate agencies with a single contract and a single invoice
- Content operations at a volume where per-word rates are the dominant cost and the tooling fee is noise
The honest half
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 Smartling.
- Translation memory is retained for only 180 days on the Core tier, so the asset that would make a future migration cheap expires on the plan most likely to be used by a team testing the water.
- The platform subscription is not published while the per-word service rates are, so you can model the variable cost precisely and cannot model the fixed cost at all until you have been through a sales sizing exercise.
- The vendor earns on words routed through it, so the commercial relationship rewards volume flowing to Smartling rather than volume being avoided through better reuse of existing memory.
- Per-word pricing multiplies by target language, so adding a market to a product that ships in twelve languages costs a thirteenth of the current translation bill rather than a marginal amount.
- Minimum contract term, minimum annual spend and whether individual connectors carry their own charge are all absent from the public site, so three of the numbers that determine total cost only appear inside a proposal.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Smartling
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.
- SmartlingvsCrowdin
Crowdin: Better value for software and product localisation, with published pricing and a strong developer workflow
- SmartlingvsLokalise
Lokalise: A closer fit for product teams shipping strings from repositories rather than marketing content from a CMS
Pricing
What Smartling costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Core
On request
- Subscription price not published
- Basic workflow, user and project management
- Browser CAT editor with visual context
- Translation memory retained for 180 days
- Essential reporting and basic quality review
Enterprise
On request
- Subscription price not published
- Fully configurable dynamic workflows
- Translation memory with unlimited storage
- Full linguistic quality assurance suite
- Sized by the vendor against your content, workflows and languages
Language services, charged separately per word
On request
- Machine translation from 0.0075 USD per word
- AI translation from 0.06 USD per word
- AI translation with human review from 0.12 USD per word
- Human and creative translation from 0.20 USD per word
- Rates are published as starting figures and carry conditions
Capabilities
Features
Translation memory
Stores approved translations for reuse, with unlimited retention only on the Enterprise tier
Visual context CAT editor
Shows translators the rendered page or screen the string appears in rather than a bare list
Configurable workflows
Routes content through translation, review and approval steps with per-language rules
First-party language services
Machine, AI and human translation delivered by Smartling at published per-word rates
Linguistic quality assurance
Scored quality review against an MQM style framework, with a fuller suite on Enterprise
Connectors and API
Pulls content from content management systems, marketing tools, repositories and design files
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.
Is there a free plan?
The Core tier is advertised as free to start, but translation memory is kept for only 180 days on it and any production deployment is a quoted subscription. Treat it as an evaluation route, not a plan.
What does the platform actually cost?
Smartling does not publish it. The published figures are per-word service rates. Expect an annual subscription sized against your content volume, workflows and language count, quoted after a scoping call.
Can I use Smartling with my own translators?
Yes, the platform works with your own vendors and freelancers. You then pay for software and forgo the services revenue the pricing model is built around, which weakens your negotiating position on the subscription.
What happens to my translation memory if I leave?
Translation memory is exportable, but on Core it only covers the previous 180 days, so leaving after two years on the entry tier means most of the asset is already gone.
Keep looking
Where to go from Smartling
- Smartling alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Smartling pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Smartling badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Translation softwareThe full category
- Best Translation softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Translation software for
Compare Smartling with
- Crowdin
- Phrase
- Lokalise
- XTM Cloud
- Smartcat
- Plunet
- wxrks
- XTRF
- SDL Trados Studio
- Localazy
- Wordbee
- Systran
- Reverso
- Sonix
- Pontoon
- wxrks
- XTRF
- Localazy
Other Translation software
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Free, then $34/mo12 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Smartling, 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.
More on Smartling
Smartling alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Smartling pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare Smartling
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