Crowdin
Smartling
| Feature | Crowdin | Smartling |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free / from $40/mo | Contact sales |
| Free Plan | ✓ Yes | ✗ No |
| Rating | 4.4 / 5 | 4.3 / 5 |
| Best For | developers, open-source-projects, product-teams, localization-managers | enterprise-companies, saas-companies, global-marketing-teams, content-teams |
| Founded | 2009 | 2009 |
| Translation Management | ✓ | ✗ |
| Machine Translation | ✓ | ✗ |
| In Context Editing | ✓ | ✗ |
| Github Integration | ✓ | ✗ |
| Quality Assurance | ✓ | ✗ |
| Api | ✓ | ✗ |
| Neural Mt | ✗ | ✓ |
| Translation Memory | ✗ | ✓ |
| Visual Context | ✗ | ✓ |
| Quality Scores | ✗ | ✓ |
| Workflow Automation | ✗ | ✓ |
| Connector Integrations | ✗ | ✓ |
✓ Crowdin Pros
- Free for open source
- GitHub integration
- AI pre-translation
- Good community features
✗ Crowdin Cons
- Complex for beginners
- Pricing per words
- Advanced features locked
✓ Smartling Pros
- Hybrid human + AI translation
- Visual context for translators
- Excellent quality management
- Strong CMS and code integrations
✗ Smartling Cons
- Enterprise pricing (not transparent)
- Overkill for small projects
- Setup requires technical resources
The Verdict
Crowdin is built for developers and open source projects, with a focus on translation-management and machine-translation. Smartling targets enterprise companies and saas companies and leads with neural-mt and translation-memory.
Smartling uses custom enterprise pricing, while Crowdin starts at $40/mo — a tangible advantage for teams with a fixed budget.
Crowdin has a free plan, which gives it a meaningful edge for individuals and small teams exploring their options. Smartling requires a paid subscription from day one.
This is a genuinely close comparison. If you can, sign up for both free trials (where available) and run a one-week test with your actual team tasks before deciding.