WebTranslateIt vs Crowdin

Both are established translation management platforms and both will do the core job. The honest summary is that they are aimed at different sizes of problem, and the pricing models differ in a way that matters more than any feature comparison: Crowdin meters words multiplied by target languages, we meter source segments. Below about three languages that favours them. Past ten it stops being close.

Pricing and features below were checked on 11 September 2026 against crowdin.com/pricing and our own pricing page. Both products change; verify before deciding.

The pricing model difference#

This is the part worth understanding first, because it determines the answer for most teams.

Crowdin prices on hosted words. Their pricing page defines the term precisely: hosted words are “the number of words that should be translated multiplied by the number of the project’s target languages.” Two multipliers are in play — how wordy your content is, and how many languages you ship.

WebTranslateIt prices on source segments. A segment is one string in your source language file. Not a word, not a translation. Translations do not count toward the total at all, so a target language is free. Every plan carries unlimited languages and unlimited projects.

Concretely: a product with 5,000 source segments costs the same here whether you ship it in two languages or twenty. On a hosted-word model that expansion is a tenfold increase in billable volume for identical source content.

What that does to the bill#

Take a product with 10,000 source segments — a mid-sized application. At five words per segment that is roughly 50,000 source words. On our side it sits on Premium at €165/month billed annually, or €1,980 a year, and that number does not move again. On a hosted-word model it is 50,000 multiplied by however many languages you ship.

Read the second row against the last. At two languages Crowdin is cheaper and they win. At ten, the same content needs their Team+ plan at €4,808 a year against our €1,980 — we are roughly 40% of their price for identical source material. At seventeen it is past what Team+ includes altogether.

This is the single most common reason teams move to us, and the shape is consistent: a company translating a mid-sized product into fifteen or twenty languages tends to arrive from a word-metered plan and land on a bill around half what they were paying, for the same content and the same language count. Nothing clever is happening — one model multiplies by language count and the other does not.

The direction is not automatic, either. Multiply your average words per segment by your language count: a low number means a word-based plan is genuinely cheaper for you, and a short-string mobile UI in two languages is a shape where Crowdin wins on price and we do not. Why translation software charges per word works both cases through.

The published numbers#

Crowdin, billed annually, checked 11 September 2026:

Prices exclude VAT. Above each tier’s included volume, hosted words are sold as add-ons.

WebTranslateIt, billed annually: €65/month for 5,000 segments, €165 for 10,000, €332 for 50,000 — €780, €1,980 and €3,984 a year. Monthly billing is €79, €199 and €399. Unlimited languages and projects on every plan.

The entry plans, on the same basis#

“60K hosted words” and “5,000 segments” cannot be compared directly — a segment is a string rather than a word, so it is several words before language multiplication enters at all. The honest question is how much source content each entry plan actually holds at a given language count:

At two languages Crowdin’s Pro plan holds more content than our Starter and costs less — they win, clearly. At five it holds less than half what ours does, and at twenty about an eighth. The crossover sits around three or four target languages.

Both have a free tier, and theirs is usually bigger#

We have a free Micro plan — 500 source segments, 10 users, unlimited languages and projects, machine translation included with a 100,000 character monthly quota. Crowdin’s free tier is 60K hosted words with one private project, one integration and unlimited translators.

Applying the same arithmetic, at five words per segment:

Crowdin’s free tier is more generous for almost any realistic project. Ours only pulls ahead past roughly thirty languages, which is not where most people evaluating a free tier are. If you want the most capable free plan in this category, take theirs.

For open source and non-profit projects, the comparison inverts. We give the full Enterprise plan free, on request — 50,000 source segments, unlimited users, languages and projects, teams, auto-translate and machine translation. Crowdin’s free plan is 60K hosted words, which at ten target languages is roughly 1,200 segments of source content. If you maintain a widely-translated open source or non-profit project, ask us.

Where Crowdin is genuinely better#

A comparison page that finds no advantages in the competitor is marketing, not information. Crowdin is a larger product and it shows in several places:

Integration breadth. Crowdin maintains a large marketplace of pre-built integrations and apps. If you need a connector for a specific CMS, help desk or design tool, they are more likely to have it already built.

A translator marketplace. You can source and pay translation vendors inside the platform. WebTranslateIt has no equivalent — you bring your own translators or agency.

Crowdin Enterprise. A separate product with private organization features, aimed at companies that need that structure. If your procurement process requires it, that is a decisive difference.

Vendor scale. For some buyers, a larger company with a bigger compliance and support organisation is the requirement, independent of the product.

A more generous free tier and a cheaper entry point. We both have a free plan, but theirs holds more content at any language count below about thirty, and Pro is €45/month against our €65. If you are small and staying small, that is simply better value.

Crowdin AI on every tier, including the free one — so machine translation is not a paid upgrade there either.

If any of those describe your situation, Crowdin is the better choice and you should take it.

Where WebTranslateIt fits better#

Predictable cost as you add languages. Covered above, and the reason most teams who switch give.

Simplicity. A smaller product with fewer concepts to learn. Teams that want a tool for translating their language files, rather than a localization platform to administer, generally get running faster.

Unlimited projects and users on every plan. No per-seat pricing to reason about, and no incentive to under-provision access — a translator who cannot get into the tool is a bottleneck.

Longevity. WebTranslateIt has been running since 2008 and is independently owned. There is no acquisition roadmap and no history of pricing being restructured after an investment round. For a system you are embedding in your build pipeline, that stability has a value that is hard to see on a feature grid.

Data sovereignty#

This is not a differentiator between these two, and it would be dishonest to present it as one. Both companies are incorporated in the EU:

• WebTranslateIt Software S.L. — Spain.
• Crowdin OÜ — Estonia. Their terms are governed by Estonian law with jurisdiction in Harju County.

On the contracting entity, EU incorporation does not separate us. It separates both of us from the US-incorporated platforms in this category — Transifex and Lokalise are both Delaware entities — so it is worth applying across a wider shortlist, just not this pair.

The layer where we do differ is who operates the machines, and for most sovereignty policies that is the layer that decides it. Crowdin’s security page states they use “Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers for our computing infrastructure, with geographical restrictions in place to ensure data processing is limited to specific countries”. We run on Hetzner, a German provider independently audited to ISO 27001 and ISO 9001.

An EU region is not an EU jurisdiction#

This is the part a hosting page invites you to misread. Selecting an EU region on a US-operated cloud tells you where the bytes sit. It does not tell you who can compel their disclosure, because US law binds the provider rather than the location:

A provider of electronic communication service or remote computing service shall comply with the obligations of this chapter to preserve, backup, or disclose the contents of a wire or electronic communication and any record or other information pertaining to a customer or subscriber within such provider’s possession, custody, or control, regardless of whether such communication, record, or other information is located within or outside of the United States.

— 18 U.S.C. § 2713, as amended by the CLOUD Act

Read the last clause. AWS Frankfurt and AWS Virginia sit under the same legal reach. Region is a latency and paperwork decision, not a sovereignty one — and an EU company running on a US hyperscaler still has a US-controlled entity in its processing chain, one that can be ordered to produce what it holds.

Two clarifications, because this argument is easy to overstate and we would rather make it accurately:

This is not a claim that AWS is insecure. It is excellent infrastructure with real certifications, and Amazon resists overbroad orders. The question is jurisdiction, not competence — a different axis entirely.

Transfers to US providers are lawful. The EU–US Data Privacy Framework adequacy decision has been in force since July 2023 and remains so, though an appeal against it is pending before the Court of Justice as of September 2026. But an adequacy decision governs whether you may send data; it does not remove a US provider’s obligation to produce it. Lawful transfer and immunity from legal process are different things, and only the first is settled.

So: if your requirement is GDPR compliance, an EU region on AWS meets it comfortably. If your requirement is that no US-controlled entity can be compelled to produce your content, Crowdin’s Estonian incorporation does not deliver it, because Amazon rather than Crowdin OÜ operates the servers.

The questions worth asking#

Three, in the order that actually narrows a shortlist:

1. Who do you contract with? Sets governing law and which regulator hears a complaint. Both of us: EU.
2. Who operates the infrastructure? Sets who else can be compelled. Us: Hetzner, German. Crowdin: Amazon, American.
3. Which sub-processors touch the content? Machine translation engines, analytics and support tooling can route strings somewhere the hosting page never mentions. Ours are in our security policy.

“Which region holds the data” is deliberately absent. It is the question most often answered and the least often decisive.

Feature comparison#

The core capabilities are broadly comparable, and any modern platform will have most of them:

Feature grids flatter whoever writes them, so treat this as orientation rather than evidence. The differences that will actually affect you are the pricing model, the file formats you need parsed correctly, and whether the sync fits your pipeline.

How to actually decide#

Test with your real files. Not a sample — your actual language files, including the awkward format. How a platform round-trips your placeholders, plural forms and comments is the thing that determines daily experience, and it is only visible with real data. Both offer free trials.

Model both pricing structures against your projected language count, not your current one. The question is what this costs in two years when you support twelve languages, not what it costs today with three.

Check the export path before you commit. Translation memory as TMX, terminology, translations in their original formats. This applies to us as much as to anyone — a platform that makes leaving difficult is telling you something.

Try the sync. Push and pull from a branch, run it in CI, see how it behaves when a source string is deleted. This is where an integration either fits your workflow or fights it, and a demo will not show you.

The short version#

Crowdin is the broader platform, with more integrations, a translator marketplace, an enterprise tier, a better free plan and a cheaper entry price. Choose it if you are shipping two or three languages, or if you need that breadth.

WebTranslateIt is smaller, simpler, independently run since 2008, includes machine translation on every plan, and prices on source segments — so the language count stops appearing on the invoice. Choose it if you already ship more than a handful of languages, or expect to. For a mid-sized product at ten languages that is €1,980 a year against €4,808; at fifteen or twenty the gap widens again.

Both are EU companies, so sovereignty does not separate them — it separates both from the US-incorporated options.

Both are reasonable choices, and which one is right turns on a single number: how many languages you ship. Calculate it rather than guess.