Both will translate your language files, and for a small project in one or two languages POEditor does it for strikingly little money. The honest summary is that the two pricing pages use the same word to mean different things, and the difference compounds with every language you add. POEditor’s “string” is a term or a translation. Our “segment” is a source string only.
Pricing and features below were checked on 11 September 2026 against poeditor.com/pricing and our own pricing page. Both products change; verify before deciding.
Choose POEditor if
- You ship one target language, or two on a small string count.
- You want the lowest entry price in the category — $17 a month.
- You have many volunteer translators; contributors are unlimited and free.
- You want translation history without buying a mid-tier plan.
- You run an OSI-licensed open source project and want it free without asking.
Choose WebTranslateIt if
- You ship more than two languages, or expect to.
- Your source content is bigger than their ceiling allows — about 9,000 segments at ten languages.
- You want one number on the invoice that stops moving as you expand.
- You need more than 100,000 billable units — they publish no plan above it.
- You need the company you contract with to be in the EU, not only the servers.
The unit is the whole comparison
Their pricing page answers this in its own FAQ, and it is worth quoting exactly:
The number of strings in an account or organization is the sum of terms and translations in all the projects hosted on it.
So a “string” on POEditor is a source term or one translation of it. Fill in a target language and every term in the project is counted a second time. The billable figure is therefore roughly:
source terms × (1 + target languages)
Empty translations do not count, so a half-finished project sits below that number until it is finished — which is a real nuance in their favour, and also means the bill arrives at the moment the work does.
On WebTranslateIt a segment is one string in your source file. Translations are not counted at all, so a target language adds nothing. Every plan carries unlimited languages and unlimited projects.
The two pages use the same vocabulary for quantities that differ by a factor of eleven at ten languages. That is not a trick — their definition is published and clearly worded — but it is the single thing most likely to be misread when the two tabs are open side by side.
This is the same language multiplier Crowdin applies to words, wearing different clothes. Crowdin at least names it in the unit — “hosted words” are defined as words times target languages. “Strings” sounds like it should mean source strings, which is exactly what it means on our page. Read the definition, not the number.
What that does to the bill
Take a product with 5,000 source segments — a mid-sized application, and the size our Starter plan is built for. Here it is €65 a month billed annually, or €780 a year, and that figure does not move again. On POEditor it is 5,000 multiplied by one plus however many languages you ship.
Same 5,000-segment product on every row. The two sides are counted in different units — source segments here, terms plus translations there — so only the orange bars are drawn to scale against each other; our side is a flat rule because the figure never changes. Both columns are annual-billing prices in each vendor’s own currency: ours in euro, theirs in US dollars with their 15% yearly discount applied. No exchange rate of the last decade changes which side is cheaper on any row.
Read the first row against the rest. At one target language POEditor is cheaper and they win — $520 a year against €780, for the same content. At two, the same 5,000 segments become 15,000 strings, push them onto Premium, and the comparison inverts for good. At ten languages they are on their top published plan and we have not moved.
The crossover here is earlier than against any other platform in this category. Against Crowdin it falls at three or four languages; against POEditor it falls at two, because their multiplier applies to a unit that is already a whole string rather than a word. A word-based plan needs several languages before the multiplication overtakes a segment plan, since a segment is several words to begin with. A string-based one needs only the first translation.
In fairness to their pricing, the tiers themselves get better value as you climb, not worse: $17 to $51 is a 3× price rise for 3.3× the capacity, and $136 to $221 is 1.6× for 3.3×. The problem is not the shape of the ladder — it is that the language multiplier pushes you up it much faster than a segment plan would.
The published numbers
POEditor, checked 11 September 2026. Monthly prices; they discount 10% for six-monthly billing and 15% for yearly.
| Plan | Monthly | Yearly equivalent | String limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | — | 1,000 |
| Start | $17 | $14.45/month ($173/year) | 3,000 |
| Plus | $51 | $43.35/month ($520/year) | 10,000 |
| Premium | $136 | $115.60/month ($1,387/year) | 30,000 |
| Enterprise | $221 | $187.85/month ($2,254/year) | 100,000 |
Every plan carries unlimited projects, and every paid plan carries unlimited contributors. Remember that the limit counts terms plus translations.
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. Prices exclude VAT. Unlimited languages and projects on every plan; 10, 50 and unlimited users respectively.
The plans, on the same basis
The only fair way to compare the two is to ask how much source content each plan actually holds at a given language count. Dividing their string limit by one plus the target languages:
| Target languages | Start $17 | Plus $51 | Premium $136 | Enterprise $221 | WTI Starter €79 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,500 | 5,000 | 15,000 | 50,000 | 5,000 |
| 3 | 750 | 2,500 | 7,500 | 25,000 | 5,000 |
| 5 | 500 | 1,667 | 5,000 | 16,667 | 5,000 |
| 10 | 273 | 909 | 2,727 | 9,091 | 5,000 |
| 20 | 143 | 476 | 1,429 | 4,762 | 5,000 |
Figures in source segments. Read the bottom right corner: at twenty target languages, POEditor’s top published plan holds less source content than our entry plan, at roughly three times the price.
The ceiling is the part to check first
Most pricing comparisons are about which column is cheaper. This one has a prior question, because POEditor’s published range stops at 100,000 strings and there is no “contact sales” tier above it.
That ceiling is 50,000 source segments at one target language, about 9,000 at ten, and about 4,700 at twenty. A documentation-heavy product in fifteen languages reaches it at roughly 6,000 source segments — which is not a large product. Our Enterprise plan holds 50,000 source segments at any language count, which is where their entire published range ends.
If your content is growing and your language list is growing, that is the constraint worth modelling before the price.
Both have a free tier, and here ours 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. POEditor’s free plan is 1,000 strings with up to 5 contributors.
Applying the same arithmetic:
| Target languages | POEditor Free | WebTranslateIt Micro |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 500 segments | 500 segments |
| 3 | 250 segments | 500 segments |
| 5 | 167 segments | 500 segments |
| 10 | 91 segments | 500 segments |
At one language the two free tiers are identical; above that ours holds more. Worth noting alongside it: POEditor’s free plan excludes translation memory, translation history and the Git integrations, all of which appear from their $17 Start plan upward. Read that as a narrow win rather than a decisive one — at a single language the two are the same size, and against Crowdin’s free tier ours is not close, which we say plainly on that page.
For open source, they are easier and we are bigger. Software under an OSI-approved licence uses POEditor free of charge, requested through a form in the project settings. We give the full Enterprise plan free, on request — 50,000 source segments, unlimited users, languages and projects. Theirs is less friction; ours is the larger grant, though POEditor does not publish which tier an approved open source project receives, so ask them before assuming. Apply to both.
Where POEditor is genuinely better
A comparison page that finds no advantages in the competitor is marketing, not information. There are several here, and two of them are gaps in our product rather than differences in positioning.
The entry price is the lowest in the category. $17 a month for 3,000 strings, with translation memory, translation history and Git integrations included. Nothing we publish comes close to that number.
Translation history from the entry plan. We gate translation history to our €199 Premium tier; they include it at $17. For a small team that wants to see who changed what, that is a real and awkward difference.
Contributors are unlimited and free on every paid plan. We cap users at 10 on Starter and 50 on Premium. If you run community or volunteer translation with thirty people on two languages, POEditor is dramatically cheaper and the segment arithmetic above never gets a chance to matter.
An official MCP server, on every tier including free. We have no equivalent. If you want an AI agent driving your localization from a terminal, they have shipped that and we have not.
AI translation and AI quality evaluation on every tier, free plan included. We include machine translation on every plan too — Google, Microsoft, Gemini and Mistral under a fair-use character quota — so this is parity rather than a deficit, but their automated quality evaluation has no counterpart here.
Self-serve open source. No email, no conversation, just a form.
If your situation is one target language, a modest string count, or a crowd of volunteer translators, POEditor is the better buy and you should take it.
Where WebTranslateIt fits better
Predictable cost as you add languages. Covered above, and the reason most teams who switch to us give.
Headroom. Our Enterprise plan begins roughly where their published range ends.
File format coverage. We parse 80+ formats. If your awkward file is a .strings, a .resx, a .po, a .ts or something older, the odds are good.
Users at the top end. Unlimited on Enterprise, which removes the seat arithmetic in the other direction.
Longevity and independence. Running since 2008, independently owned, with no acquisition roadmap and no history of pricing being restructured after an investment round.
Data sovereignty
This pairing is unusual, and it is worth setting out precisely rather than scoring points, because POEditor gets the harder half right.
The infrastructure really is European, and they deserve credit for it. Their privacy policy states that “all the data is stored in data centers in EU countries”, with only a name and email going to Stripe in the US. That checks out at the network level: poeditor.com resolves into 194.102.238.0/24, a range registered to a Bucharest company, SC Data Solutions SRL, and routed by GTS Telecom. There is no hyperscaler in the path. That puts them in a small group: of the platforms compared in this cluster, only POEditor, Localazy and WebTranslateIt keep their application off a US-operated cloud — Crowdin, Transifex, Lokalise and Phrase are on AWS, and Tolgee is on Azure.
The company, however, is American. Their terms of service open by naming the operator:
POEditor is operated by CODE WHALE INC., 1004 Sandstone Drive, Jeffersonville, IN 47130, United States
So the entity you contract with is a US corporation, and that is the layer a legal order reaches. 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 final clause. Content held by a US company in a Bucharest data centre is within that company’s possession, custody and control, and the statute says the location does not matter. Choosing genuinely European servers does not cure an American contracting entity — it is the mirror image of the more common arrangement, where an EU company rents an EU region from AWS, and it fails at the opposite layer.
By comparison, WebTranslateIt Software S.L. is incorporated in Spain and runs on Hetzner, a German provider independently audited to ISO 27001 and ISO 9001. No US-controlled entity appears at either layer.
Three fairness points, because this argument is easy to push too far:
This is not a claim that POEditor is careless with data. Their infrastructure choice is better than most of this category’s, and the privacy policy is specific about what leaves the EU. The question is jurisdiction, not competence.
It is not a claim the arrangement is unlawful. Transfers to US providers are covered by the EU–US Data Privacy Framework adequacy decision, in force since July 2023, with an appeal pending before the Court of Justice as of September 2026. Adequacy governs whether you may send data; it does not remove a US entity’s obligation to produce what it holds.
Ask for the paperwork rather than assuming either way. Their published privacy policy, last updated April 2023, does not link to a data processing agreement, standard contractual clauses, or an EU representative under GDPR Article 27. That is not evidence those do not exist — most vendors supply a DPA on request or from a trust centre rather than inside the privacy policy — but for a US-controlled processor of EU customer data they are the documents to have in hand, so ask.
One inconsistency is visible on the page itself: it states that “all other third party services are located within the EU” while its own sub-processor table lists Amazon SES and Google, and their DNS runs on AWS Route 53 with mail on Google Workspace. Those are peripheral services rather than content storage, and the likeliest explanation is a policy that has not kept pace with the stack.
The questions worth asking
- Who do you contract with? Sets governing law and which regulator hears a complaint. Us: Spain. POEditor: Indiana.
- Who operates the infrastructure? Sets who else can be compelled. Us: Hetzner, German. POEditor: a Romanian provider — genuinely European, and better than most of this field.
- Which sub-processors touch the content? Ours are in our security policy.
“Which region holds the data” is deliberately absent. POEditor is the clearest illustration in this category of why: they pass that question comfortably and it settles nothing.
Feature comparison
| WebTranslateIt | POEditor | |
|---|---|---|
| Priced on | source segments | strings (terms + translations) |
| Languages affect price | no | yes, ×(1 + languages) |
| Entry price, billed annually | €65/month | $14.45/month |
| Largest published plan | 50,000 segments, any languages | 100,000 strings |
| Free tier | Micro: 500 segments | 1,000 strings, 5 contributors |
| Open source / non-profit | full Enterprise plan free, on request | free, self-serve, OSI licences |
| Contributors / users | 10 / 50 / unlimited by plan | unlimited on every paid plan |
| Translation memory | ✓ project + shared global | ✓ from Start ($17) |
| Translation history | Premium (€199) | ✓ from Start ($17) |
| Term base / glossary | Premium (€199) | Premium ($136) |
| Machine translation | ✓ Google, Microsoft, Gemini, Mistral — every plan | ✓ AI translation, every plan |
| AI quality evaluation | — | ✓ every plan |
| MCP server | — | ✓ every plan |
| Screenshots for context | ✓ with OCR auto-detect | ✓ |
| CLI and API | ✓ wti |
✓ API on every plan |
| Git integrations | ✓ | ✓ from Start ($17) |
| Webhooks / callbacks | ✓ | Premium ($136) |
| Audit log | Activity Feed, Premium | Plus ($51) |
| SSO | — | Enterprise ($221) |
| Backups | operational, on every plan | user-facing backups, Enterprise ($221) |
| File formats | 80+ | broad, all plans |
| Incorporated | Spain (S.L.) | Indiana, USA |
| Infrastructure | Hetzner (German) | Romanian provider, EU |
| Ownership | independent, since 2008 | — |
Feature grids flatter whoever writes them, so treat this as orientation rather than evidence. Note in particular that they beat us on history, audit logging, SSO and MCP, and that we have no automated quality evaluation.
How to actually decide
Count your target languages, then multiply. This one decision settles most of the comparison. One target language favours them; two or more favours us, and by the second the gap is already wide rather than marginal.
Check your ceiling before your price. Multiply your projected source segments by one plus your projected language count. If the answer is above 100,000, POEditor has no published plan for you and the price comparison is moot.
Count your translators. If you have dozens and few languages, their unlimited-contributor policy may outweigh everything above.
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 what you live with daily, and only real data shows it. Both offer free trials; theirs is 10 days, ours 15.
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.
The short version
POEditor is cheap, capable and genuinely well-hosted, and at one target language it is better value than we are. Its string limit counts terms plus translations, so the bill multiplies with every language you add, and its published range stops at 100,000 of them.
WebTranslateIt prices on source segments, so the language count never reaches the invoice, and our Enterprise plan starts roughly where theirs ends.
Choose POEditor if you ship one language, run on volunteers, or want the cheapest credible entry plan. Choose us if you ship more than two languages, or expect to.
One more thing worth separating from the price: their servers are in the EU and their company is in Indiana. If that distinction matters to your organisation, resolve it before comparing anything else.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the main difference between WebTranslateIt and POEditor?
- What the word 'string' means on each pricing page. POEditor's own FAQ defines its string limit as the sum of terms and translations across your account, so a target language multiplies the count. On WebTranslateIt a segment is a string in your source file only — translations are never counted, and target languages are free. The same 5,000-segment product occupies 5,000 units here and 55,000 on POEditor at ten languages.
- Is POEditor cheaper than WebTranslateIt?
- At one target language, clearly yes — their Plus plan at $51 a month holds the same 5,000 source segments as our €79 Starter. The crossover falls at two target languages, because 5,000 segments in two languages is 15,000 strings and needs their Premium plan at $136. At ten languages the same content needs their top Enterprise plan at $221 a month, against €79 here.
- How many strings does POEditor count for my project?
- Roughly your source term count multiplied by one plus the number of target languages, once those translations are filled in. One thousand source terms in five languages is about 6,000 strings. Empty translations do not count, so a partially translated project sits below that figure until it is finished.
- What is POEditor's largest plan?
- Enterprise at $221 a month, capped at 100,000 strings. That is 50,000 source segments at one target language, about 9,000 at ten, and roughly 4,700 at twenty. Above it there is no published tier. Our €399 Enterprise plan holds 50,000 source segments at any language count.
- Is POEditor a European company?
- Its servers are, and its company is not. Their privacy policy states data is stored in EU data centres, and their domain does resolve to a Romanian network rather than a US hyperscaler. But their terms of service name the operator as Code Whale Inc. of Jeffersonville, Indiana — a US corporation, which is the entity a legal order would reach regardless of where the disks sit.
Keep reading
-
Why does translation software charge per word?
Per-word pricing is inherited from the human translation trade, not designed for software strings. When it works, when it does not, and how to tell which you are.
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WebTranslateIt vs Crowdin
Crowdin bills words × target languages; we bill source segments. Below three languages they win. Above ten, the same content costs less than half here.
-
Best translation management systems in 2026
A buyer's guide to the main TMS platforms: how their pricing models differ, which shape of team each suits, and the questions that actually decide it.
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WebTranslateIt pricing
Segment-based pricing with unlimited languages and projects, a free Micro plan and a 15-day trial.
Put it side by side with your own files
Start a 15-day trial, push the language files you actually ship, and see how the round-trip and the bill compare. Your translation memory imports as TMX, so you arrive with the asset you already paid to build rather than starting it again.