You don't need to spend $500/month on localization. Here's what common tools actually cost once you factor in team size, string volume, and usage limits.
Localization pricing pages are hard to compare. Entry prices look low, seat and usage limits sit further down the page, and the plan you actually need can cost several times the headline number. For startups with tight budgets and small teams, that makes tool selection genuinely difficult.
We compared common localization tools for a specific profile: a startup with 2-5 developers, 1-3 apps, 2,000-5,000 translation keys, and 3-8 target languages. Here's what it actually costs.
Prices checked September 22, 2026.
| Tool | Advertised price | What a 3-person startup actually pays | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Polyglot | Free / $49 Pro / $149 Team | $149/mo ($119 billed annually) | Pro has 1 developer seat; Team has 5; reviewer seats are free |
| SimpleLocalize | Free / €12 Developer / €35 Team | €12 - €35/mo | Translation memory on all plans |
| Crowdin | Free / $59 Pro / $179 Team | $59 - $179/mo | Metered by hosted words and manager seats |
| Tolgee | Free cloud plan; free to self-host | €0 - ~€58+/mo | Paid cloud from ~€58/mo billed annually |
| Phrase Strings | From $525/mo (billed annually) | $525/mo | Includes 15 seats; the $27 Freelancer plan is a CAT plan without Strings seats |
| Lokalise | From $149/mo | $149 - $379/mo | No free plan (14-day trial); metered by processed words |
| Transifex | From $160/mo ($135 annual) | $135 - $236/mo | Starter to Growth; free for unfunded open-source projects |
The "advertised price" column is what you see on the pricing page. The "actually pays" column is what happens when you add your real team size and project requirements.
Seats and usage meters decide the bill more often than the headline price does. Phrase's $27 Freelancer plan is a CAT plan without Strings seats — Phrase Strings starts at $525/month billed annually. Lokalise meters processed words and advanced seats. Crowdin meters hosted words and manager seats. Work out which limit you'll hit first before you compare.
This is the cost that never appears on any pricing page. Before most TMS platforms can help, your translatable strings need to live in translation files. For a Next.js app with 200 components, getting them there by hand can take days — finding hardcoded strings, wrapping them in a translation function, and adding them to your JSON files.
At a developer's hourly rate, the extraction labor for a medium-sized app can run $2,000-5,000 in developer time. Polyglot's scanner reports hardcoded-string candidates and applies wrapping plans you review first, which takes much of the searching and rewriting off your plate. You still review the patch, and unsupported patterns stay manual.
AI and machine translation are packaged differently everywhere. Lokalise includes AI/MT word allowances per plan, Crowdin offers Crowdin AI and machine translation engines, and SimpleLocalize connects AI auto-translation providers. Check what's included and what's billed on usage. With Polyglot, LLM translation is part of every plan, up to its lifetime source-string allowance: 500 strings on Free, 10,000 on Pro at $49/month ($39/month billed annually). Teams needing multiple developer seats use Team at $149/month ($119/month billed annually).
If you just want to know what needs translating, polyglot scan is free and runs locally. No account required. Run it on every project you have.
curl -fsSL https://getpolyglot.ai/install.sh | bash
polyglot scan
Polyglot Pro at $49/month ($39/month billed annually) includes local scanning and wrapping, translation of 10,000 lifetime source strings in up to 5 languages, translation memory, glossary, and local preview for one developer seat. Team includes five developer seats. Reviewers and viewers are free on every plan, so people who only review translations do not consume those seats.
If you need a web dashboard for non-technical translators at a low price, SimpleLocalize has a free plan and paid plans from €12/month. Translation memory is included on all plans.
If you have the infrastructure to self-host, Tolgee's open-source core is free to run. You get a capable TMS with in-context editing — but you pay in ops time, and some features need a paid license. Tolgee also has a free cloud plan if you'd rather not host it.
The DIY approach: use i18next as your runtime library, manually manage JSON files, and use Google Cloud Translation's free usage (the first 500,000 characters each month) for initial translations. This works for 1-2 languages and a small number of strings. It does not scale.
For a startup with 3 developers, 3,000 strings, and 5 target languages:
| Tool | Monthly cost | Annual cost | Includes detection? | Extraction labor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Polyglot Team | $149 | $1,788 ($1,428 billed annually) | Yes | Reduced — you review each plan |
| SimpleLocalize | ~€35 | ~€420 | No | ~$3,000 one-time |
| Crowdin | $59-179 | $708-2,148 | No | ~$3,000 one-time |
| Tolgee Cloud | from ~€58 | from ~€696 | No | ~$3,000 one-time |
| Phrase Strings | $525 | $6,300 | No | ~$3,000 one-time |
| Lokalise | $149-379 | $1,788-4,548 | No | ~$3,000 one-time |
The extraction figures are rough estimates for a medium-sized app. Polyglot Team costs $1,788 in year one on monthly billing ($1,428 billed annually), and a solo developer on Pro pays $588 ($468 billed annually). With the other tools, budget for extraction work on top of the subscription. Polyglot doesn't make that work disappear — you still review each wrapping plan and each generated translation — but it does the searching and rewriting for supported patterns.
For startups: start with Polyglot's free scanner to understand the scope of your i18n work. If you need translation, upgrade to Pro at $49/month ($39/month billed annually), or Team at $149/month ($119/month billed annually) once more than one developer needs a seat.
Start in your terminal
Install the CLI, run a scan, and see exactly what you're missing. Free, no account required.