Tolgee vs Locize: Which Localization Platform for Product Teams (2026)
By Jan Cizmar. Last updated 4 August 2026.
The short answer
Choose Tolgee if you want an open-source core you can read, in-context editing on every plan including the free one, and an information security management system certified to ISO 27001, not just a policy page. Same answer if translation data may have to sit on your own infrastructure one day.
Choose Locize if you ship white-label products and need multi-tenancy, or if you need explicit versions mapped to releases. Both are managed services with a free tier, so neither choice means running infrastructure.
At a glance
| Capability | Tolgee | Locize |
|---|---|---|
| ISO 27001 certified | Yes | No, they describe a security program but hold no third-party certificate |
| Review workflow | Review states and comments, every plan | Their 4th tier, Growth, $49/mo |
| In-context editing | Every plan, in any web framework: React, Vue, Angular, Svelte or plain JS | Yes, on the live page, via their locizify script tag |
| Open source | Yes, permissively licensed | No |
| Self-hosting | Free up to 10 users; a license lifts that and unlocks the paid features | Not self-serve, only under an enterprise agreement |
| Activity log: who changed which string, and when | Every plan | Their top tier, Enterprise, $199/mo |
| CDN delivery | Every plan, unlimited downloads, no rate limit | Every plan, metered by downloads; project blocked over quota |
| Bring your own LLM key | Every plan; your own key doesn't spend MT credits | AI on all paid plans; own key from their 5th tier, Professional, $99/mo |
| Glossary | Our 1st paid tier, Team | Their 4th tier, Growth, $49/mo |
| Branching | Our 3rd paid tier, Advanced | Their 4th tier, Growth, capped at 3 branches |
| Multi-tenancy for white-label products | Not supported | Their 4th tier, Growth |
| Single sign-on | Our top tier, Enterprise; one setup covers the whole organization | $20/mo per project add-on from their 5th tier, Professional; free on their top tier, Enterprise |
| Support | Our 1st paid tier, Team; premium support on Enterprise | Email support for everyone; no paid tiers published |
| Free plan | 3 users, 500 keys, free for as long as you want it | 1 user, 2 languages, and only after a 14-day trial |
What is Tolgee?
Tolgee is an open-source localization platform with a free plan and four paid tiers: Team, Business, Advanced and Enterprise. It handles all the major localization file formats, ships a CLI and a REST API on every plan, and gives translators and product managers a UI they work in without touching code.
Developers get Tolgee’s SDKs for React, Vue, Angular, Svelte and more, plus in-context editing on the running web app. You can run it on Tolgee Cloud or self-host the server for free.
What is Locize?
Locize is a managed translation management service built and run by the team behind i18next. It delivers translations over a metered CDN, understands i18next plural and context rules natively in its editor, and offers versions mapped to releases plus multi-tenant projects.
Locize sells two plan families. One is a ladder of seven fixed plans: Free, Starter, Starter-Plus, Growth, Professional, Professional-Plus and Enterprise. The other is a usage-based plan that drops most caps and bills for what you actually use.
The fixed plans cap languages, namespaces (the separate translation files you split an app into), versions, users, branches and tenants separately, so where a feature sits on that ladder decides what it costs you. The usage-based plan drops the language, user and namespace caps in exchange for metered billing.
It’s closed source, and they only offer self-hosting on enterprise terms.
Is Locize enterprise ready?
Depends what your security review asks for. Their security page describes an information security management system, but claims no third-party certification, so there is no ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certificate to put in a vendor questionnaire.
The controls a larger organization expects sit high on their ladder. The audit log appears only on Enterprise, their seventh tier at $199/mo. SAML SSO is a $20/mo per-project add-on that starts on their fifth tier, so a company with ten projects pays ten times. Self-hosting is not self-serve at all; it is only available under an enterprise agreement.
There is also an operational edge worth checking with your platform team. On their fixed plans, going 10% past your included translation downloads blocks the project rather than billing the overage, which is a failure mode most procurement checklists do not have a question for.
Where Tolgee stands out
Non-engineers get a workspace of their own. Review states, comments, translation memory and a full activity log ship on every plan, the free one included. Tasks and assignment, QA checks and granular per-language permissions come with Business and Advanced, the middle two paid tiers, as your process gets more formal.
Not tied to one framework or one language. All the major file formats, a CLI and a REST API ship on every plan.
In-context editing on every plan, the free one included. It runs through Tolgee’s web SDKs, so it works in a browser-rendered app: React, Vue, Angular, Svelte or plain JS. A translator opens your running app, clicks the string, and fixes it there.
Screenshot capture is on every plan, and those screenshots feed the AI translator, so you capture the context once and it works twice.
ISO 27001, actually certified. Tolgee’s information security management system is certified to ISO 27001.
Certification is what a security questionnaire asks for, and a policy page is a different answer.
AI translation that sees your app. Tolgee’s AI translator uses screenshots, key and project descriptions, language notes and translation memory. With SDK 5.9.0 or newer it also uses the code context the SDK gathers about where a key actually renders.
Point it at OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure OpenAI, Google Gemini or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint with your own keys, on any plan including the free one. Translations run against your key don’t spend Tolgee MT credits, so you pay your provider and nothing else.
You can run it yourself. The Tolgee server is open source and free to run for up to 10 users, with the same editor, SDKs, AI translation and content delivery. Past 10 users, or for the paid features, you buy a self-hosted license. Locize only offers self-hosting on enterprise terms, so if your security review ends with “the translations can’t leave our infrastructure,” that difference decides the evaluation on its own.
Where Locize falls short
Hard caps that stop your project. Exceed 110% of your included standard CDN downloads on a fixed plan and Locize automatically blocks the project, after a warning email. On the Free plan it unpublishes your translations instead. They document both on their own pricing page.
Think about what that means in production. If your app fetches translations from their CDN at runtime, a traffic spike doesn’t cost you money, it stops your delivery until someone notices the email and upgrades the plan. A marketing campaign, a bot crawl or a bad cache header can all get you there, and download volume isn’t a number most teams forecast.
Tolgee meters keys, seats and MT credits. Go over on a paid plan and we bill the overage; nothing stops serving.
The activity log means their top plan. On Locize’s fixed plans the audit log appears only on the Enterprise card, at $199/mo. For a team that has to show an auditor who changed which string, that means buying the $199/mo plan for one feature.
Canceling goes through support. Locize’s terms say that to cancel your subscription “you must contact Locize support at support@locize.com.” In Tolgee you cancel from the billing screen in your own account.
Where Locize has the edge
A drop-in script for sites without i18n. locizify localizes a page from a script tag with no code changes, which is genuinely less work than any SDK integration if your site has no i18n at all.
It works by rewriting the page in the browser after it loads. That’s what makes it so easy to add, and it’s also the trade: it can hurt your SEO, because the translated text isn’t in the page you serve. For a product already running i18next, both tools are a backend swap instead.
Multi-tenancy. Tenant projects inherit from a parent, with per-tenant overrides and CDN delivery, from Growth up. Tolgee has no equivalent, so if you ship white-label, that’s a real reason to pick them.
Versions as first-class objects. Locize separates versions from branches, so v1.0 and v2.0 publish independently and delivery maps to your release cycle. Tolgee has branches but no separate version objects: a branch can hold a release’s strings and a delivery configuration can pin to it, but there’s no v1.0/v2.0 concept on top.
i18next plural syntax in the editor. Their editor natively parses i18next v3 and v4 syntax, along with Vue i18n, ICU MessageFormat, Fluent, Polyglot and more. Tolgee standardizes on ICU MessageFormat and imports and exports i18next JSON, XLIFF and PO among others.
SSO you can buy without talking to anyone. Locize sells SAML SSO as an add-on for $20/mo per project. It starts on their fifth tier, Professional, and is included on their top tier.
Both connect to your company identity provider, so Okta, Entra or Google Workspace work either way. Theirs is a self-serve purchase, ours is a contract.
All of that comes on their terms: closed source, and self-hosting only under an enterprise agreement.
Switching from Locize to Tolgee
Export your namespaces from Locize as JSON or XLIFF and import them into Tolgee. Both are standard formats and both tools handle them, so the strings and their translations move cleanly. What a file export doesn’t carry is history: comments, past changes and who made them stay in Locize, so keep that account readable until you’re settled.
You can move keys, translations, tags and namespaces through Tolgee’s REST API too. It’s on every plan, so you can script the migration instead of clicking through it. If you use i18next, @tolgee/i18next keeps your existing setup and swaps only the backend.
Plan for namespaces mapping to Tolgee namespaces, and for rebuilding your delivery configuration. Tolgee Content Delivery gives you CDN-backed delivery on Free, with one configuration. You’ll set it up again, but you don’t lose it.
In our experience the export and import take an afternoon. Budget roughly another day, and it goes on three things.
Namespaces map one to one, so that part is mechanical, but anything you split by feature rather than by page tends to want reorganizing once you can see it in one place. Plural forms are the second: both tools speak ICU, but keys written against i18next’s own plural suffixes come across as separate keys rather than one plural, and those need merging by hand. Third is the delivery configuration, which you rebuild rather than migrate.
Budget more if you run many namespaces or versions. Migration time grows with how many namespaces and versions you have, not with how many keys.
Which one should you choose?
Choose Tolgee if any of these are true:
Your security review asks whether the vendor’s ISMS is ISO 27001 certified, not whether it has a policy page.
You need an activity log without buying the top plan.
Your localization managers and translators need somewhere to work, with review states and comments.
You want AI translation that reads screenshots, plus the code context the SDK gathers on Cloud.
Translation data may have to sit on your own infrastructure one day.
Already on i18next? @tolgee/i18next keeps your setup and changes only the backend.
Choose Locize if any of these are true:
You ship a white-label product and need multi-tenancy.
You need explicit versions mapped to your releases.
You want translations on an existing site with a script tag and no SDK work.
Create a free Tolgee account. Export your Locize files as JSON, import them, and you have a full working copy in Tolgee today, to evaluate against your live setup before you cut over.
FAQ
Do I have to self-host Tolgee?
No. Tolgee Cloud is a managed service with a free tier, and it’s what most teams use. You get CDN-backed content delivery, the REST API, the CLI, in-context editing and the MCP server, which lets AI coding assistants read and write your translations. All with a free account and no card. Self-hosting is an option, not a requirement. It’s there for teams whose data can’t leave their own infrastructure. The server is free to run for up to 10 users; past that, or for the paid features, you buy a self-hosted license.
What does a Tolgee Enterprise plan include?
Everything in Advanced, so branching, granular per-language permissions, tasks, QA checks, glossaries and the activity log, plus single sign-on over OIDC, premium support, a dedicated Slack channel, a named account manager, team training and prioritized feature requests. You negotiate keys, seats and MT credits instead of taking fixed limits, and self-hosted deployments get the license and hands-on support to run Tolgee on your own infrastructure. Talk to us about Enterprise. Tell us your team size and requirements and we’ll quote it.
Are most Tolgee features gated behind Enterprise?
No. Everything you’d want to evaluate is on every plan, the free one included: content delivery, in-context editing, AI translation with your own LLM keys, the activity log, project translation memory and the MCP server. You get one content delivery configuration on the free plan. The paid tiers add process features as your workflow gets more formal: glossaries, webhooks, custom content storage and translation ordering (Tolgee Cloud) from Team; QA checks, tasks, prompt customization, translation memory management and multiple delivery configurations from Business; branching, granular permissions, labels and the Slack integration from Advanced. Enterprise adds single sign-on on top of all of it, with the support and contract terms above.
Are Tolgee’s SDKs open source?
Yes, and public at github.com/tolgee/tolgee-js. MIT for the React, Vue, Angular and Svelte SDKs and the @tolgee/i18next bridge, BSD-3-Clause for the @tolgee/web runtime they sit on. The platform is Apache-2.0 outside a separately licensed directory for enterprise features.
Does Tolgee serve translations from a CDN?
Yes. Tolgee Content Delivery publishes your localization files to CDN-backed cloud storage, so translations update without a redeploy, and your app fetches a static file from a CDN rather than calling an API at runtime. It’s there from the free plan up. You get one delivery configuration on Free and Team, and multiple from Business. From Team you can publish to your own S3 or Azure bucket instead.
Does Tolgee’s editor understand ICU plurals and placeholders?
Yes. Tolgee standardizes on ICU MessageFormat, so plurals and selects get a structured editor, and Tolgee treats a placeholder as a placeholder rather than loose text you might overwrite. Automated QA checks run on top of that, from Business.
Does Tolgee’s AI translation follow a glossary and brand voice?
Yes. Translation memory feeds the model as context, and your glossary marks terms that must never be translated, terms whose capitalization must be kept, and terms the model must not use, from the Team plan. Writing your own prompt and testing it in the AI playground starts at Business. The translator sees your screenshots, and with SDK 5.9.0 or newer it also uses the code context the SDK gathers about where a key actually renders.
Does Tolgee support bringing your own LLM keys?
Yes, on every plan including the free one. Set your providers per organization on Cloud, or in server config when self-hosted. Translations run against your own key don’t spend Tolgee MT credits. You can use OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Self-hosted, you can bring your own keys for DeepL, Google, AWS, Azure and Baidu too.
Does Tolgee support branching?
Yes, with merge and conflict resolution, from the Advanced plan. Each delivery configuration pins to a branch, so a production endpoint publishes from main while a preview endpoint serves a feature branch.
Can I order professional translation from inside Tolgee?
Yes, on Tolgee Cloud from the Team plan up. You pick from a list of agencies rather than one baked-in integration, request a quote, and track the order as a task. Agency members appear in your member list, marked as agency, with permissions you control.
Does Tolgee have an MCP server for AI coding assistants?
Yes, with 22 tools covering keys, translations, languages, tags, namespaces, branches and batch operations. The three branch tools need branching, so they’re available from Advanced. It’s hosted at app.tolgee.io/mcp/developer for Cloud and built into every self-hosted instance.
Is Tolgee’s free plan bigger than Locize’s?
Yes, on the limits you hit first. Tolgee Free gives you 3 users, 500 keys, 10,000 machine-translation credits and CDN-backed content delivery, with no card and no trial clock. Locize Free gives you 1 user, 2,000 words and 2 languages. Their pricing page says every account starts on a 14-day trial. You pick a plan during or after it, Free included, or Locize deletes the project.
Will Tolgee block my project if I go over my plan limits?
On our paid Cloud plans, Team, Business and Advanced, no. They’re pay as you go, so we bill the overage and your project keeps serving. Tolgee Free is a fixed plan. At 500 keys you can’t add key 501 until you upgrade or delete some, but everything already there keeps serving. Locize blocks the project on its fixed plans when standard CDN downloads pass 110% of the included volume, and unpublishes translations on its Free plan.
Can I use Tolgee with i18next?
Yes. @tolgee/i18next connects Tolgee to an existing i18next setup, so you keep your current translation calls and change only the backend. Tolgee also ships its own SDKs for React, Vue, Angular and Svelte if you’d rather move fully.
Is Tolgee ISO 27001 certified?
Yes. Tolgee’s information security management system is certified to ISO 27001. A self-hosted deployment runs under your own information security policy. Locize describes an information security management system on its security page but claims no third-party certification.
How long does switching from Locize to Tolgee take?
In our experience, an afternoon for a straightforward export and import. Export from Locize as JSON or XLIFF, import into Tolgee. Rebuilding the delivery configuration and doing a review pass usually adds a day. For anything bigger, script it through Tolgee’s REST API, which every plan has.
Methodology
Everything here comes from primary sources: both companies’ public documentation and pricing pages, plus Locize’s security page, terms of service and their own comparison page, checked on 4 August 2026. We checked Tolgee’s plan gating against our public documentation and confirmed it matches what the product enforces.
Locize figures come from locize.com/pricing with the currency selector on USD. Locize plan names are from their fixed plans; their usage-based plan meters differently and publishes no feature list.
Switching-time figures are our own experience from customer migrations, not a published benchmark.
We refresh this page quarterly, because both products move.
Sources
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Contact us
Not sure whether Tolgee is a great match for you?
Just reach out to us at info@tolgee.io,
check our community Slack, Github discussions or Docs.
Marketa Cizmar
Co-founder & COO