Crowdin vs Weblate vs Lokalise vs PO-File: Honest Comparison
A vendor-written comparison that spends more words on where our own tool loses than where it wins. Starts with the category error behind most of these articles — three of the four are translation management platforms and one is a file tool, so a feature-for-feature table is meaningless. Then the question that actually decides it (who produces the translations), and the part no comparison covers properly: what each meter counts. Crowdin bills hosted words — source words multiplied by target languages, so a 12,000-word catalog in twelve languages is 144,000 on the meter. Weblate counts strings across all used languages. Lokalise repriced in late 2025 to processed words with unlimited hosted words and translator seats. We bill source characters, per use. Three real catalogs priced end to end through all four, including the SaaS case where our published quotas simply do not fit. Plus gettext fidelity per tool, git and CI models, AI billing, the hidden costs (the hosted-corpus ratchet, seat definitions, what self-hosting Weblate really takes, VAT), an explicit list of six situations where PO-File is the wrong tool, a decision table, and how to leave any of them without losing your translation memory.