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Shipi18n vs Crowdin
Crowdin is a localization management platform popular with open-source projects and community-driven translation.
TL;DR
Choose Crowdin if you need enterprise features, professional human translators, or complex multi-team workflows. Choose Shipi18n if you want to own the whole pipeline: an open-source tool that runs on your machine, uses your own LLM key, and costs nothing beyond the tokens you spend.
Pricing Comparison
Shipi18n
Open SourceLicenseFree — Apache-2.0
UsageYour provider’s token cost
SeatsUnlimited, no per-seat fee
No subscription and no account. You pay your LLM provider directly, at their prices.
Crowdin
Community TranslationStarter$40/mo
Team$150/mo
EnterpriseCustom
Free for open source
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Shipi18n | Crowdin |
|---|---|---|
| Free Tier Keys | Unlimited | Unlimited (OSS) |
| Free Tier Languages | Unlimited | Unlimited (OSS) |
| AI Translation | Your own model (Anthropic, OpenAI, or custom) | Add-on ($) |
| Semantic Translation QA | Yes — LLM judge, 3-pass vote, advisory by default | — |
| Placeholder Preservation | ✓ | ✓ |
| CLI Tool | ✓ | ✓ |
| Programmatic API | ✓ | ✓ |
| GitHub Action | ✓ | ✓ |
| Translation Cache | Build-time cache + incremental mode | TM included |
| Support | GitHub Issues + Discord | Email + Chat |
Crowdin Pros & Cons
Pros
- +Free for open source projects
- +Strong community translation features
- +Good GitHub/GitLab integration
- +Crowdsourcing capabilities
- +Reasonable pricing for small teams
Cons
- -UI feels dated
- -Machine translation costs extra
- -Limited AI features
- -Can be slow for large projects
- -Complex for simple use cases
Which Should You Choose?
Choose Crowdin if you...
- •Open source projects
- •Community-driven translation
- •Projects with volunteer translators
- •Teams needing crowdsourcing
Choose Shipi18n if you...
- •Want open-source tooling you can read, fork and vendor
- •Would rather pay your LLM provider directly than a middleman
- •Need your source strings to stay out of a third party's database
- •Want translation in CI, your editor, or your build — not another dashboard
- •Have no interest in seats, quotas or annual contracts
See How Simple Shipi18n Is
# Translate your en.json to 5 languages in seconds
$ export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=your-key-here
$ npx @shipi18n/cli translate en.json --target es,fr,de,ja,zh
✓ Translated to 5 languages!
✓ Saved: ./locales/es.json
✓ Saved: ./locales/fr.json
✓ Saved: ./locales/de.json
✓ Saved: ./locales/ja.json
✓ Saved: ./locales/zh.json
Done in 3.2sNo account, no server, no dashboard — an open-source library you run in CI. Apache-2.0.
Ready to catch broken translations before you ship?
Free and open-source (Apache-2.0). No account, and the checker needs no API key — install it and run it in CI today.