What is Smartling?
Smartling is a translation and localization platform that combines a translation management system, AI translation, machine translation, human translators and a website translation proxy. It runs as a web platform with connectors to content, design, code and marketing tools, plus a public API.
Who it's for
Smartling's site targets enterprises, with offerings for marketing, localization and engineering or product teams, and industry pages for e-commerce, software and healthcare. Its Core plan is described as a fit for individuals or small teams translating business documents.
Pros & cons
Strengths
- Smartling lists a translation management system, a website translation proxy, Smartling Translate (an AI portal), translator tools, analytics and a quality-evaluation agent as parts of the platform.
- Smartling says its AI Hub gives access to 20+ large language models and machine translation engines, and that its human network has 4,000+ linguists.
- Smartling's integrations page lists roughly 60 partners, including WordPress, Adobe Experience Manager, Contentful, Shopify, Figma, GitHub, GitLab, Zendesk, HubSpot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Zapier.
- Smartling says it holds ISO 27001, SOC 2, HIPAA, HITRUST e1, PCI Level 1 and ISO/IEC 42001:2023 certifications.
- Smartling says content tagged with the sl_whiteout class is not stored anywhere in its infrastructure, and that audit logs cover content ingestion, translation processing, reviewer access and AI provider usage.
- Smartling's plans page lists starting per-word rates for services: Machine Translation $0.0075, AI Translation $0.06, AI Human Translation $0.12 and Human Translation $0.20.
Limitations
- Smartling does not publish a price for any subscription plan; the plans pages point visitors to book a meeting, so the platform fee cannot be compared from public pages.
- Smartling's two plan pages disagree: smartling.com/plans shows two tiers (Core and Enterprise) with a $0.20 starting human-translation rate, while go.smartling.com/plans shows three tiers (Core, Growth, Enterprise) with a headline of $0.10 a word or less.
- On go.smartling.com/plans, the Core tier has no API access, limited user management, 180-day translation memory and business-document file types only; the page notes that additional fees may apply for some features.
- The per-word rates on smartling.com/plans are marked 'starting at', and the asterisks on the Machine Translation and AI Translation rates are not explained on the page.
- Customer-content training: Smartling says it has contractual agreements with AI providers that address data retention and training data use, but the page read does not state outright that customer content is never used for model training. It also does not describe data residency or retention periods.
Plans and pricing
- Core: Not listed (labeled 'Free to Start'). For individuals or small teams translating business documents. Basic workflow, CAT tool, translation memory kept 180 days, basic reporting and quality checks. Translation is paid per word. Free-start terms and caps are not stated.
- Growth: Not listed. Appears only on go.smartling.com/plans: for mid-sized teams localizing software or apps. Lists advanced workflows, basic API access, unlimited translation memory and all file types.
- Enterprise: Custom pricing. Everything in Core plus customizable workflows, more connectors, unlimited translation memory, glossaries and style guides, customizable reporting, an LQA suite, AI and machine translation services and bring-your-own-translators. No price shown.
Read from smartling.com/plans and go.smartling.com/plans; neither lists a subscription price, and the billing basis is not stated. Per-word service rates are shown in dollars and differ between the two pages. Confirm on the live pricing page.
Details checked October 2026 against the vendor's own pages. Prices and limits change, so confirm before you buy. Official pricing page ↗
Sources
This profile was compiled from these public pages. We have not run hands-on tests.
Smartling — at a glance
Smartling is a translation and localization platform that combines a translation management system, AI translation, machine translation, human translators and a website translation proxy. It runs as a web platform with connectors to content, design, code and marketing tools, plus a public API.
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