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Independent head-to-head · Updated October 2026

Crowdin vs Weblate

Proprietary cloud scale against libre, git-native localization.

Crowdin and Weblate are the two platforms most open-source projects end up choosing between, and both have earned it. Crowdin offers a free licence to open-source projects and a polished cloud product with a huge integrations marketplace. Weblate is libre software released under the GPLv3 or later, available as Hosted Weblate or on your own servers, with a gratis Libre plan for public open-source projects.

Beyond licensing, they disagree about where translations live. Weblate treats your git repository as the source of truth: it pulls changes, commits translations and pushes them back. Crowdin keeps translations in its own platform and syncs files to your repository through pull requests, with an optional CDN for over-the-air delivery.

At a glance

Choose Weblate if you want open-source software you can self-host, and a workflow where every translation is a real git commit. Choose Crowdin if you want a managed service with a large app marketplace, over-the-air delivery for mobile and JavaScript apps, and no servers to run.

Crowdin vs Weblate, side by side

How the two platforms differ on the questions that decide most evaluations.

Hosting

Crowdin: Cloud service; Crowdin Enterprise lets you choose US or EU data hosting

Weblate: Hosted Weblate in the cloud, or self-hosted for free, with optional paid support

Open source

Crowdin: Closed platform; open-source CLI and mobile SDKs. Free licence for open-source projects on request

Weblate: Fully open source under GPLv3+. Gratis Libre hosting plan for public libre projects

Pricing model

Crowdin: Driven mainly by hosted words, with unlimited translators on paid plans; free start and trial

Weblate: Hosted plans driven by hosted strings, with unlimited projects and translators; free trial. Self-hosting is free

How translations reach production

Crowdin: Git sync opens pull requests from an l10n branch; CLI and API; OTA via CDN for mobile and JavaScript

Weblate: Commits translations to its copy of your repository and pushes upstream or opens pull requests; translations ship with your deploy

Integrations

Crowdin: 700+ apps and integrations

Weblate: Git, Mercurial and Subversion; pull requests on GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, Bitbucket, Azure DevOps and more

Machine translation & AI

Crowdin: Google, Microsoft, DeepL and Amazon engines, plus Crowdin AI

Weblate: A long list of MT services including DeepL, Google, Amazon, Azure, LibreTranslate and ModernMT, plus LLM backends such as OpenAI, Mistral and Ollama

Best for

Crowdin: Teams that want a managed, integration-rich platform

Weblate: Teams that want open source, self-hosting and git as the source of truth

Where they really differ

Git as the source of truth

Weblate’s continuous localization model is simple to reason about: it fetches your repository on a webhook or a schedule, translators work in the web interface, Weblate commits their work and pushes it upstream, optionally only after review. Add-ons squash commits, clean up files or run automatic translation. Crowdin also syncs with GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket, opening pull requests from a service branch, but the platform rather than the repository is where translations are managed. Teams that review everything as code tend to prefer Weblate’s model; teams that want translators insulated from git tend to prefer Crowdin’s.

Running it yourself

Self-hosting Weblate gives you full control over data, upgrades and integrations, and costs nothing in licences, but someone has to operate the server, the database and the background workers. Hosted Weblate removes that work and is priced by hosted strings. Crowdin is a managed cloud service, so there is nothing to operate or upgrade. If data residency is the concern rather than control, Crowdin Enterprise lets you pick US or EU hosting.

Machine translation choice

Weblate supports an unusually broad set of machine translation services, from DeepL, Google and Amazon to self-hostable engines like LibreTranslate and LLM backends you can run locally with Ollama. That matters for projects that cannot send text to commercial providers. Crowdin focuses on the major commercial engines plus Crowdin AI, which is enough for most teams and simpler to configure.

Choose Crowdin if…

  • You want a managed service with no infrastructure to run.
  • You need over-the-air updates for iOS, Android, Flutter, React Native or JavaScript apps.
  • Your workflow depends on integrations with CMSs, design tools or e-commerce platforms.
  • Translators should never need to think about git.

Choose Weblate if…

  • You want open-source software under a copyleft licence.
  • You need to self-host for control, compliance or cost reasons.
  • You want every translation to land as a reviewed git commit.
  • You need machine translation that can run on your own infrastructure.

Dig deeper

Frequently asked questions

Weblate is free software you can self-host at no licence cost. Hosted Weblate is a paid service priced by hosted strings, with a gratis Libre plan for public libre projects.
Crowdin offers a free licence to open-source projects on request. Weblate offers the Libre hosting plan for public libre projects, or you can self-host it.
Weblate lists a dedicated Laravel PHP strings format. Crowdin supports generic PHP files, without plural support in that format, plus a third-party Laravel app. Both support JSON, which covers Laravel’s JSON lang files.
Not by itself. Weblate commits translations to your repository, so they reach users with your next build or deploy. Crowdin can deliver over the air through its CDN for the platforms its SDKs cover.

Keep exploring

A third option · this is our product

If you are a Laravel team, consider LangSyncer

Weblate and Crowdin both end in a commit or pull request that still waits for your next deploy. If you are a Laravel team, LangSyncer takes a different path: it imports your existing lang files, translates with GPT or DeepL, finds hardcoded strings with a code scanner, and publishes changes to production without a deploy, fully managed so there is nothing to host.

Start for free See all comparisons

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