Crowdin vs Lara Translate API

Crowdin

The REST API has a public OpenAPI document with 374 operations, and tokens can be limited by scope, access level and project. Translation runs inside Crowdin projects and connected engines, so it is not a stateless per-character translation API. No Retry-After guidance, idempotency keys or SLA were found in the reviewed documentation.

Lara Translate API

Glossaries, translation memories, styles and instructions on every translate call. Texts may be used for model improvement unless a request sets noTrace.

Crowdin

1. Send Authorization: Bearer <token> to https://api.crowdin.com/api/v2. Crowdin Enterprise uses https://<organization_domain>.api.crowdin.com/api/v2
2. Use the MCP V2 endpoint https://mcp.crowdin.com/v2/mcp and set crowdin-tool-sets, because the server loads all 33 tool sets by default
3. Set crowdin-read-only: true on the MCP connection for exploration. It exposes only list and get tools
4. Keep to 20 concurrent requests an account across all tokens, and add your own backoff on 429
5. Upload a file to /storages first, then pass the storageId to the add-file call. Builds, exports and reports are asynchronous and need a status poll
6. /mts/{mtId}/translations takes at most 100 strings a call and needs the mt scope and a configured engine

Lara Translate API

1. Set noTrace on every request that carries private text, since storage for model improvement is the default
2. Leave reasoning off unless the text needs it. It moves the call to Lara Think at $2,499 per million characters
3. Resolve glossary and memory names to gls_* and mem_* IDs with the list tools before translating
4. Send one target language per translate call
5. Merge short documents, since each file bills at least 20,000 characters