# Crowdin vs Lingo.dev

> Crowdin scores 69.6 (B) on agent readiness against Lingo.dev's 62.3 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Lingo.dev leads on agent ergonomics and maintenance & community. Both do translate text. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crowdin-vs-lingo-dev
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crowdin-vs-lingo-dev.md (~2,450 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crowdin-vs-lingo-dev.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crowdin-vs-lingo-dev.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-08

Crowdin scores 69.6 (B) on agent readiness against Lingo.dev's 62.3 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Lingo.dev leads on agent ergonomics and maintenance & community. Both do translate text.

- Crowdin: grade B, 69.6/100, rank #153 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/crowdin.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/crowdin.json
- Lingo.dev: grade B, 62.3/100, rank #341 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/lingo-dev.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/lingo-dev.json

## Which one, for what

### Crowdin (B)

Good for: Teams that keep product strings and files in Crowdin and want an agent to upload sources, check progress, apply pre-translation, manage glossaries and pull builds.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 78 against 71
- Schema & documentation, 80 against 54
- Security & auth, 68 against 62
- Payments & pricing, 30 against 20
- Transparency & trust, 79 against 71

Watch for: The terms forbid accessing the service to monitor availability, performance or functionality, or for benchmarking, without Crowdin's prior written consent

### Lingo.dev (B)

Good for: Product teams that translate interface strings and content into many locales and want glossary, tone and rule control held in one place, driven from code, CI or a coding assistant.

Ahead on:
- Agent ergonomics, 75 against 69
- Maintenance & community, 87 against 82

Watch for: No public OpenAPI file was found, `llms.txt` holds one title line and docs pages have no Markdown version


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Crowdin | Lingo.dev | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 78 | 71 | Crowdin +7 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 54 | Crowdin +26 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 69 | 75 | Lingo.dev +6 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 68 | 62 | Crowdin +6 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 20 | Crowdin +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 82 | 87 | Lingo.dev +5 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 79 | 71 | Crowdin +8 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **69.6 · B** | **62.3 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Crowdin | Lingo.dev |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Crowdin OÜ | Replexica, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.crowdin.com/api/v2` | `https://mcp.lingo.dev/account` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Crowdin's terms. The CLI and the official API clients are MIT | Proprietary hosted service under Lingo.dev's terms of service. The lingodotdev/lingo.dev repository (legacy CLI, JavaScript SDK, compiler) and the Python SDK are Apache-2.0. The `@lingo.dev/cli` package states no licence on npm |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| MCP registry | not listed | `dev.lingo/main` |
| Last release | 2026-09-30 | 2026-10-07 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-24 | 2026-05-07 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-24 | 2026-05-07 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 320 stars, 264k npm/wk, 14k PyPI/wk | 5.4k stars, 92k npm/wk, 2k PyPI/wk |

## Verdicts

**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.

**Lingo.dev.** Lingo.dev suits teams that want glossary and tone control on every translation call, with a published fee of $2 per million output tokens and model costs passed through. It has no public OpenAPI file, its `llms.txt` is one line, and scoped keys, roles and audit logs are limited to the Enterprise plan.

## Before you call either

### 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

### Lingo.dev

1. Send `X-API-Key` to https://api.lingo.dev and keep the key server-side. On non-Enterprise plans a personal key reaches every engine its creator can
2. Use `POST /process/localize` for one language pair and `POST /jobs/localization` with an `idempotencyKey` for several. Pipeline stages run on async jobs only
3. Treat 402 (credit limit) and 429 (daily token quota) as limits to report, not to retry. Retry 500 with backoff
4. Read `usage.cost` on each sync response to track spend. Sandbox stops at 100,000 tokens a day
5. Connect MCP clients to https://mcp.lingo.dev/account. Its tools can create and revoke API keys and invite members, so ask before those calls

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Crowdin or Lingo.dev?

Crowdin scores 69.6 (B) on agent readiness against Lingo.dev's 62.3 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Lingo.dev leads on agent ergonomics and maintenance & community.

### Do Crowdin and Lingo.dev need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Crowdin and Lingo.dev without installing anything?

Yes. Crowdin has a hosted endpoint at https://api.crowdin.com/api/v2 and Lingo.dev at https://mcp.lingo.dev/account.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crowdin-vs-lingo-dev.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crowdin-vs-lingo-dev.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "crowdin", "b": "lingo-dev"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare crowdin lingo-dev`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/crowdin.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/lingo-dev.json

## Other comparisons with Crowdin or Lingo.dev

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- [Amazon Translate vs Lingo.dev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-translate-vs-lingo-dev.md)
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- [Crowdin vs LibreTranslate](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crowdin-vs-libretranslate.md)
- [Crowdin vs Lingvanex Translation API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crowdin-vs-lingvanex.md)
- [Crowdin vs Lokalise](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crowdin-vs-lokalise.md)
- [Crowdin vs Phrase](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crowdin-vs-phrase.md)
- [Crowdin vs SYSTRAN Translate API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crowdin-vs-systran.md)
- [DeepL API vs Lingo.dev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepl-api-vs-lingo-dev.md)
- [Google Cloud Translation vs Lingo.dev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-cloud-translation-vs-lingo-dev.md)
- [Lara Translate API vs Lingo.dev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lara-translate-vs-lingo-dev.md)
- [LibreTranslate vs Lingo.dev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/libretranslate-vs-lingo-dev.md)
- [Lingo.dev vs Lingvanex Translation API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lingo-dev-vs-lingvanex.md)
- [Lingo.dev vs Lokalise](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lingo-dev-vs-lokalise.md)
- [Lingo.dev vs Phrase](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lingo-dev-vs-phrase.md)
- [Lingo.dev vs SYSTRAN Translate API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lingo-dev-vs-systran.md)