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Head to head · Translate text · October 2026 research run

LibreTranslate vs Lokalise

Lokalise scores 71.3 (BB) on agent readiness against LibreTranslate's 49.8 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. LibreTranslate leads on payments & pricing. Both do translate text.

LibreTranslateLibreTranslate · HTTP API D49.8/100#602 of 722 LokaliseLokalise, Inc. · HTTP API BB71.3/100#115 of 722

Which one, for what

LibreTranslate D

Good for Operators who must keep text on their own servers or want a fixed cost, and for light hosted use.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 40 against 30

Also in its favour

  • Open source

Watch for

No status page, SLA or terms of service for the hosted API

Lokalise BB

Good for Agents that manage localisation work, such as adding keys, uploading and exporting string files, keeping a glossary and starting AI or machine translation tasks for a team that already uses Lokalise.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 84 against 35
  • Schema & documentation, 76 against 65
  • Security & auth, 73 against 45
  • Maintenance & community, 84 against 40
  • Transparency & trust, 81 against 60

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

The Master Service Agreement forbids using the service for benchmarking or competitive analysis

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLibreTranslateLokaliseEdge
Reliability16%203584Lokalise +49
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26576Lokalise +11
Agent ergonomics13%16.26569Lokalise +4
Security & auth14%17.54573Lokalise +28
Payments & pricing10%12.54030LibreTranslate +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.84084Lokalise +44
Transparency & trust7%8.86081Lokalise +21
Negative events≤1500
Total49.8 · D71.3 · BB

Facts side by side

FactLibreTranslateLokalise
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorLibreTranslateLokalise, Inc.
Hosted endpointhttps://libretranslate.comhttps://api.lokalise.com/api2
TransportsHTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth or key
PricingPaidPaid
x402nono
LicenceAGPL-3.0Proprietary service under the Lokalise Master Service Agreement. The CLI and the Node SDK on GitHub are BSD 3-Clause
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-05-262026-10-05
Terms last updatedno document linked2025-11-01
Privacy policy last updated2025-09-232026-03-01
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Popularity17k stars, 4.5k PyPI/wk124 stars, 338k npm/wk, 39k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews4/5 (2)none

Verdicts

LibreTranslate

Open source under AGPL-3.0, self-hosted with no text leaving your network. No status page, SLA or terms of service for the hosted API.

Lokalise

The REST API has public OpenAPI files, Markdown docs, published rate limits, read-only tokens, scoped OAuth and an audit log endpoint. Access needs a paid plan after a 14-day trial, a person signs up in a browser, and the Master Service Agreement forbids benchmarking. No idempotency keys or deprecation policy were found in the reviewed documentation.

Before you call either

LibreTranslate

  1. Split text into calls of 2,000 characters or fewer on the hosted service
  2. Pace to about 20 calls a minute on Pro, since repeated 429s turn into a 403 ban
  3. Pass source=auto to detect and translate in one call
  4. Set format=html for markup
  5. Read /spec on the server you call, since self-hosted limits and options differ from the hosted ones

Lokalise

  1. Send the token in the X-Api-Token header to https://api.lokalise.com/api2. OAuth access tokens go in Authorization: Bearer and expire after about 60 minutes.
  2. Stay under 6 requests a second per token and 10 concurrent requests per project. On 429, back off exponentially and read X-RateLimit-Reset.
  3. Use a read-only token for reads. A read/write token can call PUT /projects/{project_id}/empty, which deletes every key and translation.
  4. Use pagination=cursor on /keys and /translations, with limit at most 500 on keys, and follow X-Pagination-Next-Cursor.
  5. Projects above 10,000 key-language pairs need /files/async-download. Poll /processes/{process_id} for the bundle URL, and do the same after /files/upload.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, LibreTranslate or Lokalise?

Lokalise scores 71.3 (BB) on agent readiness against LibreTranslate's 49.8 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. LibreTranslate leads on payments & pricing.

Do LibreTranslate and Lokalise need an API key?

LibreTranslate needs an API key. Lokalise takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call LibreTranslate and Lokalise without installing anything?

Yes. LibreTranslate has a hosted endpoint at https://libretranslate.com and Lokalise at https://api.lokalise.com/api2.

Are LibreTranslate and Lokalise open source?

LibreTranslate is open source (AGPL-3.0). No open-source release is listed for Lokalise.

Other comparisons with LibreTranslate or Lokalise

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