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Head to head · Translate text · October 2026 research run

Lingo.dev vs Lokalise

Lokalise scores 71.3 (BB) on agent readiness against Lingo.dev's 62.3 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Lingo.dev leads on agent ergonomics. Both do translate text.

Lingo.devReplexica, Inc. · HTTP API B62.3/100#341 of 722 LokaliseLokalise, Inc. · HTTP API BB71.3/100#115 of 722

Which one, for what

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

Watch for

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

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 71
  • Schema & documentation, 76 against 54
  • Security & auth, 73 against 62
  • Payments & pricing, 30 against 20
  • Transparency & trust, 81 against 71

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 runLingo.devLokaliseEdge
Reliability16%207184Lokalise +13
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25476Lokalise +22
Agent ergonomics13%16.27569Lingo.dev +6
Security & auth14%17.56273Lokalise +11
Payments & pricing10%12.52030Lokalise +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88784Lingo.dev +3
Transparency & trust7%8.87181Lokalise +10
Negative events≤1500
Total62.3 · B71.3 · BB

Facts side by side

FactLingo.devLokalise
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorReplexica, Inc.Lokalise, Inc.
Hosted endpointhttps://mcp.lingo.dev/accounthttps://api.lokalise.com/api2
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingPay per usePaid
x402nono
LicenceProprietary 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 npmProprietary 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
MCP registrydev.lingo/mainnot listed
Last release2026-10-072026-10-05
Terms last updated2026-05-072025-11-01
Privacy policy last updated2026-05-072026-03-01
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyesnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textnot found in the text
Popularity5.4k stars, 92k npm/wk, 2k PyPI/wk124 stars, 338k npm/wk, 39k PyPI/wk

Verdicts

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.

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

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

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, Lingo.dev or Lokalise?

Lokalise scores 71.3 (BB) on agent readiness against Lingo.dev's 62.3 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Lingo.dev leads on agent ergonomics.

Do Lingo.dev and Lokalise need an API key?

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

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

Yes. Lingo.dev has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.lingo.dev/account and Lokalise at https://api.lokalise.com/api2.

Other comparisons with Lingo.dev or Lokalise

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