Meet LangSync — the zero-ops alternative to Tolgee
Pay-as-you-go from the first thousand strings, EU residency on every plan, and a bidirectional CLI sync — without keys-and-seats step-function caps, a runtime SDK in your bundle, or the choice between paying for Tolgee Cloud and running your own Postgres.
First 1,000 strings free EU-hosted by default No SDK to embed at runtime
At a glance
LangSync Tolgee
Pricing model
Pay-as-you-go per 1,000 strings
Tiered by keys + seats (€49 / €179 / €499)
Self-serve checkout for every plan
EU data residency on every plan
Per-developer source language override
Bidirectional CLI sync
Verified June 2, 2026 against Tolgee's public product and pricing pages. Spot an inaccuracy? Email [email protected] — we'll update within two business days.
Side by side
LangSync vs Tolgee, feature by feature
Compiled from the public Tolgee pricing and product pages, docs.tolgee.io, the tolgee.io blog, and the official github.com/tolgee repositories, as of mid-2026. Tolgee has three distinct offerings — open-source self-host (Apache 2.0 core + Tolgee EE License v1 overlay), Tolgee Cloud (SaaS), and Licensed Self-Hosted (paid commercial license) — and the differences matter; we call out the variant where it's relevant.
| Section | Feature | LangSync | Tolgee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Billing shape | Pay-as-you-go — billed per 1,000 translated strings stored, price drops at higher volumes. No plan tiers, no monthly commit. | Tolgee Cloud plan tiers (Free / Team / Business / Advanced / Enterprise) metered on keys + seats, with MT credits (1 ≈ 1 translated character) and AI LLM tokens as separate meters. Step-function jumps: 2,000 → 5,000 → 20,000 keys at €49 → €179 → €499/month. Annual default, monthly more expensive. |
| Entry paid price | Free for the first 1,000 strings, no credit card. | Tolgee Cloud has a perpetual Free tier (500 keys, 3 seats, MT + integrations). Paid: Team €49/mo (4 seats, 2,000 keys), Business €179/mo (8 seats, 5,000 keys), Advanced €499/mo (20 seats, 20,000 keys). Free OSS self-host has no charge but requires you to run Postgres and Docker. | |
| Seats / users | No per-seat charges. Unlimited collaborators on every plan. | Each tier has a hard seat cap; exceeding it triggers monthly per-seat overage billing even on annual plans. | |
| Sales call to upgrade | No. Self-serve checkout for every plan. | Tolgee Cloud Enterprise and any Licensed Self-Hosted plan are sales-only with no public price. SSO, granular permissions, the AI Translator, and vendor support all sit behind the paid license. | |
| Translation engine | AI translation | Built on a modern LLM with your custom prompt per namespace — tone, audience, formality, product rules — fed into every call alongside the glossary. | Tolgee AI Translator supports Anthropic Claude, OpenAI (GPT-5 / GPT-4o), Azure OpenAI, Google Gemini, and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint (LM Studio, self-hosted). Pulls context from screenshots, "Tolgee Context" (SDK-collected layout data), key descriptions, project description, language notes, and translation memory. |
| Custom prompt control | Per-namespace or per-user prompt managed via the dashboard or API. | AI Playground lets you edit the full LLM prompt per project (not per namespace), save named prompt variants, and use "fragments" + variables. Project description is the tone-of-voice hook. | |
| Machine translation engines | LLM-first. No legacy MT routing. | Google Translate, DeepL, AWS Translate, Azure Translator plus the AI Translator. Cloud Free includes 10,000 MT credits; self-hosters BYO API keys. | |
| Glossary / term base | First-class. Per-language target translations plus optional notes. AI sees the glossary on every translation. | Org-level glossaries assigned to projects. Terms carry preferred translations plus "abbreviation" and "forbidden term" tags. CSV import/export. Fed into the AI Translator prompt. | |
| Translation memory | Not a separate concept — past translations stay in the project and inform AI completions. | Separate from glossary. Fuzzy-matches similar strings, surfaced inline and injected into AI Translator context. TMX import / export is on the 2026 roadmap, not shipped today. | |
| Source language flexibility | Per-developer override — a Czech dev can keep cs.json as source while the team-wide default stays en-US. See the workflow. | Single base language per project; no per-developer or per-file source override is documented. | |
| In-context translation | Not supported — LangSync is build-time only. | Tolgee's signature feature. Hold Alt/Option in your running app, hover any rendered string, click to open an inline edit dialog. Requires the Tolgee JS SDK + DevTools plugin (dev) or InContextTools plugin (prod, bundle-heavy) — or the Chrome/Firefox Tolgee Tools browser extension to keep keys out of the production bundle. | |
| QA / linting | Placeholder validation on the CLI side; AI is constrained by glossary on every call. | Spelling + grammar via LanguageTool (separate container when self-hosted). ICU placeholder conversion across formats is automatic. | |
| Developer workflow | First-party CLI | norcube langsync init + norcube langsync sync — one binary for the whole Norcube platform, bidirectional sync (no push/pull split), resumable across crashes. See the CLI page. | @tolgee/cli (TypeScript) — npm i -g @tolgee/cli or Docker. tolgee push / tolgee pull are separate (docs explicitly compare to Git); no bidirectional sync. Config in .tolgeerc. |
| Static string extraction | Not built-in — strings come from your i18n files. | tolgee extract print|check parses your source code and finds untracked keys. AST parsers for React, Vue, Svelte, Angular, vanilla JS/TS. extract check is a CI gate that fails the build on un-pushed keys. | |
| i18n library SDKs | No runtime SDK — you keep your existing i18n library (i18next, react-intl, FormatJS, etc.) and point it at LangSync's JSON output. | First-class runtime SDKs: @tolgee/core, @tolgee/web, @tolgee/react, @tolgee/ngx (Angular), @tolgee/vue, @tolgee/svelte, @tolgee/i18next, plus Next.js helpers. Native: tolgee-mobile-swift-sdk (iOS with OTA), tolgee-mobile-kotlin-sdk (Android + Compose Multiplatform), tolgee-unreal (Unreal Engine C++). | |
| OTA / CDN content delivery | Not supported — LangSync is build-time only. | Tolgee Content Delivery publishes translation bundles to a CDN (Tolgee-managed, or custom S3 / Azure Blob on Team+). JS SDKs consume via the BackendFetch plugin; iOS Swift SDK ships OTA natively. ~15-minute propagation. | |
| MCP server / IDE | Coming via the broader norcube CLI roadmap. | Official Tolgee MCP Server — HTTP endpoint at https://app.tolgee.io/mcp/developer with an X-API-Key header. Clients: Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, ChatGPT. No official JetBrains plugin; a VS Code extension (LILAGLASS.tolgeev2) exists on the Marketplace but its first-party status is ambiguous. | |
| File formats & integrations | Native file formats | i18n JSON is first-class. CSV, JSON, XLSX accepted for one-shot import. | JSON (structured + Tolgee Native ICU JSON), YAML, XLIFF, .strings, .stringsdict, .xcstrings, Apple XLIFF, Android XML (plurals + arrays), Compose Multiplatform XML, Flutter .arb, i18next JSON, .po, .properties, .resx, CSV, XLSX, plus Python and C/C++ source extraction. |
| Native dashboard integrations | GitHub via the CLI; webhooks for arbitrary CI. | No native GitHub / GitLab / Bitbucket OAuth — integration is via the CLI in any CI. Slack notifications. Figma plugin with bidirectional key sync, preview-language switching, page duplication per language, and screenshot upload. Chrome + Firefox Tolgee Tools extensions for in-context translation in production. No first-class CMS connectors. | |
| Webhooks | Yes — for CI pulls and arbitrary downstream automation. | Outgoing webhooks fire on key / translation / language / glossary / batch events. HMAC-SHA256 signed with per-webhook secret; automatic retries. | |
| Team & translation | Professional translator marketplace | Not built in. The AI is the primary translator; humans review and edit. | "Order Professional Translation" via Tasks → Request Quote routes work to listed agencies — docs name Alconost and Dialect. Cloud-only, on Team / Business / Advanced / Enterprise plans. |
| Crowdsourcing / public projects | Not supported. Org-scoped namespaces only. | Not supported. Tolgee is permission-based collaboration only — no public-community contribution model. | |
| Team model | Organization → namespace → user. Per-user prompts and tokens. | Organization → Project → Members. Org roles: Owner / Member. Project roles: Admin / Manage / Edit / Translate / Review / View. Granular permissions are a paid (Business+) feature. | |
| Branches | Not a separate concept — your repo's branches drive sync via the CLI. | Branches are first-class in both the platform and the CLI. | |
| Security, hosting, data | Hosting region (Cloud) | EU only (AWS Frankfurt, region publicly named). GDPR-aligned by default, no choice needed. See /security/ and /dpa/. | Tolgee Cloud spans servers in Germany, Czech Republic, and the United States — no customer region picker, data may be processed across all three. Self-host gives full residency control (your servers, your jurisdiction). |
| Self-hosting option | Not offered — LangSync is SaaS only. | Yes — this is Tolgee's biggest differentiator. Apache 2.0 core is free to self-host; Licensed Self-Hosted is a paid commercial license layered on top to unlock SSO, granular permissions, the AI Translator, and vendor support. | |
| DPA | Published, self-serve download. | DPA is "available on request for enterprise customers" — no self-serve download. Contact via [email protected] (general) or [email protected] (security-specific). | |
| Compliance certifications | GDPR-aligned, EU-resident. SOC 2 / ISO in progress as Norcube scales. | ISO 27001 — Tolgee's information-security management system is certified to ISO 27001 (applies platform-wide, not Enterprise-gated). GDPR compliant. No HIPAA. SOC 2 is only cited for upstream providers (Azure / AWS), not claimed for Tolgee itself. The compliance page lives at /info-security-policy; conventional /security and /trust URLs both 404. | |
| AI training on your content | Your strings are never used to train models. AI calls are inference-only. | Tolgee's blog states context data "does not include any personal or sensitive information," but does not explicitly state that customer strings are excluded from model training, and does not mention OpenAI's zero-retention API option. No opt-out toggle is documented. | |
| SSO (SAML / OIDC) | Not yet — on the roadmap. | OIDC only — no SAML found in the docs. Cloud SSO is Enterprise-tier only; self-hosted SSO requires a separate license. Documented providers: Okta, Keycloak. | |
| Audit log | API-accessible. | Not a first-class customer-facing feature. The info-security policy mentions internal "extensive logging of system events, API calls and administrative actions," but it is not exposed to customers. | |
| Migration & lock-in | Importing into the other | Built-in POEditor importer today. Migration from Tolgee is a CLI script: pull every locale via the API, transform, push to LangSync. | No built-in importer for POEditor, Crowdin, Lokalise, Phrase, or LangSync — file-based imports only. Tolgee imports JSON, XLIFF, Apple .strings, Android XML, Flutter .arb, .resx, .po, YAML, CSV, XLSX. |
| Translation history export | Current value of every translation via REST API. Audit log (namespace, sync-job, glossary, API key actions) accessible via API. Per-translation revision history is not yet captured — on the roadmap. | Per-translation activity log exposed via API (/translations/{id}/history), newest-first. | |
| Translation memory export | No separate TM — translations exit as i18n JSON via the REST API. | TMX export is not currently available — it's a 2026 roadmap item, not shipped. | |
| Full-project backup / snapshot | JSON export per namespace covers the source of truth. | Tolgee Cloud has no automated backups today — it's a 2026 roadmap promise. Self-hosters manage Postgres backups themselves (full DB access is the escape hatch). Bundled "export all project data including metadata and screenshots" is also roadmap. | |
| API token scopes | Org-scoped API tokens; per-action access gated by user IAM policies, not by a token-level scope. | Project API Keys (single-project, scoped per action) and Personal Access Tokens (account-wide, deliberately exclude PAT-management endpoints). Granular scopes assembled per token; no "read-only / read-write" preset switch. |
Verified June 2, 2026 against Tolgee's public product and pricing pages. Spot an inaccuracy? Email [email protected] — we'll update within two business days.
Tolgee facts verified against tolgee.io/pricing, tolgee.io/self-hosted, tolgee.io/blog, docs.tolgee.io, and the public github.com/tolgee repositories. If you find a row that is wrong, email [email protected].
Be honest about it
When Tolgee is the right call
We are biased about LangSync, but Tolgee occupies a genuinely different slot — open-source self-hostable with a runtime SDK ecosystem. If any of these describe your team, do not switch.
Stay with Tolgee
You can run your own server
For technical teams that can operate Postgres and Docker, Tolgee's Apache 2.0 core is free to self-host — genuinely cheaper than any SaaS, including LangSync. You trade ops burden (upgrades, backups, monitoring) for zero subscription. If your team already runs internal infrastructure and SSO isn't required, this is the most cost-effective path.
Stay with Tolgee
Your translators edit in a running UI
Alt+click in-context editing is Tolgee's signature feature. Hold Alt, hover any rendered string, click — an inline dialog opens, edits write straight back to the platform. Works in production via the Chrome/Firefox browser plugin so non-developers can translate live. LangSync is build-time only; if your localisation workflow lives inside the running app, Tolgee wins outright.
Stay with Tolgee
Your frontend wants a first-class i18n SDK
Tolgee ships native SDKs for React, Vue, Svelte, Angular, Next.js, plus i18next as a plugin — with screenshots, in-context editing, and CDN consumption baked in. LangSync deliberately has no runtime SDK and expects you to keep your existing i18n library, which means smaller bundles but no Tolgee-specific tooling. If you want the Tolgee runtime experience, stay.
Stay with Tolgee
You want static string extraction as a CI gate
tolgee extract check parses your React / Vue / Svelte / Angular source code and fails the CI if you've added a translation key without pushing it to Tolgee. LangSync has no equivalent — strings come from your i18n files at sync time. If you want compile-time enforcement of "no untracked keys," Tolgee fits.
Stay with Tolgee
Designers translate in Figma
Tolgee's Figma plugin bidirectionally syncs keys with the platform, switches preview language inside Figma, duplicates pages per language, and uploads frames as screenshots for translator context. LangSync has no Figma integration; if your localisation flow starts in design, Tolgee fits.
Stay with Tolgee
You ship live mobile translation updates
Tolgee's native iOS Swift SDK ships OTA updates from the Tolgee CDN without an App Store re-release. Combined with tolgee-mobile-kotlin-sdk (Android + Compose Multiplatform), the mobile story is mature. LangSync is build-time only; if you depend on OTA for a high-traffic mobile app, Tolgee wins.
FAQ
Questions teams ask
How much will I actually save switching from Tolgee to LangSync?
It depends on whether you're on Tolgee Cloud or self-hosted. Tolgee Cloud has a step-function structure — 2,000 keys at €49/mo (Team), 5,000 keys at €179/mo (Business), 20,000 keys at €499/mo (Advanced) — plus per-seat caps with monthly overage billing. A team straddling 6,000 keys jumps to Business ($2,148/year billed annually) before any SSO upgrade (Enterprise, sales-only). LangSync charges nothing for seats and bills only the strings you store, with every feature on every plan. Honest caveat: if you can run the Tolgee OSS core yourself, that path is free and beats LangSync on raw cost — at the cost of ops burden.
Is LangSync's AI as good as Tolgee AI Translator?
Different shape. Tolgee AI Translator is a breadth play — Claude, GPT-5/GPT-4o, Azure OpenAI, Gemini, plus any OpenAI-compatible endpoint (including self-hosted LM Studio) — with an AI Playground that lets you edit the full LLM prompt per project and save named prompt variants. LangSync runs a modern LLM with your custom prompt per namespace (not per project) and glossary fed into every call, all in code. For software UI strings with a maintained glossary, LangSync output is usually on the style guide; if you want to A/B test eight LLM providers including a self-hosted one, Tolgee is more powerful out of the box.
Tolgee is open-source. Doesn't that beat LangSync's pricing?
For technical teams that can self-operate it, yes — Tolgee's Apache 2.0 core is free and that's genuinely hard to beat. But "free" comes with caveats: SSO, granular permissions, the AI Translator, and vendor support all sit behind the paid Licensed Self-Hosted plan or Tolgee Cloud. The Apache 2.0 core also lacks features in the
/ee directory, which is under the Tolgee EL non-commercial license. LangSync is SaaS-only — no self-host path — but every feature ships on every plan with no Postgres to operate, no upgrade treadmill, and no EE license to worry about.Tolgee is also EU-capable. What's actually different on hosting?
Tolgee Cloud spans servers in Germany, Czech Republic, and the United States, with no customer region picker — data may be processed across all three. Self-hosted Tolgee gives you total residency control (your servers, your jurisdiction). LangSync is EU-only on AWS Frankfurt (region publicly named) on every plan, no choice required. If you need strict EU-only on a managed platform without operating it yourself, LangSync's default is tighter than Tolgee Cloud's.
How long does migrating from Tolgee take?
Plan one to three days, depending on whether you have TM and screenshots to bring across. Tolgee has no built-in LangSync importer; you export translations as JSON via the REST API (or
tolgee pull) and push into LangSync via the CLI. TMX export is on Tolgee's 2026 roadmap but not shipped today, so translation memory does not move automatically. Activity log and screenshots also stay behind.What if I want to switch back to Tolgee?
LangSync exports every namespace as standard i18n JSON via the REST API; Tolgee imports JSON, XLIFF, and many other formats natively. The data is yours either way. No lock-in on the source-string side; custom AI prompts (on either side) and Tolgee-specific tagging (abbreviation / forbidden terms) are the only platform-specific artefacts.
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