Comparison
A Phrase alternative sized for a product team, not a localization department
Phrase is priced for organisations that employ someone whose job title contains the word localization. If nobody at your company has that job, the plans start well above what the work is worth.
- Phrase, entry plan
- $525
- ShipGlobal
- €19
Software UI/UX. Billed per word held in the system, with separate yearly allowances for machine translation and AI.
Per seat and month, incl. VAT. On top of that €10 per million tokens, and only for strings that are new or changed. Bring your own model key and the token cost disappears.
Where the numbers land
The developer-facing plan, Software UI/UX, lists at $525 a month for 15 seats and one million managed words. The Team plan is $1,245 a month for 20 seats. Those are annual-billing figures from Phrase's own page. For a company with a localization manager, translation vendors under contract and a compliance requirement, that is a reasonable price for a platform that covers all of it. For four developers with a language file, the smallest plan that includes seats at all is already more per month than most of the tooling budget. The other thing to model is that Phrase meters three separate things: managed words, machine translation units, and AI units, each with its own yearly allowance.
What Phrase lists
Every plan Phrase publishes, with the source and the date it was read. Prices change; this table says when it was last checked.
| Plan | Per month | Managed words | Seats |
|---|---|---|---|
| Freelancer | $27 | 200,000 | 0 |
| Software UI/UX | $525 | 1,000,000 | 15 |
| Professional | $525 | 300,000 | 15 |
| Team | $1,245 | 1,200,000 | 20 |
| Business | On request | 3,000,000 | 150 |
The fair part
When Phrase is the better choice
Phrase is the better choice when localization is a function rather than a task. It covers translation management and a full TMS in one platform, it has the enterprise controls that procurement asks about, it supports vendor workflows where professional translators are contracted and tracked, and its machine translation allowances run into the tens of millions of units on the larger plans. If you are being asked about SSO, audit trails, or a service level agreement, this comparison is not really about price and Phrase is the safer answer.
Getting your files out
Phrase exports every format it imports, including JSON, XLIFF, .strings, .xcstrings, ARB and PO. Pull the files, diff them against your source to see the real state of each language, and convert whatever your build does not read natively.
One language file in. 64 languages out.
No seat you forgot to cancel, no allowance that expires, no per-language multiplier. You pay for the strings that changed and nothing else.
€19 per month incl. VAT, cancellable monthly.
Questions
- What is a managed word in Phrase?
- It is a word held in the system, and each plan includes a fixed number per year. It is separate from MTUs, the machine translation units, and AIUs, the AI units, which have their own yearly allowances. Three meters means three ways to exceed a plan, so model all three before committing.
- Is the $27 Freelancer plan comparable?
- Not for a team. Phrase lists Freelancer at $27 a month with 200,000 managed words and no Strings seats included. It is built for a single freelance translator working on someone else's project, not for a company managing its own product strings.
- Does ShipGlobal do anything Phrase does not?
- One thing that matters to some buyers: you can bring your own model key. The text then goes to your own account with your model provider, under your agreement with them, and no token cost arises here at all. For teams with a data processing requirement about where text goes, that changes the conversation.
- What about quality compared to a professional translator?
- A model is not a professional translator and this page will not pretend otherwise. What ShipGlobal guarantees is structural: placeholders, plural forms and file structure survive intact, and nothing goes missing. If a market matters enough to need a human reviewer, export the file and have one review it.