Transept vs memoQ professional CAT vs document-first

Segment-by-segment CAT vs document-first workspace

memoQ prices checked on October 5, 2026 against its published pricing. memoQ sets its own plans and prices, and they may have changed since. View memoQ pricing

memoQ is for professional CAT work and language operations: deep TM and terminology, LiveDocs, strong interop, and the on-prem option regulated buyers need. Transept is for document and content translation that ships now, in a browser, with nothing to install and no segment grid to learn first. Use memoQ for the professional CAT program (especially on-prem) and Transept for the document.

When Transept is the better fit

FAQ

• When does memoQ make more sense than Transept?+

  When you need deep professional CAT (a mature TM and term base, LiveDocs, tight interop with an LSP supply chain) or an on-prem or private-server deployment for regulatory reasons. memoQ is excellent there. Transept is EU-hosted cloud and doesn’t offer on-prem.

• Can I move my memoQ translation memory into Transept?+

  Yes. Export your TM as TMX and your terminology as CSV from memoQ, then import them into Transept. The memory is searchable right away, and the AI uses it as reference while it translates. You can export back to TMX or XLIFF whenever you want to move, so nothing is locked in.

• How is Transept’s translation memory different from memoQ’s?+

  memoQ is the best of classic CAT memory: deep TM plus LiveDocs, with exact, fuzzy, and context matches. Transept differs in two ways. First, matching: it adds semantic (meaning-based) search on top of exact and fuzzy matches, so a sentence you reworded still comes up. Second, what the memory does: memoQ offers matches in the editor, and its AGT add-on grounds LLM translation in your TMs, term bases, and LiveDocs, while Transept feeds your matches into the AI draft and the QA pass and also remembers the reasoning behind an approved translation. For deep professional CAT, memoQ is excellent; for document and content work, Transept’s memory is the better fit.

• Does Transept offer an on-prem option like memoQ?+

  No. Transept is EU-hosted cloud, private by default, and your documents aren’t used for model training. If you need a private-server or on-prem deployment, memoQ is the right pick. For teams that are fine with EU cloud, Transept covers the document workflow with nothing to install.

• Is Transept’s quality comparable to a memoQ-based workflow?+

  For the translation itself, Transept runs on frontier models (currently Google Gemini), enforces your glossary on every pass, and runs a QA pass that re-reads for drift, which works well for documents and content. memoQ’s strength is the mature CAT environment around the model rather than the model itself. They are different tools for different jobs, and neither simply beats the other on quality.

• Is memoQ better than Transept for professional translation?+

  For deep professional CAT work (a mature TM and term base, LiveDocs, tight LSP interop, or an on-prem deployment for compliance), memoQ is excellent. For document-first, AI-native work in the browser, with no segment grid to learn first, Transept is the better fit. The two are built for different jobs.

• How does memoQ pricing compare to Transept?+

  memoQ sells subscriptions: memoQ translator pro is €396/year or €44/month, and memoQ TMS starts at €2,750/year on the Starter plan (one PM license and five linguists, cloud only), which you can buy online. The larger TMS plans, including private-server and on-prem deployment, are sold through memoQ’s sales team. Prices exclude VAT. Transept’s pricing is public and self-serve: Free, Starter at €29/month, or Pro at €79/month, with credit packs that never expire. The everyday plans need no sales call.

• Who at Transept can see our documents?+

  Production access is limited to a few named operators, currently the two co-founders, who sign in with SSH keys under audit logging, and customer content isn’t opened in routine operations. To look into a support request, Transept first asks for your permission and the specific document. Stored data sits on EU servers (Hetzner, Germany), and the AI providers that translate a block don’t train on it.

• Can several translators work on one document at the same time?+

  Yes. Editing is real-time: a block a teammate is editing shows as taken, so two people never overwrite each other, and cursors, comments, and resolved threads update live. Comments anchor to the text and can be kept internal to the team. Resolved threads still reach the AI as context, so a decision your team settled isn’t undone on the next run. Inviting teammates is free on every plan.

• Can I keep one client’s memory out of another client’s work?+

  Yes. By default the memory searches everything you can access on the document’s language pair. Narrow it to a project, a team, or only the current document, exclude whole projects, and choose which document statuses count. Set the defaults once on the Translation memory page and override them per document. A team owner can also enforce a team policy, so members can switch memory on or off but can’t widen what it searches.

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