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Transept vs Smartcat focus vs breadth
Smartcat is broad — AI translation, human marketplace, content generation, enterprise workflows. Transept is focused — the document and content translation surface, done well. Here’s how to decide.
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Smartcat is the broad platform play: AI translation, a marketplace of human translators, AI content generation that isn’t translation, enterprise workflows, marketplace billing, the works. For a localization team that wants one tool to cover translation, human services, and content generation in one contract, Smartcat is the bundle. For a team that wants a focused translation workspace — one that does document and content translation well without the marketplace and procurement overhead — Transept is the lighter, cheaper, more opinionated alternative. Here’s how the two compare on the surface that overlaps.
Where focus beats breadth
| Feature | Smartcat | Transept |
|---|---|---|
| Translator marketplace | Yes | No |
| AI content generation (non-translation) | Yes | No |
| Enterprise procurement workflows | Yes | No |
| Document-first translation workflow | Partial | Yes |
| Sentence-level alternatives panel | No | Yes |
| Model quality tiers (per doc/sentence) | Partial | Yes |
| Smart Proofread + Vision Proofread | Partial | Yes |
| Translation memory | Yes | YesBuilt in, feeds the AI |
| Decision-context memory | No | YesRemembers the reasoning, not just the segment |
| Notion & Google Drive integration | No | Yes |
| Self-serve onboarding (no sales call) | Partial | Yes |
| Free tier with full feature set | NoFree trial only | Yes |
| Starting price (paid) | From ~$1,200/yr, billed annually | €29/mo, excl. VAT |
Smartcat pricing checked July 17, 2026 against Smartcat’s published pricing. Plans and prices are set by Smartcat and may have changed since. View Smartcat pricing
Smartcat is for running language operations — a platform with a marketplace, content generation, enterprise workflows, the works. Transept is for translating and delivering documents without the enterprise overhead. Same underlying technology in places; very different shape.
When Transept is the right fit
Focused translation work
You want a translation workspace, not a content platform. Pick the tool built for the job.
Self-serve onboarding
Sign up, translate, deliver. No platform tour, no procurement, no minimum spend.
Document-first
Books, marketing copy, knowledge bases, contracts. The deliverables Transept is purpose-built for.
Memory that remembers the why
Smartcat’s TM stores the segment you accepted. Transept also keeps the reasoning around it — the alternatives you rejected, the review comments on a sentence — and feeds that context back to the model on the next run. So the AI repeats the decision behind your wording, not just the wording, and stops re-suggesting phrasings you already turned down.
10 languages, one weekend
We translated Transept itself into ten languages over three days, running our own pages through the editor, glossary, and memory on this site. If you are reading this in German or Ukrainian, it came through the same workflow you are looking at.
Field notes from the weekend— Don’t take our word for it —
The editor, in miniature
A working slice of the real thing — Literess, glossary, styleguide, workflows, and the translation memory are all live. Click around.
Here to help you translate
A key turned in the lock and the door swung open.
У замку повернувся ключ, і двері розчахнулися.
The knock came just before midnight.
Стукіт пролунав перед самою північчю.
FAQ
- No. Transept is the translation workspace; you bring the translators (yourself, your team, your agency). Smartcat is the place to find translators if you need to outsource.
- Yes — export your TM as TMX (or glossaries as CSV) and import them into Transept; document content imports as DOCX or Markdown.
- If you need a marketplace for human translators, broad AI content generation (not just translation), and enterprise procurement workflows. Transept doesn’t cover those.
- Yes — agencies use Transept for the document translation surface, with team accounts, per-client glossaries and styleguides, and client review links. The marketplace and content-generation pieces aren’t there, but most agencies have their own translator network anyway.
- No. Transept is the translation workspace; you bring your own translators (yourself, your team, or your agency). If you need to find translators, Smartcat’s marketplace is one of the better ones; or pair with Translated, Gengo, or a vetted agency.
- Smartcat uses its own AI model alongside third-party options. Transept runs on frontier models — currently Google Gemini — with quality modes you pick per document or sentence. For raw quality, the frontier model plus the glossary/QA workflow usually wins; for workflow simplicity within one platform, Smartcat is tighter.
- Yes — export glossaries, TM, and documents from Smartcat in their standard formats (TMX, CSV, DOCX) and import into Transept. The glossary and TM map onto Transept glossaries directly.
- Not currently part of Transept. If you need human translation, vet a partner agency and use Transept for the AI/review side of the workflow.
- Smartcat Basic starts around $1,200/year and scales up. Transept starts free (1,500 words/month) and Starter is €29/month with every feature unlocked. For self-serve teams, Transept is significantly cheaper.
Keep reading around this comparison
- FeatureA glossary the AI actually follows→Character names, product terms, branded phrases, client-specific vocabulary. Build a glossary once — manually, by upload, or seeded from a…
- FeatureBatch translation without the spreadsheet→A 30-file launch kit into 12 languages used to mean a spreadsheet, a project manager, and a week. With batch translation, it’s a queue you…
- Use caseTranslate the next client document→Per-client glossaries that travel across projects. Per-client styleguides that hold tone. Sentence-level review for the lines that matter.…
- CompareTransept vs DeepL on the long documents→DeepL is the default for fast, high-quality AI translation. Transept doesn’t claim to beat DeepL on the raw translation of a single…