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Transept vs Smartcat focus vs breadth
No cardFirst 5 pages freeYour work never trains AI
Literess, the AI editor in Transept
You: Make Grandma grumpier.
Literess: Done. She doesn’t just say it anymore. She grumbles it. sagte → raunzte
Ask in plain words. You approve every change. Meet Literess →
Smartcat is the all-in-one platform: AI translation, a marketplace of human translators, AI content generation beyond translation, enterprise workflows, and marketplace billing. For a localization team that wants translation, human services, and content generation under one contract, Smartcat is the bundle. For a team that wants a focused translation workspace, one that handles documents and content well without the marketplace and procurement overhead, Transept is the lighter, cheaper, more opinionated alternative. Here’s how the two compare where they overlap.
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 | PartialSegment-based CAT editor, with preview | Yes |
| Sentence-level alternatives panel | PartialSuggestions tab and one-click Rephrase | Yes |
| Model quality tiers (per doc/sentence) | PartialEngine picked per language pair | Yes |
| Smart Proofread + Vision Proofread | PartialQA checks; AI Reviewer from Accelerate | Yes |
| Translation memory | Yes | YesBuilt in, feeds the AI |
| Decision-context memory | No | YesRemembers the reasoning, not just the segment |
| Notion & Google Drive integration | PartialGoogle Drive from Adapt; Notion not in its integration lists | Yes |
| Self-serve onboarding (no sales call) | PartialSign-up and trial self-serve; upgrades via sales | Yes |
| Free plan with core features | PartialFree plan; AI translation allowance is trial-only | Yes5,500 credits every month |
| Starting price (paid) | Adapt from $1,200/yr, billed annually | €29/mo, excl. VAT |
Smartcat prices checked on October 5, 2026 against its published pricing. Smartcat sets its own plans and prices, and they may have changed since. View Smartcat pricing
Smartcat is for running language operations: a platform with a marketplace, content generation, enterprise workflows, and more. Transept is for translating and delivering documents without the enterprise overhead. Both can run on Google’s Gemini models, but they are built for different jobs.
When Transept is the right fit
Focused translation work
You want a translation workspace, not a content platform, and Transept is built for exactly that job.
Self-serve onboarding
Sign up, translate, deliver. No platform tour, no procurement, no minimum spend.
Document-first
Books, marketing copy, knowledge bases, and contracts: the work Transept is built for.
Memory that remembers the why
Smartcat’s TM stores the segment you accepted. Transept also keeps the reasoning around it, such as the alternatives you rejected and the review comments on a sentence, and feeds that context back to the model on the next run. The AI repeats the decision behind your wording as well as the wording, and stops offering 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 same editor, glossary, and memory this site describes. If you are reading this in German or Chinese, it came through that workflow.
Field notes from the weekend— Don’t take our word for it —
The editor, in miniature
A working slice of the real app: Literess, the glossary, the styleguide, workflows, and translation memory are all live. Click around.
Simple pricing
Every plan comes with monthly credits. You spend them only on AI work, at the price each action shows before you click. No sales call and no contract: start free and add a credit pack whenever you need more.
One credit covers one source word in Standard mode. Pro mode uses a more capable model and costs 3 credits per source word. Chinese and Japanese source text is counted per character. Manual edits, exports, comments and translation memory are free: you spend credits only when AI translates, rewrites or checks your text, or reads a document to build a glossary or styleguide. Every paid action shows its price on the button before you click. See the price list.
Free
Always freeFor your first projects
Unlimited users
Translated with Pro, proofread with Standard. About 11 on Standard alone.
- Pro mode: a more capable model for nuance, 3 credits per source word
- Standard quality: fast, accurate, faithful
- Translation memory: your past translations, reused to keep new ones consistent
- Workflows: chain translation, proofreading, and checks into one run
- Glossary, styleguide, QA, import / export: all included
- Notion, Drive, TMX / XLIFF: import, export, and bring your own memory
- 68 languages: from Spanish to Tagalog
- Batch translation of whole documents
- 10 lifetime messages with Literess: your AI literary editor, who remembers your projects and preferences
- No card required
Starter
For regular client work
Unlimited users
- Literess: your AI literary editor, who drafts, proofreads, and sets things up for you
- API, MCP & webhooks: automate runs, or let AI assistants work in your account
- Teams: invite anyone for free; add €29 seats to fund a shared credit pool (60,000 credits a month each)
- Top up anytime: pack credits never expire
Pro
For higher volumeFor agencies & large catalogs
Unlimited users
- Over 3× Starter’s credits: headroom for batch work and full catalogs
- Priority support: a direct line and faster replies
- Predictable bill: most months need no extra credit packs
Prices are in euros and exclude VAT. If VAT applies to your purchase, checkout shows it before you pay, and a business with a valid EU VAT ID pays the net price under reverse charge. You can buy credit packs on any plan, including Free: 30,000 credits for €19, 100,000 for €55 or 300,000 for €149. Pack credits never expire. Creating a team and inviting people is free. To share credits, add two or more seats: each seat adds its plan’s monthly credits to the team’s pool, all on one invoice. Cancel anytime and keep your plan until the end of the period you’ve paid for. We give refunds for faults on our side that we can’t fix and for billing mistakes, and EU consumers can withdraw within 14 days and get back the unused part.
FAQ
- No. Transept is a translation workspace, and you bring the translators: yourself, your team, or your agency. If you need to outsource, Smartcat is the place to find translators.
- Yes. Export your TM as TMX and your glossaries as Excel files from Smartcat. In Transept, import the TMX from the editor’s Memory panel, and save each glossary’s source and target columns as a CSV, without a header row, to upload when you create the glossary. Documents import as DOCX or Markdown.
- When you need a marketplace of human translators, AI content generation beyond translation, and enterprise procurement workflows. Transept doesn’t cover those.
- Yes. Agencies use Transept to translate documents, with team accounts, a glossary and styleguide for each client, and client review links. There’s no marketplace or content generation, but most agencies have their own network of translators anyway.
- Not as separate hires. Smartcat sells AI coworkers by plan: its plans start with a Chief of Staff plus translator and content coworkers, and the Reviewer coworker comes with Accelerate, from $24,000 a year. In Transept, workflows and Literess do that work on every plan. A workflow chains the steps (translate, proofread, check against your glossary and styleguide) and can pause for your review before anything is applied. Literess, the assistant inside the app, builds glossaries, runs workflows, and edits blocks, and asks for your approval before she changes your documents. Free includes 10 messages with her; paid plans keep her with you.
- The model alone won’t decide it, because the two can run on the same ones. Smartcat lets you pick the engine for each language pair: OpenAI GPT, Google Gemini, or Anthropic models, or DeepL, Google, or Microsoft machine translation. Transept runs on frontier models (currently Google Gemini), with a quality mode you choose for each document or sentence. With similar models underneath, the difference comes from what each tool gives the model (your glossary, styleguide, and memory) and from the review that follows. Translate the same sample in both before you decide.
- In Transept, a plan’s credits reset every billing cycle. Credit packs, which you can add to any plan from €19, never expire, so a busy month doesn’t force a bigger plan. Smartcat’s subscription Smartwords expire at renewal, whether they come monthly or, on an annual plan, as a full year up front. Its pay-as-you-go top-ups stay valid for a year from purchase.
- No. Transept translates text: Word files, EPUB books, Markdown, plain text, PDFs (imported as text), HTML files and email templates, string tables, Notion pages, and Google Docs. Smartcat also has translators for video and subtitles, audio, images, and live websites. If much of your content comes in those forms, Smartcat covers it and Transept doesn’t.
- Smartcat’s entry plan, Adapt, starts at $1,200 a year, billed annually, with 100,000 Smartwords; the next plan, Accelerate, starts at $24,000 a year. Transept starts free (5,500 credits/month), and Starter is €29/month excluding VAT, with 60,000 credits, glossaries, styleguides, QA, and Pro mode included. For self-serve teams, Transept costs significantly less.
Keep reading around this comparison
- FeatureA glossary the AI actually follows→Character names, product terms, brand phrases, client vocabulary. Build a glossary once (by hand, from a file, or from a sample document)…
- FeatureBatch translation without the spreadsheet→Taking a document into 12 languages usually means a spreadsheet of files, a project manager, and a week of follow-up. With batch…
- CompareTransept vs DeepL for long documents→DeepL is the default for fast, high-quality AI translation, and Transept doesn’t claim to beat it on a single sentence. Most translation…
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How we handle dataSecurity you can check
Hosted in Germany, in Hetzner’s ISO 27001-certified data center. Every sub-processor is listed, and a DPA is one email away.
All sub-processorsGive it context
Glossaries, styleguides, translation memory and per-string notes go with every request. You set them up once per project.
GlossariesYou’re the human in the loop
The AI drafts; you decide. Review every change side by side, keep or revert it, and send a review link when a client needs to look.
Review linksAPI, MCP and webhooks
The full API on Starter and Pro. Connect Claude or another AI assistant over MCP, or start runs from your own tools.
Developer guideSomething bigger?
Large catalogs, custom workflows, a DPA for procurement. Transept stays self-serve; write to us for the rest.
support@transept.aiFeatured on
