locAGI runs on your own AI keys (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek, Mistral — or a free local Ollama model). You pay the AI vendor at wholesale rates. We charge nothing for the workbench itself. The numbers below are real.
| locAGI | Phrase Personal | memoQ Translator Pro | Trados Studio | Smartcat | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost to translate one 1,500-word doc with AI | ~$0.02 – $0.40 | $27/mo flat (5k AI words/mo) | €0 (no AI; bring plugin) | €0 (no AI; plugin extra) | Metered, ~$0.06/word |
| Up-front license | Free (MIT) | Subscription only | €620 one-time | €695 – €995 | Free tier exists |
| AI baked in (no plugin install) | Yes | Add-on tier | No (manual MT) | Plugin required | Yes |
| Self-hosted (your firewall, your machine) | Yes | No | Desktop only (Windows) | Desktop only (Windows) | No (cloud only) |
| Linux / macOS native | Yes (browser) | Yes (browser) | Wine workaround | Windows only | Yes (browser) |
| Real-time per-call cost visibility | Yes — chip on every screen | Billed monthly | n/a | n/a | Wallet only |
| Per-model price comparison before you commit | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Open exports (XLIFF, TMX, TBX, MQXLIFF, SDLXLIFF) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| AI translation QA (MQM-aligned) | Yes | Add-on | Manual | Plugin / add-on | Yes |
| Glossary / termbase injection into AI prompt | Yes | Limited | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Multilingual project view | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Your data leaves your machine? | Only to the AI vendor you chose | Yes (Phrase cloud) | No (desktop) | No (desktop) | Yes (Smartcat cloud) |
Pricing data collected 2026-05-20 from each vendor's public site — check theirs for current rates. locAGI's "pennies per file" figure assumes the user picked a mid-tier model (DeepSeek V4-Pro or Gemini 2.5 Flash) and ran AI Improve + Critic on every segment. Cheaper if you pick Gemini Flash; more if you pick GPT-5 or Claude Opus.
Below is a realistic spend for translating one 1,500-word document through locAGI's Studio workflow (AI Improve on every segment, Critic pass, exporting to MQXLIFF). Numbers are projected from the catalog pricing we surface in the analysis modal.
You connect your own OpenAI / Anthropic / Google / DeepSeek / Mistral / xAI / OpenRouter / Ollama-Cloud key in Settings. locAGI sends the API call straight to that vendor; your card on file with them is the one charged. We don’t add a markup, see your bill, or have a billing relationship with you at all.
Yes — connect a local Ollama server, pick a local model, and the AI calls never leave your machine. Free in dollar terms (you pay in GPU watts). Great fit for regulated content where data residency matters.
You swap to a cheaper one in Settings — no migration, no lost work. The per-model cost projection on the analysis modal lets you see the impact of the change before you commit. (This is the wedge: competitors lock you into their chosen MT vendor.)
Yes — MIT licensed. You can self-host on a $4/mo VPS, fork it, run it air-gapped inside a SCIF, or paste an LLM response on top of someone else’s deployment. Source on GitHub.
Within roughly ±20%. We use vendor-published per-million- token rates and a ~3.5 chars/token estimate. Reasoning models can spend extra hidden tokens (chain-of-thought) that don’t show in the input/output split — rare but worth knowing. Open the Studio analysis modal for the live numbers on a real project.