Need a Lokalise alternative that handles more than strings and simple workflows?
Why settle for a one-trick translation tool? From product to marketing to legal, Phrase scales with your content and your company. Get a tool that works for all company departments.
Trusted by 3,600+ global teams
What holds teams back from scaling with Lokalise
One tool per department, guaranteed silos
Lokalise is mainly built for software. Phrase supports software, marketing, documentation, support, compliance, and multimedia localization in one platform.
Phrase Strings gives product teams the workflows developers expect, including CI/CD, branching, and API-first integration.
Phrase TMS supports broader cross-functional content and review workflows, while Phrase Studio adds transcription, subtitles, and voiceovers in 100+ languages.
Limited AI Translation and quality customization
Lokalise offers less flexible AI context, more limited engine selection, and more basic quality evaluation.
It lacks the same depth in customizable quality checks and audience-specific personalization.
Teams also get less flexibility to bring in their own AI, quality, or post-editing solutions.
The result is less control over translation quality at scale.
Usage limits that can’t keep up with demand
Lokalise’s plans include lower processed-word limits, which can create friction as teams expand into more languages, releases, and content.
Phrase includes more generous capacity for processed words, AI translation, and integrations from lower plan tiers, making it better suited to growing localization programs.
One platform across product, marketing, support, and multimedia
Phrase combines software localization, translation management, self-service translation, and multimedia localization in one ecosystem. Shared language assets, quality controls, and reporting help teams work across functions without splitting systems.
Smarter machine and AI translation, built for quality
Phrase provides advanced AI translation technology, enabling you to confidently reduce human effort without compromising quality. AI translation capabilities leverage context from translation memories and style guides, while AI post-editing improves fluency and corrects terminology errors. Quality evaluation detects issues based on predefined checks.
No-code workflows that adapt to how your team works
Instead of fitting your process into rigid templates, Phrase Orchestrator lets you build exactly what you need: conditional logic, automated vendor handoffs, multi-stage review flows, and more. Whether you’re localizing software, support, or marketing content, Phrase adapts to your internal systems, not the other way around.
Better visibility into quality, activity, and optimization opportunities
Phrase offers built-in analytics dashboards for visibility into activity and quality, with advanced analytics available for more customizable reporting.
Built for multi-vendor operations
Phrase supports buyer-vendor collaboration and centralized workflow control, which gives growing organizations more flexibility as supplier models evolve.
Why teams switched from Lokalise
Unfiltered Lokalise G2 reviews
“Efficient for software localization, not so much for documentation.
Limited options for document and marketing localisation; highly sensitive to formatting placeholders, making it difficult to edit translations and perform efficient QA; no in-app document preview; room for improvement in integrations with some apps (Storyblok, HubSpot)”.
Verified User in Information Technology and Services. Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.).
“The vendor reporting functionality is significantly lacking, forcing us to rely on external methods to address this issue.
Additionally, automatic task creation does not support the inclusion of a rate card, resulting in these tasks not appearing in any generated reports. Overall, reporting requires substantial improvement for this tool to truly reach its full potential”.
Verified user in Computer Software. Small Business (50 or fewer employees).
Don’t take our word for it
Phrase recognized as a Leader in the Forrester Wave™, Q3 2025
We scored top marks in 21 of 26 criteria, setting the benchmark for enterprise language technology.
Why customers choose Phrase over Lokalise
| Phrase | Lokalise | |
|---|---|---|
Content types | • Software • Games • Mobile apps • Websites • Documents • Support content (Zendesk, Intercom and Salesforce integration) • Content from all CMS types (headless and traditional) • Live chats • Video subtitling and dubbing | • Software • Games • Mobile and web apps • Content from headless CMS (Contentful, Storyblok) • Support content |
| Pricing model | Pricing geared towards high volumes and AI-powered workflows across departments. Main pricing metrics are: • Processed words • Automations • Integrations • AI Translation capacity | Pricing geared towards software localization use cases. Main pricing metrics are: • Processed words • Automations • Integrations • AI Translation capacity |
Analytics | Strategic approach for decision-making: 9+ Pre-defined dashboards measuring all relevant localization KPIs out of the box. Vendor management analytics. Chart personalization. Possibility to export metadata to run analysis in an external BI system. | Tactical approach: Simpler reports like translations by language, contributor, or words translated for a specific period. Lokalise includes analytics on paid plans, but deeper reporting options are more limited outside Enterprise. |
| Company-approved internal translation front desk | Yes, Phrase Portal. Upload documents and instantly receive customized machine translations from secure, company-approved providers. | No equivalent. |
| Video subtitling and dubbing | Yes, Phrase Studio. Create multilingual subtitles and dubbing with natural-sounding voices in minutes instead of days. | No. |
| Machine & AI Translation capabilities | Context for AI Style guides, glossaries, and translation memories are leveraged by AI capabilities to ensure translations meet your specific needs. Smart engine selection Automatically selects the best engine for each translation job from 30+ supported engines. Quality evaluation Evaluates AI translations using standardized and customizable quality metrics, and only sends content requiring review to human linguists. Personalization Add custom instructions to tailor translations to specific audiences, such as language variants. Open ecosystem Bring your own AI translation, quality evaluation, or AI post-editing capabilities. | Context for AI Style guides, glossaries, and translation memories can serve as context for AI translation, but not within the same workflow. You need to choose between TM or style guide + glossary as the context source. Smart engine selection Selection from two models. Quality evaluation Provides standardized scores, but no customizable quality checks. Personalization No personalization capabilities for specific target audiences. Open ecosystem No easy way to integrate your own solution. |
CI/CD integration, Mobile SDK for App Localization with over-the-air (OTA) Updates | Yes. Unlimited, OTA prices based on product usage. | Yes. Unlimited, OTA prices based on payload volume. |
| Security | • SOC 2 Type I certified, with Type II certification expected in 2026 • ISO 27001 • GDPR and CCPA compliant • PCI DSS adherence • HIPAA compliant • AWS-powered, with 99.9% uptime • Zero-downtime deployments • Separate US and EU data centers | • Soc 2 Type I and II • ISO 27001 • GDPR and CCPA • HIPAA |
| Support | 24/7 support on all pricing plans. Success plans to help with migration. On-demand courses and certifications for all user roles. | 24/7 support on all pricing plans. |
FAQs
Phrase vs Lokalise: what should product teams consider?
Lokalise is widely used by developer-led product teams and is strong for software localization workflows. Phrase is often chosen when software localization needs to connect to a broader enterprise program, including marketing and documentation workflows, shared translation memory, and organization-wide governance and analytics. When comparing the two, consider platform scope, permissions, support model expectations, integration depth, and how quality signals are handled.
How does Phrase’s pricing model work?
Phrase pricing is designed to grow with your business with generous capacity on processed words, AI translation and automations. That means no scaling penalties.
Can I build custom MT models with Phrase?
Yes. Phrase Custom AI gives you the ability to train and deploy machine translation engines tailored to your brand, tone, and industry-specific language, helping you improve quality without relying solely on generic MT.
How easy is it to migrate from Lokalise to Phrase?
Most teams are up and running within a few days. Phrase is consistently rated one of the easiest localization platforms to set up, and our onboarding specialists guide your team through every step of the migration process.
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The comparative information published on this webpage is based on publicly available information and internal research as of March 20th, 2026. All competitor brand names are trademarks of their respective owners. This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to disparage any company. To report corrections, please contact Phrase at marketing@phrase.com