Comparing Crowdin and Crowdin Enterprise

Crowdin offers two powerful localization management platforms: Crowdin and Crowdin Enterprise. While both provide a robust set of tools to streamline your translation process, they are designed to meet different organizational needs, workflows, and security requirements.

This article will help you understand the key differences between the two platforms so you can choose the one that best suits your projects and team.

Core Concepts: Project-Based vs. Organization-Based

The most fundamental difference between Crowdin and Crowdin Enterprise lies in their architectural model. Understanding this distinction is key to choosing the right platform.

Crowdin: A User-Account-Centric Model

Crowdin is built around individual user accounts. A user signs up and becomes the owner of projects, and project ownership cannot be changed. Key resources like Translation Memories (TMs), Glossaries, and Machine Translation (MT) engine configurations are managed within the owner’s personal account settings and can be shared with the projects they own. This model is straightforward and ideal for individual developers, open-source projects, and small teams where localization management is handled by one or a few people.

Crowdin Enterprise: An Organization-Centric Model

Crowdin Enterprise is designed for teams and businesses. Instead of an individual account, you create an organization that serves as a centralized, private workspace with a unique domain (e.g., your-company.crowdin.com). All projects, localization resources, and users belong to the organization, not an individual, and ownership can be transferred. This model enables centralized management, advanced security, granular permissions, and scalable collaboration across multiple teams and products.

Key Differences

Feature	Crowdin	Crowdin Enterprise
Target Audience	Individuals, open-source projects, startups, and small teams.	Mid-sized to large businesses, enterprises with complex security needs.
User & Access Model	User-account-centric. A user owns projects and resources.	Organization-centric. The organization owns all projects, resources, and users.
Workflow System	Standard project lifecycle.	Advanced, multi-step, fully customizable workflow engine.
Resource Management	Managed in a user’s personal account and shared with their projects.	Centralized in the organization’s Workspace and assignable to groups or projects.
Security & Compliance	Standard security features, 2FA.	Advanced SSO (SAML, OIDC), IP Allowlisting, Custom Fields, choice of US/EU data residency.
Vendor Collaboration	Order translations from a vendor marketplace.	Formal B2B Vendor/Client model where organizations collaborate directly.
Reporting & Analytics	Standard project-level reports.	Organization-level reports and advanced analytics (Task Usage, Accuracy reports).
Self-Hosted Integrations	Not supported.	Supported for GitHub Enterprise, GitLab Self-Managed, and Bitbucket Server.
Support	Community, email, and chat support depending on the plan.	Includes all standard support plus priority support, SLAs, and Slack support for the Business plan.
Billing	Monthly and annual subscription options.	Annual subscriptions, billed upfront.

Detailed Feature Comparison

While many core translation features are available on both platforms, Crowdin Enterprise offers enhanced capabilities in key areas designed for larger teams and more complex requirements.

Organization, User, and Team Management

Crowdin: User management is user-account-centric. While contributors like translators and proofreaders are invited directly to projects via the Members tab, project owners can also invite and manage managers from a dedicated Managers page in their personal account. From this page, managers can be assigned to specific projects, TMs, and Glossaries, reinforcing that all management and resources stem from the owner’s account.
Crowdin Enterprise: Features a centralized Users section within the organization’s Workspace to manage all members. You can organize users into Teams for simplified permission assignment and create Groups to structure projects hierarchically, with resources and managers inherited from the group level.

Workflow and Automation

Crowdin: Follows a standard localization lifecycle where content is translated and then approved. Automatic pre-translation can be configured in the project Settings > Pre-translate.
Crowdin Enterprise: Features a powerful, visual workflow editor that allows you to build custom, multi-step workflows. You can add unique, Enterprise-only steps to automate your process, including:
- Source Text Review: Review and correct source text before translation begins.
- Custom Code: Use JavaScript to automatically route strings into different workflow paths based on labels, file names, or other criteria.
- Crowdsourcing: Engage your community for volunteer translations in a dedicated step.
- Vendor Steps: Formally assign translation or proofreading work to vendor organizations.
- App-based Steps: Extend the workflow with custom logic by installing apps from the Crowdin Store.

Security, Compliance, and Access Control

Crowdin: Provides robust security, including two-factor authentication (2FA) for individual users and project privacy settings. All data is stored in the US data center by default.
Crowdin Enterprise: Offers a comprehensive suite of advanced features for corporate environments, providing granular control over how users join the organization and access data:
- Data Residency: You can choose to host your organization’s data in either a US or EU data center during setup.
- Advanced SSO: Integrate with your corporate identity provider using SAML and OpenID Connect (OIDC). Enterprise also allows the configuration of Custom Auth Applications for social SSO providers.
- Enforced Security Policies: Mandate security measures across the organization, including required Two-Factor Authentication and Device Verification for new logins.
- Access Control: Restrict access to your organization with an IP Allowlisting and control how new users can join with options for Admin-Managed Invitations.
- Customization and Granularity: Use Custom Fields to add metadata to resources and enable Permission Granularity Mode to manage resources (like TMs and Glossaries) at the group level.

Resource Management

Crowdin: Resources like TMs and Glossaries are managed in the user’s personal account and can be shared across their projects. A unique feature for public projects is the ability to leverage the Global Translation Memory, a massive TM shared across the platform.
Crowdin Enterprise: All resources are owned by the organization and managed centrally in the Workspace. This allows for consistent and secure use of TMs and Glossaries across all company projects and groups.

Task Management

Crowdin: Provides a comprehensive task management system that allows you to assign work, set due dates, and split files among translators. It also supports Sequential Tasks to link translation and proofreading workflows and Task Templates to save and reuse configurations.
Crowdin Enterprise: Includes all the standard task management features and adds Task Cross-Review, an extra layer of control that requires tasks to be approved by a manager or owner before assignees can begin their work.

Collaboration and Vendor Management

Crowdin: Uses a vendor marketplace model where you can order professional translations. You can browse and connect with translation agencies from the Vendors page, accessible from your profile home page. The collaboration is transactional, where you create a Task to order translations from a connected vendor.
Crowdin Enterprise: Supports a formal B2B collaboration model where you can invite partner agencies to become a Vendor from the Store > Vendors page. Once connected, the vendor organization is managed in the Workspace > Vendors section and can be assigned directly to steps in a project’s workflow. The vendor manages the work within their own secure workspace, and communication across organizations is supported via Shared Comments in the Editor.

Reporting and Analytics

Crowdin: Provides a solid set of project-level reports, including a Project Overview dashboard, Cost Estimate, Translation Cost, Pre-translation Accuracy, Translator Accuracy, and Top Members.
Crowdin Enterprise: Offers a more extensive analytics suite with all the standard project-level reports, plus:
- Organization-level Reports: Aggregate data from all projects within your organization for a high-level overview of costs and activities.
- Advanced Reports: Includes the detailed Task Usage report, which is not available on Crowdin. This report provides in-depth analytics on team performance, workload, task completion times, and bottlenecks.

API and Integrations

While both platforms offer an extensive RESTful API, they differ in their endpoint structure and the scope of available operations.

Crowdin: The API and integrations use global domains (e.g., api.crowdin.com). The API provides comprehensive methods for managing projects, files, strings, TMs, and glossaries on a per-user basis.
Crowdin Enterprise: The API uses an organization-specific domain (e.g., your-company.api.crowdin.com). In addition to all the core functionalities of the standard API, the Enterprise API includes exclusive methods for managing organization-level resources such as Users, Groups, Teams, and Vendors. It also provides programmatic control over advanced features like multi-step Workflow Templates and Custom Fields. External tools and integrations, such as the Figma or Sketch plugins, require you to specify your Organization Domain during setup.

AI Capabilities

Crowdin: AI features are managed at the user-account level from the owner’s personal profile. Key features include AI pre-translation, an in-editor AI Assistant, and AI-powered QA checks.
Crowdin Enterprise: AI is managed centrally at the organization level from the Workspace. In addition to the standard AI features, Enterprise offers exclusive capabilities for advanced terminology and quality control:
- AI Alignment: An advanced feature (available on the Business plan) that analyzes human translations to automatically create draft glossary terms and enforce terminology consistency. To support this, the Enterprise platform includes a distinct Alignment prompt type.

Billing and Subscriptions

Crowdin: Offers both monthly and annual subscription plans. The default free trial period for paid apps is 14 days.
Crowdin Enterprise: Plans are billed annually. The default free trial period for paid apps is 30 days.

Which Platform Is Right for You?

Your choice ultimately depends on your team’s size, workflow complexity, and security needs.

Choose Crowdin when:

You are an individual developer, a student, or managing an open-source project.
You are part of a small team or startup with straightforward localization needs.
You do not require advanced security features like SSO or IP allowlisting.
Your workflow is simple (e.g., translate, then approve).

Choose Crowdin Enterprise when:

You are part of a mid-sized to large company managing multiple products or projects.
You require advanced security and compliance, such as SSO, IP allowlisting, or EU data residency.
Your team needs centralized control over users, projects, and localization resources.
You need complex, automated, and customizable multi-step workflows.
You collaborate formally with multiple translation agencies (vendors).
You need in-depth analytics on costs, quality, and team performance across the entire organization.

Migrating Between Platforms

If you start on Crowdin and your needs grow, a direct migration path is available. You can move your projects, Translation Memories, Glossaries, and team members from your Crowdin account to a new or existing Crowdin Enterprise organization using the Migration to Crowdin Enterprise tool in your Account Settings.