Comparison
WordRate vs Protemos
Protemos is built for translation businesses that route work to vendors, while WordRate is built for the shop where the person quoting is usually the person translating.
Comparison
WordRate vs LSP.expert: quoting speed or the whole admin stack
WordRate suits the translator whose painful hour is the quoting hour, while LSP.expert is aimed at translators who want the whole freelance business recorded in one system.
The short answer
If your day is mostly quoting, WordRate is the closer fit. It is built around one motion: a file arrives, you pull a word count, apply that client rate card and send a price in about ninety seconds, with the glossary already sitting on the same client record. LSP.expert takes the wider view of a freelance translation business, so a quote is one record among many kinds. Pick by where the friction actually is. If invoicing and year end reporting hurt most, look at the broader suite. If the quote is what eats your evenings, start here.
WordRate and LSP.expert side by side
| What you are deciding | WordRate | LSP.expert |
|---|---|---|
| Center of gravity | Quoting. Word count in, priced quote out, on the rate card you saved for that client. | Broad freelance business management, with quoting one part of a wider record. |
| Per client rate cards | Each client carries its own per word rates, minimum fee, rush tier and fuzzy grid. | Rate handling sits inside a wider job and invoice model, so confirm the granularity you need on their site. |
| Glossary storage | Term lists live on the client record next to the rates, so the right list opens with the right job. | Terminology is generally handled in your CAT tool rather than the business layer. |
| Scope of the tool | Narrow on purpose: quote, rate card, glossary, delivery tracking. | Wider by design, aimed at translators who want one system for the whole admin side. |
| Time to first useful quote | Set up one rate card and you are quoting the same afternoon. | A broader system usually rewards a fuller setup before it pays back. |
| Who it assumes is working | You, or a team of two or three who both quote and translate. | Built around the independent translator running a solo practice. |
| Pricing shape | Three flat tiers, Freelance at $15, Busy Freelance at $39 and Language Agency at $99 a month. | Published on their own site and worth checking directly before you compare. |
What follows on the right is the shape of LSP.expert as a category: the workflow it assumes and the buyer it is written for. None of it stands still, so take the current position from them rather than from here. WordRate is published by MLJ, SASU and this page is written by Jimenez Julien.
Choose WordRate when
- You quote several files a day and the quote, not the invoice, is what keeps you at the desk.
- You run different per word rates for a direct client in Denver and an agency in Dublin and keep mixing them up.
- Your glossaries are scattered across spreadsheets and the wrong preferred term reached a client file last month.
- You want a second person to be able to quote on your rate card without asking you first.
Choose LSP.expert when
- You want one system for the entire freelance business, including the reporting your accountant asks for at year end.
- Most of your income is retainer or hourly work, so word count quoting is a small part of the week.
- You prefer a single broader suite over two focused tools, even if setup takes longer at the start.
What the ninety second quote actually involves
The quote is not one action, it is five. Count the words, decide which of them are new, fuzzy or repeated, pull the rate that applies to this client rather than your list rate, check the total against your minimum fee, and decide whether the deadline triggers a rush tier. Done by hand across a CAT analysis, a spreadsheet and an old email, that is fifteen minutes and one honest chance of using last year rate.
WordRate collapses those five steps into one screen because it holds the rate card. That is the whole design decision. A wider business suite has to be good at the job record, the invoice, the payment status and the reporting, so the quote screen is one page among many rather than the point of the product.
Where per client rate cards stop the leaks
Translators lose money in small, repeated ways. A certificate of birth priced by word instead of by document. A rush job quoted at the weekday rate because the surcharge was in a different file. An agency client charged the direct client rate, which either costs you the account or costs you the margin. Each of these is a rate card problem, not a discipline problem.
Holding minimums and rush tiers as part of the client record means the surcharge appears on the quote by default and you decide whether to waive it, rather than remembering to add it. If you already track all of this reliably in a broader system you use daily, that advantage shrinks. If your rate card currently lives in your head, it does not.
Glossaries belong with the client, not in a folder
Terminology work is where repeat clients are actually won. The medical device account that always wants device rather than unit, the law firm that insists on a specific rendering of a court name, the software client with a UI string list you built over two years. That knowledge is worth more than any single job, and it usually lives in a folder named after the client with three versions inside it.
WordRate keeps the term list on the client record beside the rates, so the person quoting and the person translating open the same list. This is a deliberately modest form of terminology management, not a replacement for the termbase inside your CAT tool. It is the layer that stops the term list going missing between jobs.
Questions people ask before they choose
Do I still need my CAT tool if I use WordRate?
Yes, and that is the intended setup. WordRate handles the commercial layer, meaning the count, the rate card, the quote and the client glossary. The translation itself, the translation memory and the segment level work stay in Trados Studio, memoQ or whatever you already run.
Can WordRate take a CAT analysis instead of a raw word count?
That is how most users quote. You enter the new words, the fuzzy band totals and the repetitions, and the rate card applies your own percentages to each band. Quoting from the raw document count is the fastest way to either overcharge a client or undercut yourself on a heavily repetitive file.
Which tool suits a translator who invoices only a few clients a month?
If you send a handful of invoices and dozens of quotes, the quoting side is where the time goes and WordRate is aimed at that. If the opposite is true and your admin pain is billing, payment chasing and reporting, a broader freelance business suite like LSP.expert is the more sensible place to look.
Other comparisons on wordrateapp.com
Comparison
WordRate vs Plunet BusinessManager
Plunet BusinessManager is enterprise translation management for agencies with dedicated project managers, while WordRate is for the small shop that quotes in the morning and translates in the afternoon.
See this head to head on a real file
Two columns of criteria read cleanly until your own fuzzy grid, minimum fee and rush tier get involved. Send us a quote you wrote last month and we will rebuild it live, glossary attached to the same client record, so you can judge the difference rather than infer it. If the other product suits your work better, we would rather tell you now.