Ultimate DX for i18n
Keyless i18n your coding agent gets right the first time: one file to edit, no locale JSON to load, no merge conflict
Free self-hosted, or from €4/month.
5-Minute Setup
Your whole i18n implementation in 5 minutes. Not kidding.
No Keys System
Your brain shouldn't be involved for such meaningless tasks.
Global From Day One
Ship to international markets without extra effort.
Multiple PITA exist with the current i18n solutions. Pains are so big that you delay i18n as much as possible.
Setup the keys' system: at least 1 hour of senior dev time
Back and forth for each new key: 1 minute per key, x500 keys, x2 languages = 17 hours
With i18n-keyless, you don't care about the i18n system at all. You can go on the beach and order a mojito.
This is painful to generate. This is painful to maintain.
When you see a text in the app, and you want to update it, you need to find the corresponding key.
With i18n-keyless, you don't care about the i18n system at all. Use your brain for something more interesting.
With the key system, you need to manage the translations in the app.
Otherwise your users will see someheader.welcome.title in their app.
With i18n-keyless, worst case scenario offline you see untranslated real words. Normal pace, you don't care about the i18n system at all. Just write good headlines, focus on marketing, get sales.
With the key system, when you read the code and the content, you have to read keys, not natural language.
Sometimes you should make a fix because a sentence is not grammatically correct. But you don't know that because you read keys.
With i18n-keyless, you don't care about the i18n system at all. Codebase stays beautiful.
Add i18n from day one without any impact on your development pace
Nothing you have goes away.
Every SDK stays on npm, PyPI, RubyGems, pub.dev and the other registries. Fork them, keep them, they are yours.
The very same Docker image that runs i18n-keyless.com. Run it on your machine with SQLite or Postgres, your AI key, your data at home.
Fully free, unlimited projects. Donations are voluntary and keep the project alive. The licence is verified offline — the server never calls home. Export all translations to JSON at any time.
Built for coding agents
Plus six other reasons why the system is so optimized for agentic coding.
A key is a naming decision with no right answer. Two agents write login.submit and auth.button.send for the same button. Without keys there is no decision to make.
A keyed change touches the component plus every locale JSON, and agents forget files. Here a copy change is a single-file edit.
Five agents on five branches all edit en.json: a guaranteed conflict. There is no shared file, so worktrees and background agents never collide.
To reuse a key, an agent must load the locale files into context on every edit. Keyless loads nothing: the text is right there in the component.
The pull request shows real sentences. A human or a review agent can judge the copy without digging for what a key stands for.
Every i18n rule you write is a rule the agent can break. This one needs a single line — and the fallback is the real text, so a miss cannot show a.b.c on screen.
# CLAUDE.md Write the UI copy in English and wrap it in <T>…</T> from i18n-keyless-react. That is the whole i18n setup.
Through the MCP server, the agent lists missing translations, reads one, overrides a bad one, or imports the copy you already have — with its own OAuth login, no key to paste.
Perfect for MVPs
Stop delaying i18n because of complexity. Implement in 5 minutes, not days. Maintain your development velocity as if i18n wasn't implemented.
5-minute implementation. Not kidding.
One simple config object and you're done.
Maintain development velocity
Code as if i18n wasn't implemented at all.
Ship to global markets
No refactoring needed as you scale to new languages.
SSR & SEO ready
Works with Next.js, Remix, TanStack Start and Astro. Server-render any language for search engines — same 5-minute setup.
Setup keys system (1 hour)
Create translation files (2 hours)
Refactor components (4 hours)
Test all languages (2 hours)
Fix layout issues (3 hours)
12+ hours of work
Add package (1 min)
Configure with API key (2 min)
Wrap text components (2 min)
5 minutes of work
How It Works
Just the simplest config object and you're ready to go global.
And even more, your agent will set it up for you.
import * as I18nKeyless from "i18n-keyless-react";
I18nKeyless.init({
API_KEY: "YOUR_API_KEY",
storage: window.localStorage,
languages: {
primary: "en",
supported: ["en", "fr"],
},
});import { I18nKeylessText } from "i18n-keyless-react";
// import { T } from "i18n-keyless-react"; // also works
// Just write in your primary language
<I18nKeylessText>
Welcome to our website
</I18nKeylessText>import { awaitForTranslationOrFallbackToOriginal, type Lang } from 'i18n-keyless-node';
const title = await awaitForTranslationOrFallbackToOriginal('Come see my app!', user.lang as Lang);
const body = await awaitForTranslationOrFallbackToOriginal('So many new stuff!', user.lang as Lang);
await sendExpoPushNotification({ user, title, body });import { getTranslation } from "i18n-keyless-react";
export default function Navigation() {
return (
<HomeTabs.Navigator>
<HomeTabs.Screen
options={{ tabBarLabel: getTranslation("Welcome") }}
name="WELCOME"
/>
</HomeTabs.Navigator>
);
}i18n-keyless is a library, combined with an API service, that allows you to translate your text without the need to use keys.
If the translation is not found, there will be an asynchronous fetch to I18nKeyless' API to get the translation by an AI API call.
This operation is made usually in dev mode, while you're coding. If you missed one, in production only the first user missing the translation will see a glitch, then it'll be available instantly to users all over the globe.
App Store & Google Play
Every update means new release notes, a description and keywords — for each language, on both stores. That is what stops you from adding languages. Not the app.
Release notes for every language, in one call
Write the update once. awaitForTranslation returns it in each language you sell in, and your store config feeds it to EAS or fastlane.
48 languages, mapped to the App Store slots
pt-BR and pt-PT are two listings; en-GB, en-AU and en-CA are three. toAppStoreLocale puts each translation in the right one.
Fix a bad translation without a release
In the app, one override in the dashboard is live at once — no hotfix build, no store review. In the listing, re-run the push.
Not priced per word
A translator charges about €0.10 a word. 2,000 strings times 10 languages is a budget a solo developer does not have. Here words are not counted.
// store.config.js — EAS Metadata awaits an async config
const { init, awaitForTranslation, toAppStoreLocale } = require("i18n-keyless-node");
const LANGS = ["en", "fr", "de", "ja", "pt-BR"];
const DESCRIPTION = "Bibi translates your app while you sleep…";
module.exports = async () => {
init({ API_KEY: process.env.I18N_KEYLESS_KEY, languages: { primary: "en", supported: LANGS } });
const info = {};
for (const lang of LANGS) {
info[toAppStoreLocale(lang)] = {
title: await awaitForTranslation("Bibi", lang, { context: "App Store app name, 30 characters max" }),
subtitle: await awaitForTranslation("Keyless i18n", lang, { context: "App Store subtitle, 30 characters max" }),
description: await awaitForTranslation(DESCRIPTION, lang, { context: "App Store description" }),
};
}
return { configVersion: 0, apple: { info } };
};The same call writes fastlane metadata files for Google Play. Caps are advisory: put the limit in the context and check the length before you push.
Try It Yourself
See how i18n-keyless works in real-time
Open a live, editable StackBlitz project to see translations resolve as you type.
"I always postponed i18n until my client wanted it so much that I had no choice. I hate reading the code with i18n keys inside, and I hate maintaining JSON files as much as seeing how expensive are i18n translations providers. So I had to build mine, and I FREAKING LOVE IT. All my apps are i18n by default now."
AA
Arnaud Ambroselli
Founder of i18n-keyless
Pricing
One flat price for your scale.
Every feature in every plan.
No per-word fees, no token math.
Self-hosted — free forever
The same API, dashboard and MCP server, in one Docker container with SQLite, on your server, with your own AI key. Fully free, unlimited projects, no subscription, no usage cap, updates for life. If it saves you time, support it with a donation.
Prefer not to run a server? We run it for you.
Starter
€4/ month
Up to 1,000 monthly active users
For indie apps and new products
Indie
€9/ month
Up to 5,000 monthly active users
For apps finding their audience
Growth
€29/ month
Up to 50,000 monthly active users
For apps with real traction
Scale
€99/ month
Up to 500,000 monthly active users
For products at scale
Every plan includes:
All 48 languages. The whole world, from day one
Unlimited translations, AI included. New strings translate themselves in production
Live translation of UGC (user-generated content)
Upgrade, downgrade or cancel anytime
More than 500,000 monthly active users? Contact us
Move the two sliders. The bill is for your app in all 48 languages.
1,000
Public list prices, read in August 2026. Vendors change them, so please check. Each bill is our reading of the published ladder, and we always take the cheapest paid plan that holds your app. When a vendor bills the first translation once, we spread it over twelve months.
1 Crowdin publishes €44 a month for 60,000 hosted words on the Pro plan, billed annually. A hosted word is one word in one target language. We repeat that block price above 60,000.
2 Intlayer is open source. The $29 a month buys the CMS and the AI generation quota. Above the quota you supply your own AI key, so we add the model bill at $10 for each million tokens, spread over twelve months.
3 Lingo.dev publishes $99 a month plus $2 for each million tokens of infrastructure, and it passes the model bill to you. We count 1.4 tokens for each word and $10 for each million tokens of model cost. The base fee is most of this number.
4 Locize publishes €7, €19 and €49 a month for 15,000, 30,000 and 60,000 words, with 1, 3 and 5 million CDN downloads. Above that it publishes $0.50 for each 1,000 extra words and $5 for each million extra downloads. We count thirty downloads for each user each month. No published plan holds 48 languages.
5 Lokalise publishes $144, $375 and $999 a month, and no key limit. We assume the three plans hold 5,000, 20,000 and 100,000 keys, and twelve words for each key. Human translation is billed apart.
6 Phrase publishes $525 a month for 1 million managed words on the software plan, and $1,245 for 3 million. We count one managed word for each word in each language, and we repeat the $1,245 block above 3 million.
7 Smartling does not publish a platform price. We count only the AI translation, at the published $0.06 a word, spread over twelve months. Your real bill is higher.
8 Tolgee bills keys, not words, so we count twelve words for each key. It publishes €49 for 2,000 keys, €179 for 5,000 and €499 for 20,000, billed annually. Above that we repeat the €499 block. Machine translation credits are counted apart.
9 Weglot translates a web page, not an app. Its largest published plan is €699 a month for 20 languages, so we scale that price to 48 languages. Your words fit inside every one of these plans.
Every other line grows with your product. Ours is a flat price.
Before you ask
No. There are no JSON files, no key extraction step, and no build-time plugin. You write your sentences in your source language, the SDK sends them to the API on the first request, the API translates them with AI, and every subsequent request is served from the cache. Your code is the single source of truth.
The source text is the key. Change it and you get a new key with a fresh AI translation. The old key simply stops being requested, and the dashboard cleans it up after 30 days without use. A typo fix is the same: fix it in the code, deploy, and the new text is translated on the first request.
Self-hosted: fully free, unlimited projects, no subscription and no usage cap — install the Docker image, use your own AI key. Donations are optional and keep the project alive. Hosted: one flat price per project per month, by monthly active users — €4 up to 1,000, €9 up to 5,000, €29 up to 50,000, €99 up to 500,000 — billed monthly, cancel any time. There is no per-seat, per-word, or per-string pricing on either.
Yes. The dashboard has an "Export JSON" button that downloads every translation in your project as a single JSON file. The export includes all rows, not just the ones used in the last 30 days, so it is a full backup. There is no lock-in: your data is always one click away.
The SDKs are MIT and stay on npm, PyPI, RubyGems and the other registries. The server is public under the Elastic License 2.0 and the protocol between them is documented, so anyone can run it, fork it, or write a server against it. Your translations leave in one JSON export at any time. If the hosted service stopped: installed apps keep serving their cached translations, a fresh client falls back to the source language, and pointing the SDK at your own instance with API_URL restores everything. What you would lose is the AI translation of new strings on i18n-keyless.com — not your data and not your app.
Read the full answer, with codeTry It Yourself
Watch this short video to see i18n-keyless in action
Your whole i18n implementation in 5 minutes. iykyk.