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Adriano Raiano
Adriano Raiano

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Finally: A Free Plan for the Official i18next Platform

#i18n #javascript #webdev #opensource

Stop manually editing JSON files. The "native" home for i18next is now free for hobbyists and side projects.

The "Manual JSON" Struggle is Real

If you’ve ever built a multi-language app with i18next, you know the drill. You start with one en/translation.json file. It’s fine. Then comes de/translation.json. Then a teammate adds a key to one but forgets the other. Then a translator sends you an Excel sheet, and you spend your Friday night copy-pasting strings into nested objects.

We created i18next in 2011 to solve the code side of internationalization. A few years later, we built Locize to solve the management side.

Until today, Locize was mostly a "pay-as-you-go" service with a 14-day trial. But we heard you: "I want to use the official tool for my side projects, but I don't want a ticking clock on my trial."

We listened. Today, we’re launching the Locize Free Plan.

What’s in the Free Plan?

We wanted this to be actually useful, not just a "demo" tier.

  • 1,000 Words: Plenty for a landing page, a SaaS MVP, or a personal blog.
  • 10,000 Downloads/mo: Enough to handle a healthy amount of traffic via our CDN.
  • The Full "Native" Experience: You get automatic missing key handling, the In-Context Editor, and runtime updates.

Why this matters for the i18next ecosystem

Transparency is one of our core values. We don't have venture capital funding. Locize is what funds the development of i18next. When you use Locize — even on the free plan — you are helping us maintain the open-source libraries you use every day, like i18next, react-i18next, and i18next-cli. It’s a sustainable cycle: the service funds the framework, and the framework makes the service better.

How to set it up (The 2-Minute Version)

Integration is exactly what you'd expect from the creators of the framework. You just swap your local backend for the Locize backend.

import i18n from 'i18next';
import { initReactI18next } from 'react-i18next';
import Backend from 'i18next-locize-backend';

i18n
  .use(Backend)
  .use(initReactI18next)
  .init({
    fallbackLng: 'en',
    backend: {
      projectId: 'your-project-id',
      apiKey: 'your-api-key', // only use in development!
      referenceLng: 'en'
    },
    // This allows you to send missing keys 
    // from your code directly to Locize!
    saveMissing: true 
  });
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With saveMissing: true, you don't even have to type keys into the Locize UI. You just write t('new_hero_title') in your React component, and the key appears in Locize automatically.

Growing beyond "Hobby" scale?

For teams that need more, we’ve also introduced new Fixed Pricing Plans.

Our "pay-as-you-go" model is flexible but sometimes hard to budget for. Now, you can choose a fixed tier (Starter, Professional, or Enterprise) so you know exactly what your base cost is every month, with fair, graduated overages if you go viral.

Let's build together

We’ve been maintaining i18next for over 15 years. This new pricing model is our way of making sure the "Native Home" for i18next is accessible to everyone — from the dev building their first portfolio to the enterprise scaling to hundreds of languages.

Check out the new plans here: locize.com/pricing

I’d love to hear what you think in the comments! What's the biggest pain point you have with i18n right now?

PS. Locize has no sales reps. You can sign up, try it, and talk directly to the engineers. No "discovery calls," no sales pitches, just real support from the people who build the platform.

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