How Contextra compares
Contextra is a CAT tool — translation memory, glossary, term bases, keyboard-first review, all of it. What’s different is the era it’s built for: AI translation on your own key, document and term analysis, formatting that comes back untouched, and a shared team memory your vendor can’t read. Here’s how it lines up against the tools you already know.
Where Contextra goes further
The CAT-tool fundamentals are all here — translation memory, a purpose-driven glossary, term bases with TMX/TBX, keyboard-first review. This is what the AI era adds on top.
Formatting that simply holds
Bold, italics, superscript, hyperlinks and nested tables come back exactly where they were. You export your original DOCX with only the words changed — no tags to place, no layout to repair.
Elsewhere: The tag-by-tag formatting work every CAT tool grew up with just disappears.
It reads the document — and any term — before you commit
Contextra profiles each document’s domain, jurisdiction, register and source language, then lets you analyze any term on demand: definition, register-tagged alternatives, cited usage examples, and false-friend and jurisdictional warnings.
Elsewhere: No other tool we researched offers this analysis layer.
Frontier AI on your own key, at cost
Choose Gemini, GPT or Claude per job and pay the provider’s list price with no markup and no metering — and a per-document cost panel shows exactly what each file cost, so you can bill it through.
Elsewhere: Cloud tools only sell AI as marked-up credits; none show a per-document price.
Local-first, on macOS and Windows
Your documents are parsed on your machine and your memory and term bases stay on your disk — in the default BYOK mode, text leaves only for the AI provider you chose. A Contextra server enters only when you choose it: translating on managed credits, or sharing work with your team — which you can encrypt end to end. Native on both platforms.
Elsewhere: The tools agencies require most — Trados, memoQ — are Windows-only; the cloud platforms upload your files.
Feature by feature
Against the best-known tools translators actually compare us to. Every other tool is in the full lineup below.
| Capability | Contextra | Trados | memoQ | Wordfast | Phrase | DeepL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Native macOS + Windows desktop | ||||||
| Choose frontier LLMs — Gemini, GPT & Claude | ||||||
| AI on your own key, at provider cost | ||||||
| Per-document AI cost, ready to bill | ||||||
| Your original DOCX back — no tags to place | ||||||
| Formats beyond DOCX — XLSX, PPTX, InDesign, XLIFF | ||||||
| Agency packages in and out (SDLPPX, MQXLIFF) | ||||||
| Automatic document analysis | ||||||
| On-demand term analysis with warnings | ||||||
| Local-first — documents parsed and kept on your machine | ||||||
| One-time perpetual license option | ||||||
| TMX + TBX memory & term-base interop | ||||||
| Shared team memory & term bases | ||||||
| Shared memory encrypted end to end — the vendor can't read it |
The closest tool on AI: CafeTran
It runs the same frontier models on your own key with no markup, and it does several things better than we do: it is cheaper (€80/yr or €200 perpetual, plus a free size-limited version), it handles far more file formats, and it runs on Linux too. What Contextra adds is the document and per-term analysis, formatting you never have to repair, the per-document cost panel, shared team memory you can encrypt end to end, and a modern native experience on macOS and Windows.
Two details that came from sworn translators. A stored match that differs from your segment only in capitalisation scores 99%, never 100 — the difference has to be shown to you, not silently accepted. And numbers, dates and reference codes are carried into a reused segment only when it is provably safe to do so; when it isn’t, Contextra declines to guess rather than hand you a certificate with the wrong number in it.
The full lineup
Fourteen tools translators weigh up, grouped by what they are. Pricing is what we found in July 2026 and shifts often — treat it as a guide, not a quote.
Desktop CAT tools
Cloud platforms & TMS
Powerful for agencies and teams — your documents live on the vendor’s servers.
AI translators & productivity tools
Where the big suites still lead
Contextra isn’t trying to be everything. A few places where an established tool is the better call:
DOCX today
Contextra translates Word documents — not spreadsheets, slide decks, InDesign or agency XLIFF packages. Certified and legal work is overwhelmingly Word, and building for one format is why the formatting comes back untouched. If your work isn't, a broad suite like memoQ or Trados fits better today. Your memories and term bases move in and out via TMX/TBX either way. Spreadsheets and slide decks are on the way.
Teams, but not a TMS
A team can assign documents with due dates, watch progress as the work happens, and share translation memories and term bases — end-to-end encrypted, if you turn it on. What it isn’t is a workflow platform: there’s no real-time co-editing, no vendor or supply-chain management, no PM orchestration layer, and no configurable QA profiles. For an agency routing dozens of freelancers through a pipeline, a cloud TMS is still the right tool.
See how teams workNew, and open by design
The incumbents have 15–30 years and deep agency adoption behind them. Contextra is new — but because everything is local and exchanged through open TMX/TBX standards, trying it costs you nothing and locks in nothing.