Trados alternative for freelance translators: what to check first

Looking for a Trados alternative for freelance translators usually starts with the price and ends with a file: the .sdlppx package an agency sends and the .sdlrpx it expects back. Here is what to check in any alternative, ours included, before you rely on it for paid work.

We make Lexora Studio, a CAT tool that competes with Trados Studio. Read this with that in mind. Prices and features were checked on the makers’ own pages on 16 October 2026. What we say about Lexora is about version 0.7.3.

What Trados costs a freelancer

On 16 October 2026, RWS’s pricing page for freelance translators listed two plans. Trados Freelance, the desktop and browser version, cost £34 a month, £408 paid yearly. Trados Go, which runs only in the browser and covers 1 million target words a year, cost £24 a month, £288 paid yearly. Both prices exclude VAT, and the page showed them to us in pounds (Trados pricing for freelance translators). The same page announced Trados Studio 2026 as released.

For comparison, Lexora Studio Pro costs €39 a month or €384 a year, VAT included for the EU and UK (Lexora pricing).

What to check in any Trados alternative

It opens the package, not only the bilingual file. Agencies send an .sdlppx project package and expect an .sdlrpx return package. A tool that opens .sdlxliff files but can’t write the return package leaves you rebuilding the package by hand.
Every tag and segment goes back where it was. Open the return package again in the tool and check a few segments with formatting. The agency’s Trados rebuilds the final document from those tags.
Segment status and locks survive. A segment you confirmed should go back as Translated, and a segment the agency locked should stay locked.
Your memories and termbases come with you. Trados keeps memories in .sdltm files and termbases in MultiTerm .sdltb files. A tool that can’t read them needs them exported as TMX and TBX first, which takes Trados and MultiTerm.
The word count. Agencies usually pay by the analysis in the package. Tools don’t all count words the same way, so invoice by the agency’s report.
Online projects. If an agency gives you access to Trados GroupShare or a Trados Cloud project instead of sending a package, you need Trados for that client.
Your computer. Some tools run on Windows only, some also on macOS and Linux, some in the browser.

The surest test is a real package. Try the tool on a job you already delivered, or ask an agency for a small test package before a paid one.

The alternatives, from their own pages

What each maker says, as of 16 October 2026. We haven’t tested these tools ourselves, so this says what their pages claim, not what we saw.

memoQ translator pro runs on Windows. Its page says “memoQ can accept packages from most major translation tools” (memoQ translator pro). It cost €396 a year, or €33 a month billed annually, with VAT on top for EU residents without a VAT ID (memoQ pricing).
CafeTran Espresso runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. Its page lists “full support for xliff, sdlxliff, sdlppx, mqxliff, and txml formats”, and says it can be downloaded for free and used indefinitely, with a licence needed once your memories and glossaries reach a certain size (CafeTran Espresso). The page doesn’t give the licence price.
OmegaT is free and open source under the GNU General Public License, and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. Its page lists more than 30 file formats and exchange with other tools through TMX and XLIFF (OmegaT). It doesn’t say whether it opens Trados packages; check that before you rely on it.
Matecat is free and runs in the browser. Its page says it supports 82 file formats and stores your data in its cloud (Matecat).

Several of these do things Lexora doesn’t: OmegaT and Matecat are free, OmegaT and CafeTran run on macOS and Linux, and Matecat works on any computer with a browser.

Where Lexora fits

Lexora Studio opens an .sdlppx, translates the documents for your target language and writes the .sdlrpx return package. A segment you confirm goes back as Translated and a reviewed one as Approved; a segment the agency locked opens locked and goes back locked. It imports Trados memories (.sdltm) and MultiTerm termbases (.sdltb), and it opens memoQ packages and Office files as well. The Trados alternative for freelance translators page lists every Trados file it opens, and the help article on packages walks through a job.

What it doesn’t do:

It doesn’t connect to Trados GroupShare or Trados Cloud projects.
It doesn’t load the memories and termbases inside a package by itself. You add them by hand.
Its word count is its own.
It runs only on Windows 10 and 11.
We haven’t yet tested a package made in Trados Studio 2026. The packages we tested were made in 2017 and 2021 (the test, with its files).

When Trados is the right choice

We think Trados is worth its price when most of your work arrives in Trados packages, when agencies give you access to their GroupShare or Trados Cloud projects, or when they rely on what Trados adds to a package besides the text, such as their own analysis. It is the tool those packages are made for.

If Trados packages are an occasional job among Word files and other formats, we think a tool that opens them and writes a clean return package can be enough. That is the case we built Lexora for.