This article outlines Smartling's AI Subscription, a flexible prepaid plan that allows you to use multiple AI translation offerings under a single subscription. Learn what's included, how usage is tracked, and what additional services are billed separately.
What is the AI Subscription?
Smartling’s AI Subscription is a prepaid, flexible subscription that lets you use multiple AI offerings under a single plan.
Rather than purchasing individual AI services separately, the AI Subscription provides a shared translation budget that can be applied across supported AI offerings. This gives you the flexibility to adapt your translation strategy based on your content needs without being locked into service-specific commitments.
The subscription works like a translation budget you can spend across different AI services, allowing you to mix and match as needed. Usage is consumption-based, meaning capacity is drawn down at service-specific rates as each AI service is used.
What's included?
The AI Subscription includes the following AI offerings. Each service draws against your subscription at different rates.
AI Hub usage
The AI Hub allows you to translate content using your preferred MT engines or LLMs by setting up custom translation Profiles, or using Smartling's preconfigured Auto Select Profile. Use Smartling-provisioned credentials to access your preferred translation provider or bring your own credentials (BYOK).
Using any MT or LLM Profile (including Smartling Auto Select) in a workflow or for an Instant MT integration counts as AI Hub usage. AI Hub usage is billed at different rates depending on whether you use your own API keys (BYOK) or Smartling-provisioned credentials.
AI Toolkit usage
AI Toolkit is an add-on to the AI Hub that includes a bundle of AI-powered features designed to improve machine translation quality, consistency, and efficiency. See the complete list of features included in the AI Toolkit.
To use the AI Toolkit:
- It must be enabled for your account. (This can be done by your Customer Success Manager or another Smartling representative.)
- Since AI Toolkit features are designed to optimize machine translation output, AI Toolkit features must be enabled in the translation step of any relevant workflows.
All words processed through a workflow with one or more AI Toolkit features enabled are counted as AI Toolkit words and are billed at the AI Toolkit rate.
AIHT (AI-Powered Human Translation) by Smartling Language Services
AIHT is a Smartling Language Services offering that combines AI efficiency with human linguistic expertise. It is accessed through preconfigured workflows and comes with a Translation Satisfaction Guarantee.
If your account has an active AI Subscription, words processed through the AI Review step in AIHT workflows are not counted as billable Processed Words.
Words processed through AIHT workflows are counted as AIHT words and are billed at the AIHT rate.
AIT (AI Translation) by Smartling Language Services
AIT is a fully automated translation solution designed to replace traditional MTPE while providing instant ROI. AIT uses the same AI features as AIHT without a human review step*. Instead, content is routed based on the target language. AIT is available in two tiers:
- Tier 1: For high-resource languages, content goes directly from translation to the published step.
- Tier 2: For other languages, includes a light post-editing step before content reaches the published step.
* If your team prefers to review the translations, you have the option to add an internal review step. For a limited group of lower-resource languages (Tier 2), a light post-editing human step is required. This Light Post-Edit step is completed by SLS and is included in the AIT workflow.
Words processed through AIT workflows are billed at the AIT Tier 1 or AIT Tier 2 rate, depending on the workflow path.
How can I track AI Subscription usage?
As you use AI services, usage is tracked and deducted from your prepaid AI Subscription balance. Each service draws down capacity at its respective rate. If you run out of capacity, you can purchase additional capacity to continue using the AI Subscription.
You can track your AI Subscription usage from the AI Subscription Usage Report.
How does the AI Subscription affect cost estimates?
If your account has an active AI Subscription, Smartling uses your subscription rates to calculate cost estimates instead of the rates in your standard rate cards. This applies to all workflows and services covered by the AI Subscription.
If your account does not have an active AI Subscription, cost estimates continue to use the standard rate card rates.
How rates are applied
Each AI service included in the subscription has its own per-word rate. When you run a cost estimate, Smartling applies the subscription rate that matches the service used in each workflow step. For example, the AIHT rate for an AIHT workflow, or the AI Hub rate for a workflow with an MT step. You can see the rate applied to each step in the estimate details.
If AI Toolkit is enabled on a workflow step, the estimate uses the AI Toolkit rate for that step. The AI Hub rate is not added on top of the AI Toolkit rate.
How costs are displayed
Subscription rates can include up to five decimal places for precision. When calculating a cost estimate, Smartling sums costs at full precision and then rounds the displayed total up to the nearest cent ($0.01). As a result, very small jobs, particularly MT jobs using BYOK credentials with low per-word rates, will display a minimum estimated cost of $0.01.
What costs extra?
While the AI Subscription covers a comprehensive range of translation offerings, the following are not included and are invoiced separately:
- Smartling Language Services professional translation (SLS Human Translation + Editing workflows)
- Additional language services such as DTP and LQA
- Processed Words fees for non-SLS workflows that include a human step (for example, if you use a third-party translation agency with AI Hub or AI Toolkit). If your account has an active AI Subscription, words processed through the SLS-managed AI Review step in AIHT workflows are not counted as billable Processed Words.
- Managed Services
- TMS fees
Getting started
To learn more about Smartling's AI Subscription and whether it's the right fit for your organization's translation needs, contact your Smartling Customer Success Manager or Smartling representative.