memoQ

What Is memoQ?

In 2004, three Hungarian language technologists — Balázs Kis, István Lengyel, and Gábor Ugray — were frustrated with the tools professional translators were forced to use. The dominant option was already more than a decade old, designed in the era of floppy disks, and had not fundamentally rethought its interface since. They built a competitor from Budapest that would go on to become, by most industry measures, the world's second most widely used professional CAT tool.

That tool is memoQ — now developed by memoQ Translation Technologies (formerly Kilgray), still headquartered in Budapest, still privately owned with no external investors. The company rebranded from Kilgray to memoQ between 2017 and 2019, aligning the corporate identity with the product that had eclipsed everything else they made. Today, over 35,000 translators and thousands of language service providers use memoQ daily.

Understanding what memoQ is requires understanding who uses it. This is not productivity software for office workers tracking hours. It is professional-grade translation infrastructure: a desktop CAT environment for linguists, a server-based TMS for language service providers managing projects across dozens of translators and dozens of clients, and a customer portal that lets non-technical clients interact with the workflow without needing software training.

The platform competes primarily with SDL Trados (now RWS), Phrase, and to a lesser extent cloud-first platforms like Crowdin and Lokalise. Among CAT tools, memoQ is consistently rated ahead of Trados for user satisfaction, while Trados holds advantages in enterprise integrations and market longevity.

Key Features

LiveDocs — Dynamic Translation Memory

Translation memory has been a standard CAT tool feature for decades. What memoQ's LiveDocs adds is the ability to use live reference documents — existing translations, bilingual PDFs, previous project files — as dynamic TM sources without the overhead of importing and maintaining formal TM databases.

A translator working on a technical manual can point LiveDocs at all previous manuals the client has produced, and memoQ will surface relevant translations in real time as they type. The quality and coverage improve with every document the client adds. For language service providers with long-term client relationships and years of reference material, LiveDocs is transformative — it allows institutional translation knowledge to compound.

Project Management for LSPs

The memoQ Server component turns the individual CAT tool into a full-scale TMS for language service providers. Project managers can create projects, assign documents to translators and reviewers, set deadlines, track progress, and manage version history from a central dashboard. Translators connect to the server from their local memoQ installation without needing to exchange files manually.

This architecture — a powerful server TMS backed by a sophisticated desktop client — reflects memoQ's origins in the professional translation industry rather than in software development. The workflows it supports are the workflows of translation agencies: multiple linguists on the same project, structured review chains, client-facing status reporting.

Customer Portal

The customer portal allows clients — procurement managers, marketing departments, legal teams — to submit translation requests, approve quotes, download deliverables, and track project status without needing to install or learn any translation software. For agencies managing high-volume relationships with enterprise clients, this removes a significant administrative overhead.

The portal integrates tightly with project management, so a submission through the customer portal automatically creates a project in the memoQ Server queue. Status updates propagate back to the portal without manual intervention.

Machine Translation Integration

memoQ integrates with all major MT engines — DeepL, Google Translate, Microsoft Translator, and others — with quality estimation scoring that helps post-editors prioritise segments requiring human attention. The platform supports fragment assembly, combining TM matches with MT for segments that partially match existing translations, which improves throughput on technical content with repetitive sentence structures.

Importantly, memoQ's MT integration is engine-agnostic. Organisations with domain-specific MT engines or MT providers under GDPR-compliant contracts can integrate them directly, without being locked into a specific provider.

File Format Breadth

memoQ supports an exceptionally wide range of file formats, including formats from Adobe InDesign and Illustrator, Microsoft Office formats, XLIFF, HTML, XML, JSON, SDL Trados TTX, and numerous legacy formats used in the translation industry. Crucially, it reads and writes SDL Trados package formats natively, which is essential for agencies that collaborate with clients or contractors using Trados.

Pricing

memoQ operates a split pricing model reflecting its two distinct user populations.

For individual translators and freelancers, memoQ Translator Pro is available at €40/month on a monthly subscription or €360/year (equivalent to €30/month) on an annual subscription. There is a 30-day free trial with no credit card required. The subscription includes full CAT tool functionality, continuous updates, and support. A one-time perpetual licence was historically available; the current focus is on subscriptions.

For language service providers and enterprises, memoQ TMS is custom-priced based on server configuration, number of users, and required features. No public pricing is listed, and procurement requires contacting the sales team. This is appropriate for a server product with installation, configuration, and ongoing support requirements — but it means LSPs cannot evaluate TCO without a sales conversation.

The freelancer tier is competitively priced relative to the market. €30-40/month sits below equivalent subscriptions from RWS Trados, and the 30-day trial is among the more generous in the category.

EU Compliance & Privacy

memoQ Translation Technologies operates from Budapest, Hungary — an EU member state — with no US parent company and no private equity ownership that might create jurisdictional complexity. The company offers EU data hosting for its cloud TMS, and organisations with strict data residency requirements can deploy memoQ Server entirely on-premise within their own infrastructure.

An on-premise deployment means zero cloud data flow: all translation memory, termbases, and project data remain inside the organisation's own network. For highly sensitive industries — defence contractors, law firms processing confidential litigation documents, pharmaceutical companies handling pre-publication research — this is a significant compliance advantage over cloud-only tools.

A Data Processing Agreement is available for cloud TMS customers. EU-based customers contracting with memoQ deal with an EU entity and are not subject to the trans-Atlantic data transfer complexities that arise with US-headquartered SaaS providers.

Who It's Best For

Professional translators who translate large volumes of technical, legal, or specialised content and need the deepest possible CAT tool — LiveDocs, fragment assembly, quality assurance checks, and format support — will find memoQ's feature depth hard to match.

Language service providers running multi-translator, multi-client workflows need a server-based TMS with project management, a customer portal, and structured review workflows. memoQ Server is built precisely for this use case.

Enterprises with sensitive translation requirements — financial services, legal, government — that require on-premise deployment to meet data residency obligations will find the on-premise option a rarer capability than cloud-native competitors offer.

If the use case is localising a SaaS product through continuous deployment pipelines, Crowdin or Lokalise will integrate more cleanly. If the team is a small startup needing a quick way to translate a website, memoQ's desktop-first architecture is more than the situation requires. But for professional translation environments, memoQ remains the most credible EU-headquartered challenger to Trados.

The Verdict

memoQ is not trying to win the same market as Crowdin or Lokalise. It is the professional translator's tool and the language service provider's backbone — a dense, feature-rich platform built on 20 years of engagement with the actual workflows of the translation industry. The desktop-first architecture feels dated next to cloud-native competitors, and the server TMS pricing opacity frustrates agencies that want a quick comparison. But the feature depth, the EU data hosting options, the genuine on-premise capability, and the LiveDocs technology make it the strongest EU-headquartered choice for professional translation teams.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is memoQ GDPR compliant?

Yes. memoQ Translation Technologies is headquartered in Budapest, Hungary and operates fully under EU law. The platform offers EU data hosting on its cloud TMS and an on-premise deployment option that keeps all data within the customer's own infrastructure. A Data Processing Agreement is available for cloud customers.

Where is memoQ data hosted?

Cloud TMS data is hosted in EU infrastructure. memoQ also supports full on-premise deployment, where all data remains inside the customer's own servers with no external data transfer. This makes it one of the few localisation platforms in the market with a credible air-gapped deployment option.

How does memoQ compare to SDL Trados?

Both are professional CAT tools used by language service providers worldwide. memoQ is consistently rated higher for user satisfaction and has a cleaner workflow for individual translators. Trados has deeper enterprise system integrations and longer market presence. A key distinction: memoQ is EU-headquartered (Budapest, Hungary); Trados is owned by RWS Group (UK, post-Brexit). Both platforms read each other's file formats, making mixed-tool collaboration practical.

Can a freelance translator afford memoQ?

Yes. The Translator Pro subscription at €40/month (monthly) or €360/year (€30/month equivalent) is priced for individual translators. A 30-day free trial is available. The higher-priced memoQ TMS is a separate product designed for language service providers managing multi-user server environments.

Does memoQ work on Mac or Linux?

The full memoQ desktop CAT editor is Windows-only. Mac and Linux users can access the web-based memoQ TMS interface for project management, document upload, and translation tasks via browser. However, the complete feature set — including LiveDocs, full quality assurance tools, and advanced fragment assembly — currently requires the Windows desktop client.