Polylens
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Comparison

Polylens vs i18n-check

A CLI check is a snapshot. Polylens keeps score over time.

Start free ↗Try the live scan

i18n-check is a solid open-source CLI that validates i18next and ICU translation files: missing keys, broken syntax, invalid plurals. Run it locally or in CI and it exits non zero on findings. If you want a free, stateless lint, it is a good one.

Polylens covers that ground and then keeps going: a 0 to 100 health score per language, a drift trend across scans, stale-translation detection that needs scan history (a stateless CLI cannot do this), a public badge, a dashboard for the whole team, Git repo import, alerts, and MCP tools for AI agents.

Side by side

Polylens
i18n-check
Primary job
✓ Translation health system
One-shot file validation
Missing keys and broken plurals
✓ Yes
Yes
Health score per language
✓ Yes, 0 to 100, severity weighted
No, pass or fail output
Drift trend over time
✓ Yes, charted per project
No state between runs
Stale translation detection
✓ Yes, from scan history
Not possible without history
Public health badge
✓ Yes, SVG per project
No
Team dashboard and alerts
✓ Yes
No, terminal output
Price
✓ Free tier, Team $19/mo
Free, open source

When i18n-check is enough

  • ·A solo project where a local lint before commit covers the risk.
  • ·You only need structural validation and zero infrastructure.
  • ·You want everything in the repo with no external service.

When you want Polylens

  • ✓More than one person needs to see translation health without running a CLI.
  • ✓You care whether quality is trending up or down, not just the current snapshot.
  • ✓You want stale strings caught when the source copy changes.
  • ✓You want a badge in the README and a gate wired to a hosted endpoint.

Plenty of teams run both: a CLI lint locally for fast feedback, and Polylens in CI as the system of record. If you pick one, pick the one with memory.

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