We investigate the superfluid-insulator transition of one-dimensional interacting bosons in both deep and shallow periodic potentials. We compare a theoretical analysis based on quantum Monte Carlo simulations in continuum space and Luttinger liquid approach with experiments on ultracold atoms with tunable interactions and optical lattice depth. Experiments and theory are in excellent agreement. Our study provides a quantitative determination of the critical parameters for the Mott transition and defines the regimes of validity of widely used approximate models, namely, the Bose-Hubbard and sine-Gordon models.