Skip to main content
Save 30% on your first year

Alternatives

Airbase alternatives

Airbase built a mid-market spend platform that covered corporate cards, invoice processing, expense management, procurement intake and approvals in one product. Paylocity bought it for about $325 million and has been folding it into its HCM platform.

Why people look

Why teams look for a Airbase alternative

The reasons that come up in evaluations. Whether they apply to you depends mostly on where your receipts come from.

We consolidated AP and expense, and the documents underneath are just as poor as before.

Network receipts arrive itemized and supplier invoices are captured and matched line by line. The consolidated view is built on better inputs.

Our spend software now comes through an HR platform and renews on its schedule, not ours.

Smartbills is finance software bought on its own cycle. A payroll decision doesn't decide where your receipts come from.

Coding accuracy depends on whichever category the requester happened to pick.

Line items bring their own categories into the ledger. Coding follows the purchase instead of a dropdown choice.

The shortlist

6 alternatives to Airbase

The products teams shortlist against Airbase, each with what it's for. The order isn't a ranking, and the criteria are explained below.

  1. Ramp

    A corporate card program with spend management built around it. The comparison turns on what a card feed can and can't tell you.

    Best forChoose Ramp if you're consolidating US card spend onto one program and the rebate, the controls and the card itself are where you see the value.

    Compare it with Smartbills

  2. Brex

    Cards and business banking for US companies. This comparison is about the purchase document behind each card charge.

    Best forChoose Brex if you're a venture-backed or enterprise US company that wants cards, banking, treasury and spend controls from one vendor.

    Compare it with Smartbills

  3. BILL

    Worth a look if your payables team loses more time finding and coding invoices than paying them, and card receipts sit in another tool.

    Best forBusinesses paying supplier invoices at high volume, especially when most of their suppliers are already enrolled on the BILL network.

    Compare it with Smartbills

  4. Expensify

    The expense report app most finance teams already know, set against Smartbills on where each receipt comes from before anyone files it.

    Best forChoose Expensify if your team already runs on its expense reports and wants a familiar, well-supported report-and-approve workflow it won't have to relearn.

    Compare it with Smartbills

  5. SAP Concur

    The long-time enterprise T&E standard, set against Smartbills on setup time and on where the receipt comes from.

    Best forChoose SAP Concur if you run managed travel, have complex global policy across many entities, and have the internal resources to configure and maintain it.

    Compare it with Smartbills

  6. Navan

    Travel booking first, expenses second. This comparison is about the everyday spend that isn't a trip.

    Best forChoose Navan if your people travel constantly and you want booking, travel policy and expenses in a single flow for the traveller.

    Compare it with Smartbills

Disclosure

And Smartbills, which is ours

Slipping our own product into a roundup without saying so is exactly what makes these pages worthless, so to be clear, this one is ours.

Smartbills

Best for: Finance teams that want receipts as structured data, and want their spend software on its own renewal cycle, separate from HR.

Smartbills vs Airbase

How this list was put together

These are the products that come up in the same evaluations as Airbase, drawn from what prospects actually shortlist against it and from the rest of its category. The order is editorial rather than a ranking, because we don't run benchmarks on products we don't operate, and a scored table written by a vendor about its competitors isn't evidence. Each entry links to a full comparison with claims specific enough to check.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What people ask us before they sign up.

It has been part of Paylocity since the acquisition closed. Packaging and roadmap are theirs to describe. Ask them directly instead of relying on this page.

Bills are captured, coded line by line and sent to the right approver. A person only sees the ones that need a decision.

It's a strong commercial argument for Airbase. Weigh it against how much of your spend has no usable document behind it today.

Get started

Comparing Airbase with something else?

Bring one month of your own receipts and card transactions. The number that settles it is the share of transactions that ended up with an itemized document attached, and you can measure that in one cycle.

Book a demo