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Alternatives

Navan alternatives

Navan, formerly TripActions, combines corporate travel booking with expense management and a card program. Its strongest claim is that booking and expense really are one product. The cost of a trip is known before anyone files anything about it.

Why people look

Why teams look for a Navan alternative

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

Travel is a small slice of our spend, but every tool we're shown is built around it.

Supplies, fuel, meals, subscriptions and supplier invoices sit at the centre of Smartbills, where a booking product treats them as a side module.

Everything that is not a trip still arrives as a photograph somebody took on a phone.

Stores that use Smartbills send the receipt as data at the point of sale. Most of your non-travel spend arrives itemized without anyone being asked for a photo.

Our supplier invoices live in a different system from our expenses, and the two never reconcile cleanly.

Accounts payable and bill pay sit on the same ledger as the receipts. Card spend and supplier invoices show up in a single view.

The shortlist

6 alternatives to Navan

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

  1. 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

  2. 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

  3. 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

  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. Pleo

    European company cards that prompt for a receipt within seconds. The question here is whether anyone should still be photographing it.

    Best forChoose Pleo if you're a European team looking for the smoothest card-and-receipt loop, with deep local accounting integrations and local support.

    Compare it with Smartbills

  6. Spendesk

    A French spend platform with cards, invoices and approvals under one layer, set against Smartbills on the evidence behind each purchase.

    Best forChoose Spendesk if you're bringing cards, subscriptions and invoice approvals into one controlled European workflow, with mature budgeting behind it.

    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: Teams whose expenses are mostly everyday operating spend, supplier invoices and in-person purchases, with flights and hotels a smaller share.

Smartbills vs Navan

How this list was put together

These are the products that come up in the same evaluations as Navan, 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.

Yes, and several teams do exactly that: Navan for booking, Smartbills for capture, coding and payables. Either way, the card feeds reconcile on the Smartbills side.

No, and it isn't planned, because travel inventory is a different business. If integrated booking is the requirement, Navan is the right tool.

Then Navan's combined booking and expense is probably worth more to you than merchant-issued receipts. Better to hear that now than three months into a rollout.

Get started

Comparing Navan 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.

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