Softwr

Accounting · head to head

Airbase vs Unit21

Airbase logo

Airbase

Accounting

Spend management combining corporate cards, bill payment and expense claims, now part of Paylocity

From
$29/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Unit21 logo

Unit21

Cybersecurity

No-code fraud and AML risk operations platform for fintechs and neobanks

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Airbase card issuing and bill payment are built around United States entities and United States bank accounts, so a group with subsidiaries abroad keeps running local card and payment processes alongside and does not get the single ledger of spend that justified the purchase.; Unit21 it is built for fintech scale rather than card issuer scale, so organisations reaching very high transaction volumes generally re-evaluate against heavier platforms and face a migration.
  • They diverge on capability: Airbase covers Corporate cards, Unit21 covers No-code rule builder.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Airbase and Unit21 actually diverge.

Attributes where Airbase and Unit21 differ
AttributeAirbaseUnit21
Starting price$29/monthOn request
Pricing modelsubscriptionquote
PlatformsWeb, Ios, AndroidWeb
CategoryAccountingCybersecurity
Founded2017Unknown

Identical on both: free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Airbase

  • Corporate cards
  • Virtual cards per vendor
  • Bill payment
  • Expense reimbursement
  • Unified approval policy
  • Purchase intake and procurement
  • Automated coding
  • Receipt collection

Only in Unit21

  • No-code rule builder
  • Case management
  • SAR filing
  • Backtesting
  • Identity and device signals
  • Data ingestion API

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Airbase

  • A company that has outgrown one shared company card and needs per person and per subscription cards with real limitsnot Unit21
  • A finance team where supplier invoices arrive in an inbox and approval is whoever replies, with no record afterwardsnot Unit21
  • A controller trying to close the month without rebuilding card and expense coding from statements every timenot Unit21
  • An organisation that wants spend approved before it is committed rather than discovered when the invoice arrivesnot Unit21

Unit21

  • A neobank whose sponsor bank requires a documented monitoring programme before it will keep the BIN sponsorshipnot Airbase
  • A crypto exchange needing SAR filing and case management without building an internal compliance engineering teamnot Airbase
  • A payments startup where the fraud lead needs to ship a new rule the same day a new attack pattern appearsnot Airbase
  • A lender consolidating fraud alerts from three point tools into one investigator queue with a single audit trailnot Airbase

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Airbase

  • Card issuing and bill payment are built around United States entities and United States bank accounts, so a group with subsidiaries abroad keeps running local card and payment processes alongside and does not get the single ledger of spend that justified the purchase.
  • The value depends on nearly all spend flowing through the platform, which makes partial adoption almost worthless and means the rollout is a change management exercise across every budget holder rather than a finance department deployment.
  • Paylocity's acquisition in 2024 reorients the roadmap towards a human capital management suite, so expense reimbursement is likely to be well served while procurement and the more finance specific features compete for attention with payroll and HR priorities.
  • Pricing combines a platform fee with tiering on features and users, and part of the economics rests on interchange rebates from card spend, so a company that puts most of its spend on transfers rather than cards pays the fee without earning the offset.
  • The general ledger sync is a mapping you own, so a chart of accounts change, a new department dimension or a ledger migration means reworking the coding rules, and a bad mapping quietly posts correct approvals to the wrong accounts.

Unit21

  • It is built for fintech scale rather than card issuer scale, so organisations reaching very high transaction volumes generally re-evaluate against heavier platforms and face a migration.
  • No-code rule authoring shifts power to the risk team, which is the point, but without governance it produces rule sprawl that nobody can explain to an examiner two years later.
  • Detection quality depends on the signals you feed it, so a thin integration produces thin results and the platform cannot compensate with proprietary consortium data the way larger vendors do.
  • Pricing is quoted by volume with an annual commitment, so a fintech whose growth stalls pays for headroom it did not use.
  • SAR filing coverage is oriented to United States FinCEN reporting, so firms filing in the United Kingdom, European Union or Asia handle those submissions outside the tool.

Pricing, plan by plan

Airbase

$29/month
  • StandardFree
    • Corporate cards
    • Expense reports
    • Bill pay
  • Premium$10/month
    • Advanced approvals
    • NetSuite sync
    • Procurement
  • Enterprise$undefined/month
    • Custom workflows
    • API access
    • Dedicated support

Unit21

On request
  • Unit21 Platform$undefined/year
    • Priced by monitored volume and modules, annual contract
    • Fraud, AML and case management packaged separately
    • Implementation and historical data backfill quoted with the subscription

Which should you pick?

Choose Airbase if

  • You need corporate cards.
  • You work on Web, Ios, Android.
  • You also want virtual cards per vendor.
Airbase review

Choose Unit21 if

  • You need no-code rule builder.
  • You also want case management.
Unit21 review

Questions people ask

Is Airbase or Unit21 better?
Neither clearly leads. Airbase starts at $29/month and Unit21 at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Airbase or Unit21?
Airbase starts at $29/month and Unit21 at On request.
Does Airbase or Unit21 run on more platforms?
Airbase runs on Web, Ios, Android. Unit21 runs on Web.
What is Airbase best used for?
Airbase is most often used for a company that has outgrown one shared company card and needs per person and per subscription cards with real limits, a finance team where supplier invoices arrive in an inbox and approval is whoever replies, with no record afterwards, a controller trying to close the month without rebuilding card and expense coding from statements every time, an organisation that wants spend approved before it is committed rather than discovered when the invoice arrives. Of those, a company that has outgrown one shared company card and needs per person and per subscription cards with real limits and a finance team where supplier invoices arrive in an inbox and approval is whoever replies, with no record afterwards are not what Unit21 is typically brought in for.
What can Airbase do that Unit21 cannot?
Airbase covers Corporate cards, Virtual cards per vendor, Bill payment, Expense reimbursement. Unit21 covers No-code rule builder, Case management, SAR filing, Backtesting.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Airbase: Does it work for companies outside the United States?

Partially. Some international spend and reimbursement is supported, but card issuing and the payment rails are strongest for United States entities. Confirm coverage for each country you operate in before assuming it replaces local processes.

Unit21: Do we need engineers to run it?

Only for the initial data integration. After that the design intent is that risk and compliance staff author and deploy rules themselves.

Airbase: Does Airbase replace our accounting system?

No. It manages spend and pushes coded transactions into the ledger. QuickBooks, NetSuite or whatever else you use stays.

Unit21: Does it file SARs?

Yes, it generates and electronically files suspicious activity reports to FinCEN. Non-US regimes are not covered to the same depth.

Airbase: What changed after the Paylocity acquisition?

Ownership and roadmap direction. The product continues, now positioned alongside Paylocity's payroll and HR products. If procurement is your main reason to buy, ask directly about investment in that module.

Unit21: Can we test a rule before it goes live?

Yes. Backtesting against historical data to see projected alert volume is one of the more useful parts of the product, because alert volume is the real cost.

Airbase: How is it priced?

A platform subscription with tiers, plus usage and user dimensions, partly offset by rebates on card spend. Because the rebate depends on card volume, model your own mix of card versus transfer spend before accepting a payback figure.

Airbase: Can we use it for accounts payable only?

You can, but the approval consistency argument weakens considerably. Most of the reported benefit comes from cards, bills and reimbursements sharing one policy and one coding process.

Airbase: Will our auditors accept the approval records?

The per transaction record of approver, receipt and coding is generally what auditors want to see for spend testing. Agree the sampling approach with them early, particularly around any spend that still happens outside the platform.

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