Is Basware or Cledara better?

Neither clearly leads. Basware starts at On request and Cledara at £100/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, Basware or Cledara?

Basware starts at On request and Cledara at £100/month.

Does Basware or Cledara run on more platforms?

Basware runs on Web, iOS, Android. Cledara runs on Web.

What is Basware best used for?

Basware is most often used for a multinational needing compliant electronic invoicing across italy, poland, france and mexico without building each mandate itself, a shared service centre processing hundreds of thousands of invoices a year that needs touchless processing rates measured and improved, a group standardising accounts payable across subsidiaries running different erp systems, a finance function trying to capture early payment discounts that are currently lost to slow approval cycles. Of those, a multinational needing compliant electronic invoicing across italy, poland, france and mexico without building each mandate itself and a shared service centre processing hundreds of thousands of invoices a year that needs touchless processing rates measured and improved are not what Cledara is typically brought in for.

What can Basware do that Cledara cannot?

Basware covers Invoice capture, Matching, E-invoicing compliance, Supplier network. Cledara covers Virtual card per subscription, Cancel by card, Application inventory, Invoice collection. Both handle Approval workflow.

Accounting · head to head

Basware vs Cledara

Basware

Accounting

Invoice automation and e-invoicing compliance across a large number of national mandates

From: On request
Rated: -

Full review Website

Cledara

Accounting

Software subscription management with a virtual card per application, priced from £100 a month

From: £100/month
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Each has a real cost: Basware the e-invoicing compliance breadth that justifies the price is worthless to a company operating in a single country, where cheaper AP automation tools will do the same work.; Cledara control only extends to subscriptions paid on a Cledara card, so anything billed by invoice, bank transfer or a legacy company card is invisible to the system and undermines the inventory it promises.
They diverge on capability: Basware covers Invoice capture, Cledara covers Virtual card per subscription.
Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Basware and Cledara actually diverge.

Attributes where Basware and Cledara differ
Attribute	Basware	Cledara
Starting price	On request	£100/month
Pricing model	quote	Per month by number of applications
Platforms	Web, iOS, Android	Web

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

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 Basware

Invoice capture
Matching
E-invoicing compliance
Supplier network
Payment execution
Spend analytics
ERP integration

Only in Cledara

Virtual card per subscription
Cancel by card
Application inventory
Invoice collection
Accounting export
Spend optimisation module
IT management and compliance modules

Both cover

Approval workflow

What people use each for

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

Basware

A multinational needing compliant electronic invoicing across Italy, Poland, France and Mexico without building each mandate itselfnot Cledara
A shared service centre processing hundreds of thousands of invoices a year that needs touchless processing rates measured and improvednot Cledara
A group standardising accounts payable across subsidiaries running different ERP systemsnot Cledara
A finance function trying to capture early payment discounts that are currently lost to slow approval cyclesnot Cledara

Cledara

A finance team that cannot say what software the company pays for because everything is on three people's company cardsnot Basware
A company that keeps paying for tools nobody uses and cannot get the vendor to process a cancellationnot Basware
A startup wanting approval on new software purchases before the first charge rather than at the auditnot Basware
A finance function that spends days each month chasing SaaS invoices for the accountantnot Basware

Where each one falls short

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

Basware

The e-invoicing compliance breadth that justifies the price is worthless to a company operating in a single country, where cheaper AP automation tools will do the same work.
Implementation is a substantial integration project involving ERP connectors, supplier onboarding and country-by-country compliance configuration, and it is priced and timed accordingly.
The user interface is dated next to newer accounts payable products, and approvers outside finance find it unintuitive, which slows the very cycle times the system is bought to improve.
Supplier onboarding onto the network is the hidden effort: the touchless processing rate depends on how many suppliers actually send electronic invoices, and that is a change management programme, not a software setting.
Growth by acquisition, including Glantus, has left overlapping analytics capability and integration work still in progress, so buyers should check which components share a data model today.

Cledara

Control only extends to subscriptions paid on a Cledara card, so anything billed by invoice, bank transfer or a legacy company card is invisible to the system and undermines the inventory it promises.
Tier limits are set by number of applications rather than headcount, and twenty applications on the Basic plan is fewer than most companies of fifty actually run, so buyers often land on a higher tier than the entry price suggests.
The modules that turn it from a payment layer into a management platform, spend optimisation, IT management and compliance, are each priced at £150 to £200 a month, comparable to the base plan itself.
Usage data is inferred from payment and integration signals rather than deep application telemetry, so its judgement of whether a tool is underused is weaker than a discovery product built on single sign-on and API usage.
It is a card issuer as well as a software vendor, which adds financial counterparty considerations and means a change in its banking arrangements would affect how the company pays every one of its suppliers.

Pricing, plan by plan

Basware

On request

Basware$undefined/year
- Invoice automation, matching and approval
- E-invoicing compliance across national mandates
- Supplier network connectivity

Cledara

£100/month

Basic$100/month
- Up to 20 software applications
- Virtual card per subscription
- Application inventory and approvals
Premium$undefined/month
- Up to 75 software applications
- Typically 51 to 150 staff
- 1% cashback in the first year, capped at the subscription cost
Pro$undefined/month
- For organisations above roughly 150 staff
- Scoped individually
- 1% cashback in the first year, capped at plan cost
Add-on modules$200/month
- Spend Optimization £200 a month or £1,500 a year
- IT Management £150 a month or £1,500 a year
- Software Compliance £150 a month or £1,500 a year

Which should you pick?

Choose Basware if

You need invoice capture.
You work on Web, iOS, Android.
You also want matching.

Basware review

Choose Cledara if

You need virtual card per subscription.
You also want cancel by card.

Cledara review

Questions people ask

Is Basware or Cledara better?: Neither clearly leads. Basware starts at On request and Cledara at £100/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Basware or Cledara?: Basware starts at On request and Cledara at £100/month.
Does Basware or Cledara run on more platforms?: Basware runs on Web, iOS, Android. Cledara runs on Web.
What is Basware best used for?: Basware is most often used for a multinational needing compliant electronic invoicing across italy, poland, france and mexico without building each mandate itself, a shared service centre processing hundreds of thousands of invoices a year that needs touchless processing rates measured and improved, a group standardising accounts payable across subsidiaries running different erp systems, a finance function trying to capture early payment discounts that are currently lost to slow approval cycles. Of those, a multinational needing compliant electronic invoicing across italy, poland, france and mexico without building each mandate itself and a shared service centre processing hundreds of thousands of invoices a year that needs touchless processing rates measured and improved are not what Cledara is typically brought in for.
What can Basware do that Cledara cannot?: Basware covers Invoice capture, Matching, E-invoicing compliance, Supplier network. Cledara covers Virtual card per subscription, Cancel by card, Application inventory, Invoice collection. Both handle Approval workflow.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Basware: Should we buy Basware if we only operate in one country?

Probably not. Its main advantage is multi-country e-invoicing compliance. In a single jurisdiction, cheaper AP automation gives you the same result.

Cledara: What does it cost?

Basic is £100 a month for up to 20 applications, with Premium covering up to 75 and Pro above that. Add-on modules are £150 to £200 a month each, and annual payment saves 16%.

Basware: Does it handle mandatory e-invoicing regimes?

Yes, and that is the core reason to choose it. It covers a wide set of national mandates as a service rather than an integration project you run yourself.

Cledara: Does it find software we did not tell it about?

Only what passes through its cards or connected integrations. Subscriptions paid by invoice or another card stay hidden, which is the main limitation of the model.

Basware: What drives the price?

Invoice volume, number of countries and modules. It is quoted, and implementation with ERP connectors and supplier onboarding is separate.

Cledara: How does cancelling work?

You cancel the virtual card for that subscription, which stops the payment. It does not remove your contractual obligation, so check notice periods.

Basware: What determines the return?

The share of invoices arriving electronically. Touchless rates depend on supplier adoption, so budget for a supplier onboarding programme, not just the software.

Cledara: Is the application limit by users or by tools?

By tools. Twenty on Basic, seventy-five on Premium. Count your actual subscriptions before assuming the entry price applies to you.

Basware vs Cledara

Basware

Cledara

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Basware

Only in Cledara

Both cover

What people use each for

Basware

Cledara

Where each one falls short

Basware

Cledara

Pricing, plan by plan

Basware

Cledara

Which should you pick?

Choose Basware if

Choose Cledara if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Basware

More on Cledara

Keep looking

Other head to heads