Is Circula or Medius better?

Neither clearly leads. Circula starts at €15/month and Medius at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, Circula or Medius?

Circula starts at €15/month and Medius at On request.

Does Circula or Medius run on more platforms?

Both run on Web, iOS, Android, so platform support will not decide this one for you.

What is Circula best used for?

Circula is most often used for a german company that must apply statutory per diem rates and meal deductions correctly to avoid payroll tax exposure, a finance team wanting card spend, expense claims and benefits in one datev export, an employer offering the tax free monthly benefit allowance and needing auditable records of it, a mid sized business replacing spreadsheet mileage claims with rule enforced distance calculations. Of those, a german company that must apply statutory per diem rates and meal deductions correctly to avoid payroll tax exposure and a finance team wanting card spend, expense claims and benefits in one datev export are not what Medius is typically brought in for.

What can Circula do that Medius cannot?

Circula covers German per diem engine, Receipt capture and OCR, Corporate credit cards, Employee benefits. Medius covers Invoice capture and coding, Matching and exception handling, Fraud and anomaly detection, Supplier payments.

Accounting · head to head

Circula vs Medius

Circula

Accounting

Expense, travel and employee benefit management for German speaking finance teams

From: €15/month
Rated: -

Full review Website

Medius

Accounting

Accounts payable automation and supplier payments for mid-market finance teams, Marlin Equity owned

From: On request
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Each has a real cost: Circula the module pricing stacks: expenses at fifteen euro per licence plus ninety nine euro for cards plus a hundred and forty nine euro for accounts payable means a fifty person company pays well over a thousand euro a month before add ons.; Medius the sourcing, contract and procurement modules are considerably less developed than the AP core, so buying Medius as a full source-to-pay suite means accepting weak upstream tooling.
They diverge on capability: Circula covers German per diem engine, Medius covers Invoice capture and coding.
Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Circula and Medius actually diverge.

Attributes where Circula and Medius differ
Attribute	Circula	Medius
Starting price	€15/month	On request
Pricing model	Per user per month	quote

Identical on both: free tier (No), platforms (Web, iOS, Android), 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 Circula

German per diem engine
Receipt capture and OCR
Corporate credit cards
Employee benefits
Accounts payable
Mileage and travel
DATEV and ERP export
Approval workflows

Only in Medius

Invoice capture and coding
Matching and exception handling
Fraud and anomaly detection
Supplier payments
Approval workflow
ERP integration

What people use each for

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

Circula

A German company that must apply statutory per diem rates and meal deductions correctly to avoid payroll tax exposurenot Medius
A finance team wanting card spend, expense claims and benefits in one DATEV exportnot Medius
An employer offering the tax free monthly benefit allowance and needing auditable records of itnot Medius
A mid sized business replacing spreadsheet mileage claims with rule enforced distance calculationsnot Medius

Medius

A mid-market finance team where most spend arrives as an invoice with no purchase order to match againstnot Circula
A group with several legal entities on different ERPs that wants one AP process across all of themnot Circula
Reducing invoice fraud exposure with automated detection of supplier bank detail changesnot Circula
Replacing a scanning bureau and a shared AP inbox with automated capture and exception-based reviewnot Circula

Where each one falls short

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

Circula

The module pricing stacks: expenses at fifteen euro per licence plus ninety nine euro for cards plus a hundred and forty nine euro for accounts payable means a fifty person company pays well over a thousand euro a month before add ons.
A minimum of ten licences excludes small teams, and the flexible licensing model for occasional claimants makes monthly cost harder to forecast than a flat per seat price.
Strength is in German tax rules, so companies with significant operations outside the DACH region gain little from the feature that justifies the price.
The accounts payable module includes only a hundred invoices per month, so invoice heavy businesses face metered overage on top of the platform fee.
Card issuing carries a per card transaction ceiling and depends on partner issuing, so high value procurement spend can hit limits that a bank issued corporate card would not.

Medius

The sourcing, contract and procurement modules are considerably less developed than the AP core, so buying Medius as a full source-to-pay suite means accepting weak upstream tooling.
Pricing is quote-only and driven by invoice volume, so a business with many low-value invoices pays disproportionately relative to the spend being controlled.
Payments are billed on transaction volume separately from the AP subscription, which is easy to omit from a cost comparison against a licence-only AP tool.
Private equity ownership since 2017 has produced an acquisition-driven product line, so payments and adjacent capability come from bought-in technology rather than the original platform.
ERP integration depth varies sharply by system, and organisations on less common or heavily customised ERPs face integration work that lengthens the implementation.

Pricing, plan by plan

Circula

€15/month

Employee and Travel Expenses$15/month
- Per licence, billed annually
- Minimum 10 licences
- OCR receipt capture
Credit Cards$99/month
- Platform fee, unlimited cards
- Per card spend limits
- Transaction limit of EUR 750,000 per card
Accounts Payable$149/month
- Platform fee
- Includes 100 invoices per month
- Supplier invoice capture and approval
Benefits$1/month
- Per licence
- Tax free benefit allowances
- Mobility and meal benefits

Medius

On request

Medius AP Automation$undefined/year
- Two packaged AP automation tiers
- Priced by invoice volume and entity count
- Sourcing, contracts and procurement modules sold separately

Which should you pick?

Choose Circula if

You need german per diem engine.
You work on Web, iOS, Android.
You also want receipt capture and ocr.

Circula review

Choose Medius if

You need invoice capture and coding.
You work on Web, iOS, Android.
You also want matching and exception handling.

Medius review

Questions people ask

Is Circula or Medius better?: Neither clearly leads. Circula starts at €15/month and Medius at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Circula or Medius?: Circula starts at €15/month and Medius at On request.
Does Circula or Medius run on more platforms?: Both run on Web, iOS, Android, so platform support will not decide this one for you.
What is Circula best used for?: Circula is most often used for a german company that must apply statutory per diem rates and meal deductions correctly to avoid payroll tax exposure, a finance team wanting card spend, expense claims and benefits in one datev export, an employer offering the tax free monthly benefit allowance and needing auditable records of it, a mid sized business replacing spreadsheet mileage claims with rule enforced distance calculations. Of those, a german company that must apply statutory per diem rates and meal deductions correctly to avoid payroll tax exposure and a finance team wanting card spend, expense claims and benefits in one datev export are not what Medius is typically brought in for.
What can Circula do that Medius cannot?: Circula covers German per diem engine, Receipt capture and OCR, Corporate credit cards, Employee benefits. Medius covers Invoice capture and coding, Matching and exception handling, Fraud and anomaly detection, Supplier payments.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Circula: Does Circula calculate German per diems automatically?

Yes, by destination country and trip duration, including meal and accommodation deductions, which is the main reason DACH finance teams buy it.

Medius: Is Medius a procurement suite or an AP tool?

Primarily an AP automation platform with procurement modules attached. If sourcing is your main requirement, look elsewhere.

Circula: What does it actually cost for fifty employees?

Roughly seven hundred and fifty euro a month for expense licences alone at the fifteen euro rate, before the ninety nine euro card platform fee and any accounts payable module.

Medius: Who owns Medius?

Marlin Equity Partners, which acquired it in 2017 and has funded several bolt-on acquisitions since.

Circula: Is there a minimum commitment?

Yes. A minimum of ten licences and annual billing on the published rates.

Medius: How is it priced?

By quote, driven by invoice volume and entity count, with payments billed separately on transaction volume.

Medius: Does it replace our ERP?

No. It sits alongside the ERP and posts approved invoices into it.

Circula vs Medius

Circula

Medius

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Circula

Only in Medius

What people use each for

Circula

Medius

Where each one falls short

Circula

Medius

Pricing, plan by plan

Circula

Medius

Which should you pick?

Choose Circula if

Choose Medius if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Circula

More on Medius

Keep looking

Other head to heads