Softwr

Travel · head to head

Egencia vs Smoobu

Egencia logo

Egencia

Travel

Corporate online booking and travel management from Amex GBT for mid-market and enterprise programmes

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Smoobu logo

Smoobu

Travel

All-in-one channel manager and PMS for hosts with a handful of holiday rentals

From
€29/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Egencia pricing is per transaction and offline touches cost several times an online booking, so a programme with many complex multi-leg itineraries pays far more than the headline online fee suggests.; Smoobu the Flex plan carries a 0.9% fee on every booking, which on an apartment turning over €40,000 a year costs more than the entire annual subscription saving, and the pricing page presents Flex as the cheaper option.
  • They diverge on capability: Egencia covers Policy and approval engine, Smoobu covers Channel manager.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Egencia and Smoobu actually diverge.

Attributes where Egencia and Smoobu differ
AttributeEgenciaSmoobu
Starting priceOn request€29/month
Pricing modelquotePer unit per month

Identical on both: free tier (No), platforms (Web, iOS, Android), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Travel).

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 Egencia

  • Policy and approval engine
  • Negotiated rate loading
  • Traveller tracking
  • Agent support
  • Concur Expense integration
  • AI booking assistant

Only in Smoobu

  • Channel manager
  • Website builder
  • Guest messaging
  • Unified calendar
  • Invoicing and e-invoicing
  • Mobile apps

What people use each for

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

Egencia

  • A company of several hundred travellers wanting negotiated hotel rates without paying for a high-touch TMCnot Smoobu
  • A finance team standardising on SAP Concur that wants booking data pre-populating expense reportsnot Smoobu
  • A multi-country employer needing consolidated duty of care reporting on where staff are travellingnot Smoobu
  • An organisation moving off a regional TMC and wanting one supplier across Europe and North Americanot Smoobu

Smoobu

  • A host with three apartments in Berlin who needs Airbnb and Booking.com calendars kept in sync and wants a direct booking site to cut OTA commissionnot Egencia
  • An owner wanting automated check-in instructions and pre-arrival messages sent per channel without logging into each extranetnot Egencia
  • A small manager who needs guest invoices that meet German documentation requirements without adding a separate accounting toolnot Egencia
  • A host testing dynamic pricing through the bundled trial before deciding whether to subscribe to PriceLabs separatelynot Egencia

Where each one falls short

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

Egencia

  • Pricing is per transaction and offline touches cost several times an online booking, so a programme with many complex multi-leg itineraries pays far more than the headline online fee suggests.
  • It is now a service tier inside Amex GBT rather than an independent supplier, so a competitive process that shortlists both Egencia and Amex GBT is not really two bids.
  • Regional content and service quality are uneven, and companies with travellers in smaller markets often find local fares and hotels missing from the tool and end up going offline.
  • Implementation to load negotiated rates and configure policy typically runs months, and rate loading errors surface as travellers seeing the wrong prices rather than as a clean failure.
  • Because the platform underwent a relaunch on new architecture, customers migrating from the older Egencia stack have faced feature parity gaps and retraining during the transition.

Smoobu

  • The Flex plan carries a 0.9% fee on every booking, which on an apartment turning over €40,000 a year costs more than the entire annual subscription saving, and the pricing page presents Flex as the cheaper option.
  • Pricing is per unit, so a ten unit portfolio pays roughly €31.50 plus nine additional units at about €9.60, and the headline monthly figure covers a single apartment only.
  • Write access is charged per account beyond the included seats, so a cleaner, a co-host and an owner all needing to edit bookings turn into a recurring per seat cost.
  • There is no trust accounting or owner statement generation, so anyone managing units on behalf of third-party owners has to build payout reporting outside the system.
  • Housekeeping and maintenance dispatch is minimal compared with manager-grade platforms, so cleaning coordination happens in WhatsApp or a separate tool once you are past a few units.

Pricing, plan by plan

Egencia

On request
  • Egencia$undefined/year
    • Per-transaction booking fees, online and offline rates differ
    • Optional annual platform or management fee
    • Implementation and rate loading charges

Smoobu

€29/month
  • Professional Flex$29/month
    • One unit included
    • 0.9% fee on every booking
    • Channel manager, website builder, messaging
  • Professional Prepaid$31.5/month
    • One unit included
    • No booking fee
    • Website builder, invoicing, chatbot, API access
  • Teams Pro+$49.5/month
    • Everything in Prepaid
    • E-invoicing
    • Two write-access accounts, extra accounts from about €12 each

Which should you pick?

Choose Egencia if

  • You need policy and approval engine.
  • You work on Web, iOS, Android.
  • You also want negotiated rate loading.
Egencia review

Choose Smoobu if

  • You need channel manager.
  • You work on Web, iOS, Android.
  • You also want website builder.
Smoobu review

Questions people ask

Is Egencia or Smoobu better?
Neither clearly leads. Egencia starts at On request and Smoobu at €29/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Egencia or Smoobu?
Egencia starts at On request and Smoobu at €29/month.
Does Egencia or Smoobu run on more platforms?
Both run on Web, iOS, Android, so platform support will not decide this one for you.
What is Egencia best used for?
Egencia is most often used for a company of several hundred travellers wanting negotiated hotel rates without paying for a high-touch tmc, a finance team standardising on sap concur that wants booking data pre-populating expense reports, a multi-country employer needing consolidated duty of care reporting on where staff are travelling, an organisation moving off a regional tmc and wanting one supplier across europe and north america. Of those, a company of several hundred travellers wanting negotiated hotel rates without paying for a high-touch tmc and a finance team standardising on sap concur that wants booking data pre-populating expense reports are not what Smoobu is typically brought in for.
What can Egencia do that Smoobu cannot?
Egencia covers Policy and approval engine, Negotiated rate loading, Traveller tracking, Agent support. Smoobu covers Channel manager, Website builder, Guest messaging, Unified calendar.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Egencia: Is Egencia still sold under its own name?

Yes. Amex GBT bought it in 2021 and kept the brand, relaunching it in 2026 with a conversational AI assistant and a Concur Expense integration.

Smoobu: Which plan is actually cheaper, Flex or Prepaid?

Prepaid, for almost anyone with real occupancy. The 0.9% booking fee on Flex exceeds the subscription difference once annual revenue passes a few thousand euros.

Egencia: How is it different from Amex GBT itself?

Egencia is the more self-service, lower-touch tier of the same company, aimed at mid-market programmes; Amex GBT proper is the high-touch enterprise service.

Smoobu: How many properties does the entry price cover?

One. Every additional unit adds roughly €9.60 per month.

Egencia: Does it replace an expense system?

No. It books travel and feeds data to expense tools such as SAP Concur; you still need an expense product.

Smoobu: Does it include dynamic pricing?

Only two months free on the Teams tier. Ongoing dynamic pricing means subscribing to PriceLabs or similar.

Smoobu: Is there a contract?

Billing is monthly, yearly or two-yearly, with 30 days notice required to cancel; longer terms buy 10% or 20% off.

Share

Related pages

More on Egencia

More on Smoobu

Keep looking

Other head to heads