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Airbase
Spend management combining corporate cards, bill payment and expense claims, now part of Paylocity
As of 30 August 2026, Airbase starts at $29/month. Airbase puts corporate cards, supplier bill payment and employee expense claims behind one approval workflow and syncs the coded transactions to the ledger. Softwr lists it under Accounting. Airbase is made by Airbase Inc, launched in 2017, available on Web, iOS, Android.
Overview
What Airbase does
Airbase is a spend management platform covering three things that most companies buy separately: corporate cards with per card controls, accounts payable bill payment with approval routing, and employee expense reimbursement. Every transaction, whatever the channel, passes through the same approval policy, gets coded to a general ledger account and a cost centre, collects its receipt, and syncs to the accounting system. There is also a procurement and intake layer for approving spend before it is committed. It was acquired by Paylocity in 2024 and now sits within that company's product range. The distinguishing argument is single ledger of spend. A finance team running a card programme from the bank, bill payments from the banking portal and expenses from a claims tool has three approval regimes, three coding exercises and three reconciliations, and no view of committed spend until the invoices land. Consolidating them means the approval policy is written once and enforced everywhere, and the month end close on spend becomes a review rather than a rebuild. That is a controller's argument rather than a chief financial officer's cost saving argument, and it is why the product is usually championed by whoever runs the close. The buyers are venture backed and mid market companies in the United States, typically between fifty and a thousand employees, that have outgrown a company credit card and a shared inbox for invoices. The trade offs are jurisdiction, dependency and ownership. Card issuing and bill payment are strongest for United States entities and United States bank accounts, so a group with meaningful operations abroad will still run local processes alongside. The value only appears if essentially all spend flows through the platform, which makes it hard to trial partially. And the Paylocity acquisition means the roadmap now serves a human capital management suite, which is a reasonable fit for expense reimbursement and a less obvious one for procurement.
What people use it 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
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about 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.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Airbase
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- AirbasevsRamp
Ramp: The corporate card that helps you spend less
- AirbasevsMelio
Melio: Simple business payments
- AirbasevsWise Business
Wise Business: The smart way to send and receive business payments
Pricing
What Airbase costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Standard
Free
- Corporate cards
- Expense reports
- Bill pay
Premium
$10 /mo
- Advanced approvals
- NetSuite sync
- Procurement
Enterprise
On request
- Custom workflows
- API access
- Dedicated support
Capabilities
Features
Corporate cards
Physical and virtual cards with per card limits, merchant restrictions and automatic receipt chasing
Virtual cards per vendor
A dedicated card per subscription or supplier so an unexpected charge is attributable and stoppable
Bill payment
Supplier invoice capture, coding, approval routing and payment by transfer, cheque or card
Expense reimbursement
Employee out of pocket claims with receipt capture and reimbursement runs
Unified approval policy
One set of approval rules applied across cards, bills and reimbursements rather than three
Purchase intake and procurement
Requests for new spend approved before commitment, with the resulting invoice matched back to the request
Automated coding
Rules and learned defaults that code transactions to account, department and class before they reach the ledger
Receipt collection
Automated chasing of missing receipts from the cardholder rather than from the accountant
General ledger sync
Posts coded transactions to the mainstream ledgers with configurable mapping
Amortisation schedules
Spreads prepaid expenses across periods so annual subscriptions do not distort a single month
Vendor management
Holds supplier records, payment details and tax documentation in one place
Approval delegation
Cover arrangements so approvals do not stall while an approver is away
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Behind it
Who makes Airbase
- Company
- Airbase Inc
- Based in
- San Francisco, CA
Keep looking
Where to go from Airbase
- Airbase alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Airbase pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Airbase badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Accounting softwareThe full category
- Best Accounting softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Accounting software for
Compare Airbase with
- Ramp
- Spendesk
- Fyle
- Brex
- Divvy
- SAP Concur
- Medius
- Tipalti
- Spendbase
- Plaid
- Wise Business
- Stampli
- Invoicera
- Lago
- Metronome
- Modern Treasury
- Moss
- RazorpayX
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13 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Airbase, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
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