Circula

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

As of 1 September 2026, Circula starts at €15/month. A Berlin expense platform that prices each module separately: fifteen euro per user per month for expenses, a ninety nine euro monthly platform fee for cards, a minimum of ten licences. Softwr lists it under Accounting. Circula is made by Circula GmbH, available on Web, iOS, Android.

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Overview

What Circula does

Circula covers employee expense claims, travel expenses, corporate cards, accounts payable and tax free employee benefits, aimed squarely at companies operating under German tax law. Its distinguishing capability is compliance detail rather than breadth: German per diem rates by country and trip duration, meal deductions, mileage rules and the Sachbezug benefit allowance are built in with the correct tax treatment, and receipts are archived in a GoBD compliant way. That matters commercially because getting per diems wrong is a payroll tax exposure, not a reporting inconvenience. A generic expense tool will happily let an employee claim a full day rate on a departure day, and the correction lands in a payroll audit years later. Circula's pricing reflects the modular design: expenses are fifteen euro per user per month billed annually, credit cards carry a ninety nine euro monthly platform fee with unlimited cards, accounts payable is a hundred and forty nine euro monthly platform fee including a hundred invoices, and benefits are one euro per licence. There is a minimum of ten licences. Buyers are German, Austrian and Swiss mid market companies that need DATEV output and defensible per diem handling. The trade off is that the licence model is per active user with flexible licensing for occasional claimants, which is fairer than pure per seat but harder to forecast, and the module fees stack quickly once cards and accounts payable are added.

What people use it 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

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 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.

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Circula

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.

Circulavs
Moss
Moss: If you want underwritten corporate credit cards rather than expense first workflow
Circulavs
Pleo
Pleo: If you need European card issuing across more countries with published per user pricing
Circulavs
Expensify
Expensify: If your operations are mostly outside Germany and per diem compliance is not the deciding factor

Pricing

What Circula costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Employee and Travel Expenses

€15 /mo

Per licence, billed annually
Minimum 10 licences
OCR receipt capture
Per diem and mileage calculation
GoBD compliant archiving

Credit Cards

€99 /mo

Platform fee, unlimited cards
Per card spend limits
Transaction limit of EUR 750,000 per card
Card transactions flow into expense workflow

Accounts Payable

€149 /mo

Platform fee
Includes 100 invoices per month
Supplier invoice capture and approval
Additional invoices charged separately

Benefits

€1 /mo

Per licence
Tax free benefit allowances
Mobility and meal benefits
Payroll ready reporting

Capabilities

Features

German per diem engine
Country and duration based per diems with meal and accommodation deductions
Receipt capture and OCR
Mobile capture with GoBD compliant archiving
Corporate credit cards
Unlimited cards under a monthly platform fee with per card limits
Employee benefits
Tax free benefit allowances including Sachbezug and mobility budgets
Accounts payable
Supplier invoice capture and approval with an included invoice allowance
Mileage and travel
Distance based claims and trip level expense grouping
DATEV and ERP export
Structured export to DATEV and common accounting systems
Approval workflows
Multi level approval by cost centre, project and amount

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 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.

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.

Is there a minimum commitment?

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

Keep looking

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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Circula, 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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