Cledaravs
Spendesk
Spendesk: Broader company spend and expense management with cards, where software is only part of the problem
Cledara
Software subscription management with a virtual card per application, priced from £100 a month
As of 31 August 2026, Cledara starts at £100/month. Cledara issues a separate virtual card for every SaaS subscription, which means cancelling a tool is a card action rather than a support ticket. Softwr lists it under Accounting. Cledara is available on Web.
Overview
What Cledara does
Cledara manages a company's software subscriptions. Each application is paid on its own virtual card issued by Cledara, so spend is attributed automatically, renewals are visible, and a subscription can be stopped by cancelling its card. Around that sit an application inventory with owners and renewal dates, approval workflow for new software requests, invoice collection and accounting export, and optional modules for spend optimisation, IT management and software compliance. The distinguishing mechanism is the card. Most SaaS management tools discover subscriptions after the fact from expense data or single sign-on logs and then ask a human to act. Cledara sits in the payment path, which makes the inventory accurate by construction and gives finance an actual control rather than a report. It also means Cledara must be the payment method, and any subscription still on a company card or an invoice is outside the system. Buyers are European startups and mid-sized companies, typically twenty-five to a hundred and fifty staff. Pricing is published: Basic at £100 a month covering up to twenty applications, Premium up to seventy-five, and a Pro tier for larger organisations, with 16% off annually and add-on modules at £150 to £200 a month. The trade-off is that the application caps bite quickly, since a company of fifty easily runs past twenty tools, and the add-ons that make it more than a payments layer are each priced close to the base plan.
What people use it for
- A finance team that cannot say what software the company pays for because everything is on three people's company cards
- A company that keeps paying for tools nobody uses and cannot get the vendor to process a cancellation
- A startup wanting approval on new software purchases before the first charge rather than at the audit
- A finance function that spends days each month chasing SaaS invoices for the accountant
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 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.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Cledara
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.
- CledaravsTropic
Tropic: Where negotiating software prices matters more than controlling how they are paid
- CledaravsBrex
Brex: Where corporate cards and expense management across all spend categories are the requirement
Pricing
What Cledara costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Basic
£100 /mo
- Up to 20 software applications
- Virtual card per subscription
- Application inventory and approvals
- 30 business and travel cards included
- 16% discount paid annually
Premium
On request
- Up to 75 software applications
- Typically 51 to 150 staff
- 1% cashback in the first year, capped at the subscription cost
- Priced by quote
Pro
On request
- For organisations above roughly 150 staff
- Scoped individually
- 1% cashback in the first year, capped at plan cost
Add-on modules
£200 /mo
- 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
Capabilities
Features
Virtual card per subscription
A dedicated card for each application, so spend attribution is automatic
Cancel by card
Stopping a subscription by cancelling its card rather than chasing the vendor
Application inventory
Owners, renewal dates and spend per tool
Approval workflow
Requests for new software routed to finance before a card is issued
Invoice collection
Automatic retrieval and matching of supplier invoices for accounting
Accounting export
Reconciled export into the general ledger
Spend optimisation module
Usage and value analysis, priced separately
IT management and compliance modules
Access and vendor compliance tooling, each priced separately
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.
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%.
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.
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.
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.
Keep looking
Where to go from Cledara
- Cledara alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Cledara pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Cledara 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 Cledara with
- Tropic
- Spendesk
- Brex
- Spendbase
- Mesh Payments
- Airbase
- Soldo
- Kodo
- Maxio
- Medius
- Ramp
- Plaid
- freee
- Happay
- insightsoftware
- IRIS KashFlow
- Karbon
- Kodo
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Cledara, 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.
More on Cledara
Cledara alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Cledara pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
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