Buying guides

Airbase vs Ramp vs Brex: pricing, cards and fit after the Paylocity and Capital One deals

If your shortlist is Airbase, Ramp and Brex, you are comparing one platform owned by a payroll company, one owned by a bank, and one that is still independent. That ownership now shapes pricing and the card question more than any feature grid does. Here is the comparison for a US company of about 100 people, with the cost worked out.

Airbase alternatives

Try it on a real budget

What would any of the three have told you, and when?

Set a department budget and replay a month of card spend. The simulator shows the day a percentage alert fires and the day a projection would have called the overrun. It runs in your browser.

Live demo · computes entirely in your browser

Data source

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Monthly budgets

Anomaly sensitivity

Low Medium High

Alert channels

Email SMS Slack

The short version

Pick Ramp if you want a published price, bill pay on the free plan, and are happy to move every cardholder onto a Ramp card. Pick Brex if you are a funded startup or scale-up that clears Brex's eligibility bar and wants a $12 Premium tier for multi-entity work. Pick Airbase, sold today as Paylocity for Finance, if you run payroll on Paylocity, need purchase requests approved before money is spent, or have to keep an existing bank card program. On software cost alone, Ramp and Brex win because both publish a $0 tier. On migration cost, Airbase often wins because it can sit on the cards you already have.

Side by side

Airbase vs Ramp vs Brex compared

Read off each vendor's own pricing and product pages in September 2026. Where a vendor publishes nothing, the cell says so rather than borrowing someone else's estimate.

Swipe the table sideways to compare all columns.

	Airbase (Paylocity for Finance)	Ramp	Brex
Owner	Paylocity, since October 1, 2024	Independent	Capital One, since April 7, 2026
Published price	None. Custom quote; modules sold in whole or in part	Free $0 per user; Plus $15 per user per month plus a platform fee based on team size	Essentials $0 per user; Premium $12 per user per month; Enterprise on quote
Your existing cards	Supported for visibility and reconciliation; blocking at the swipe needs the Paylocity card (Sutton Bank, Visa)	Controls work on Ramp-issued cards	Controls work on Brex-issued cards
Purchase requests	Guided Procurement module	Check the plan you are quoted	Check the plan you are quoted
Bill pay and AP	AP Automation module	Bill Pay on Free, with free wires and same-day ACH	Check the plan you are quoted
Strongest fit	Paylocity payroll customers; approval-heavy finance teams	Mid-market teams moving cards who want a published price	Funded startups and scale-ups, multi-entity

Read the quote, not the headline

Is Airbase cheaper than Ramp?

Usually not on software alone, because Ramp and Brex both publish a $0 tier and Airbase publishes nothing. The honest way to compare is to price the plan each company would actually need. Take a US company with 100 employees, 60 of them holding a card, that wants more than the free feature set.

Swipe the table sideways to compare all columns.

Plan, 60 users	Per month	Per year	What is missing from the number
Ramp Free or Brex Essentials	$0	$0	A card migration for all 60 cardholders
Brex Premium at $12	$720	$8,640	Eligibility approval; card migration
Ramp Plus at $15	$900 plus platform fee	$10,800 plus platform fee	The platform fee, which Ramp does not publish
Airbase (Paylocity for Finance)	Quote	Quote	Everything; but no card migration if you keep your cards

The table hides the larger cost in two of the three rows: moving 60 people onto a new card. Every cardholder reactivates, and every subscription and vendor that bills the old cards has to be updated by hand. Miss one and a renewal declines. That work lands in the same month either way, which is why a company attached to its current bank card program can rationally pay more in software to avoid it.

If you are already a Paylocity payroll client, ask for the finance modules as a separate line with the per-employee rate after any bundle discount and the annual increase cap in writing. Paylocity's wider platform is quoted per employee per month, so a bundle can move the number a long way. When you take the recommendation to your CFO, it is worth turning the comparison into a short deck with those three quotes side by side, since "the free one" rarely survives the first question about migration effort.

Pick by situation

Is Ramp better than Airbase?

Ramp is better if you want a published price, a genuinely free tier and bill pay without a separate AP contract, and you are willing to move your cards to Ramp. Airbase is better if you run payroll on Paylocity, need structured purchase requests approved before spend happens, or must keep existing cards. Neither wins for every company, and the reasons are specific enough to check against your own situation in five minutes.

You run Paylocity payroll. Stay on Airbase unless the renewal quote is out of line. One employee record driving payroll, reimbursements and card limits is the entire reason Paylocity bought it, and you are the customer it is being built for.

You run payroll elsewhere and live on cards. Ramp. The published price and the free bill pay make the business case easy to write, and the card migration is a one-time project. See Ramp pricing for what the platform fee does to Plus.

You are venture funded with several entities. Brex. Capital One ownership changes little for a customer today, and Premium at $12 per user is the cheapest published paid tier of the three. The Capital One detail is on our Brex alternatives page.

Purchase requests are the job you cannot lose. Stay on Airbase or pair a card platform with a procurement tool. If you are leaving Airbase for that reason, the Airbase alternative comparison lists the procurement options with their published prices.

The gap in all three

None of the three projects your month for you

All three record spend accurately once a card is swiped and let you set a limit. What none of their pricing or product pages describe is projecting a department's month against its budget and telling the budget owner early. A limit tells you when money has run out. A projection tells you on day five that the month is heading for 130 percent, while there is still time to change it.

That is the one job SpendNotify does. It connects read-only to the card and bank feeds you have, whichever of these three issues them, checks every charge against budgets per team, person and category, and alerts the owner by email, SMS or Slack. It does not issue cards or pay bills, and pricing is flat per month rather than per user. During a migration, when spend runs on two platforms at once, it is also the only place both sets of cards show up against one budget. More on how that works on our budget alerts page.

Questions people actually ask

Airbase vs Ramp vs Brex questions

What is the difference between Airbase and Brex?

Brex is a corporate card and spend platform, now owned by Capital One, priced at $0 on Essentials and $12 per user on Premium. Airbase is a spend platform now owned by Paylocity that bundles procurement, AP automation, expenses and cards, and supports existing cards as well as its own. Brex expects you on its card; Airbase does not.

Who owns Airbase and Brex now?

Paylocity owns Airbase, after completing the acquisition on October 1, 2024. Capital One owns Brex, after completing its acquisition on April 7, 2026. Ramp is still an independent company. Two of the three platforms in this comparison now belong to a larger parent with its own products to sell you.

Can I move from Airbase to Ramp without changing cards?

Not in any useful way. Ramp can import outside card transactions, but its limits, merchant locks and freezes work on the cards Ramp issues. Plan the move as a card migration: new cards for every holder, every recurring vendor charge moved, and one month-end close run on both systems before Airbase is switched off.

Whichever you pick, add the early warning

Airbase, Ramp and Brex all record spend well once it has happened. SpendNotify watches the budgets you set across your company cards and accounts, projects where each month is heading, and messages the budget owner while it can still change. Read-only, and it works alongside any of the three.

Airbase alternatives