Corporate travel software pricing: what Navan, Perk, ITILITE, Ramp and Concur actually cost

Two meters, sometimes combined. A seat meter bills per user per month, almost always per active user, meaning someone who logs in but files nothing costs nothing. A transaction meter bills per booking, either a flat fee per trip like ITILITE's $10 or a percentage of booking value like Perk's 3% to 5%. Everything else on a pricing page is packaging.

The two meters fail in opposite directions. Seat pricing is expensive for a company with a large headcount and light travel, because you are paying for people who fly twice a year. Transaction pricing is expensive for a small team that travels constantly, because the fee tracks spend rather than people. Nobody tells you this in a demo, because the demo is built around the case where their meter wins.

Work out your own ratio before you take a single call. Divide monthly travel spend by the number of people who will actually book. Under roughly $500 of bookings per traveler per month, a percentage fee is usually cheaper than a seat price. Above about $1,000 per traveler per month, the seat price wins and keeps winning as the program grows. That one number tells you which half of the market to shortlist, and it takes five minutes to calculate from last year's ledger.

The software line genuinely is free on Navan Business and on Engine. Neither is running a promotion. Both are funded by supplier economics: commissions and negotiated rates on the hotels, flights and cars booked through their inventory. Engine states it plainly, promising no fees, no contracts and no minimum spends.

That is a real offer, and for a lot of US companies it is the right one. What you should understand is where the leverage sits. A platform paid by suppliers earns more when more spend flows through its inventory, so the incentive to surface the cheapest fare and the incentive to surface the best-commission fare are not identical. The defence is simple and takes an afternoon: sample twenty bookings a quarter, price the same itinerary outside the tool, and keep the record. If the spread is consistently in your favour, free is free. If it is not, you have found the fee.

The same logic applies in reverse to the percentage models. A 3% booking fee is disclosed and predictable, which is worth something. It is also the only pricing model in this market where the vendor's revenue rises every time your travel budget overruns, which is worth remembering when you are deciding who to trust with the savings report.

SAP Concur does not publish a list price, so any per-user number you find is a benchmark rather than a rate card. Third-party contract data puts annual Concur spend roughly between $1,832 and $45,132, which works out at about $153 to $3,761 a month depending on company size, edition and modules. The range is that wide because Concur is sold as a configured deployment, not a plan.

The more important difference is the meter. Some Concur editions bill per expense report rather than per seat, which changes everything about how the price scales. A company with 400 staff who each file one report a month pays for 4,800 reports a year. The same company on a seat price pays for 400 people whether they file or not. Ask which meter your quote uses, then model it against your actual report volume from last year, not against headcount.

Ask for these four numbers in writing: the annual software fee, the implementation and data-migration fee, the cap on the annual uplift, and the exit terms if you do not renew. Our SAP Concur alternative page covers what the same requirements cost elsewhere, and corporate travel management company fees covers the separate agency line, which is the cost most software comparisons forget.