Email ·
From: SpendNotify Alerts
Rho vs Brex pricing and Brex vs Rho cashback worked out by company size
Both cards are free to hold and neither asks for a personal guarantee, so the comparison everyone publishes ends in a draw. It is not a draw once you put a company's real card spend through both rate cards. One number on Rho's own card page decides it, and almost nobody mentions it.
Try it on a real budget
See when a department budget would have warned you
Whichever card wins, someone still has to notice when a team is spending too fast. Set a monthly budget, replay a month of card and bank spend, and see the day a trend alert would have fired.
Live demo · computes entirely in your browser
Data source
Loading transactions…
Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you paste is uploaded.
Monthly budgets
Settings changed. Run monitoring again to refresh.
Your free run is used
That was your free run on your own data
SpendNotify has already replayed one file of your own transactions in this browser. Create your account to keep these rules running on your real cards, every day, without pasting anything.
The three sample company profiles stay open. Run those as often as you like.
$0.00
0 breaches
0 warnings
0 info
The alert wire
Chronological replay of the month
Get alerts like these for your real spend.
Get started
Signed webhook ·
Slack · #spend-alerts ·
SpendNotify app
Turn a channel back on to preview the message.
A quiet month: no alerts fired at these settings. Tighten a budget slider or raise the sensitivity, then run again.
The short version
Is Rho cheaper than Brex?
On software, always. Rho charges nothing, and Brex Premium costs $12 per user a month. On rewards, Rho pays more until a company puts about $2.1 million a year on the card, because Rho caps cashback at $1,000,000 of eligible spend per calendar year and Brex points have no cap. Above roughly $3.3 million, Brex beats even Rho Platinum.
The rate cards
What Rho and Brex charge and pay back
Rho's figures are from its card and pricing pages, Brex's software prices from brex.com/pricing, both read October 1, 2026. Brex's pricing page only promises "competitive card rewards", so its point rates are the program terms reported by NerdWallet, AwardWallet and Forbes Advisor this year.
Swipe the table sideways to compare all columns.
| Rho | Brex | |
|---|---|---|
| Software | $0, all features | Essentials $0. Premium $12 per user a month. Enterprise and Smart Card custom. |
| Card fees | $0 annual, $0 per card | No annual fee, no interest |
| Base reward | 1.25% cash on Daily Terms, 1% on Monthly Terms | 1 point per dollar, about 0.6 cents as cash |
| Top reward | 2% (Daily) or 1.75% (Monthly) on Rho Platinum | 7x rideshare, 4x travel booked through Brex, 3x dining, 2x recurring software |
| Cap | $1,000,000 of eligible spend a year, all tiers | None reported |
| What earns the top rate | Payroll, revenue and half of company assets at Rho | Where your team spends |
Three companies
Rho vs Brex cost for a 25, 80 and 250 person company
Annual cash back minus software. Every cardholder counted as a Brex Premium user, every Brex point valued at the 0.6 cent cash rate with no bonus categories, Rho on standard Daily Terms and on Platinum. Real bonus-category spend would lift the Brex column, so read it as a floor.
Swipe the table sideways to compare all columns.
| Company | Card spend a year | Rho Daily | Rho Platinum | Brex Essentials | Brex Premium cost | Brex Premium net |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 people, 15 cardholders, $30,000 a month | $360,000 | $4,500 | $7,200 | $2,160 | $2,160 | $0 |
| 80 people, 50 cardholders, $120,000 a month | $1,440,000 | $12,500 (capped) | $20,000 (capped) | $8,640 | $7,200 | $1,440 |
| 250 people, 150 cardholders, $400,000 a month | $4,800,000 | $12,500 (capped) | $20,000 (capped) | $28,800 | $21,600 | $7,200 |
At 25 people Rho wins clearly, by $2,340 a year on standard terms against Brex Essentials and by $5,040 on Platinum. At 80 people Rho still wins, but the cap is already doing work: the company spends $1.44 million and earns cashback on only $1 million of it, so its effective rate drops from 1.25% to 0.87%.
At 250 people the answer flips. Rho's cashback stops at $12,500, or $20,000 on Platinum, which is an effective rate of 0.26% to 0.42% on $4.8 million. Brex's base-rate cash alone is $28,800, before a single bonus category. A company that size is also more likely to be on a custom Brex Enterprise contract than on Premium.
Where does Brex start beating Rho on cashback?
At about $2.1 million of card spend a year against Rho's standard Daily Terms, and about $3.3 million against Rho Platinum. Those are the points where Brex's 0.6% base cash catches Rho's capped $12,500 and $20,000. Software and rideshare spend at Brex's multipliers pull both thresholds lower.
Below $1 million of spend the cap never binds and Rho's flat rate is simply higher than Brex's base rate, so the only question is whether Brex bonus categories cover enough of your spend to close a gap of at least 0.65 points. For most companies they do not. A team that books all its travel through Brex and runs its SaaS stack on the card is the exception worth modelling with your own statement.
The other variable is Platinum, and it is not a rewards decision. To earn 2% you run payroll from Rho, deposit revenue there and hold at least half of company assets with it. For a company whose board wants cash split across banks, that condition settles the matter before the arithmetic starts. The full terms are on our Rho corporate card page.
Is Brex Premium worth $12 per user?
Only if you will use what it adds, and that has to be weighed against Rho, which includes approvals, receipts, reimbursements, bill pay and accounting sync for nothing. Premium is charged on every user, so it scales with headcount while the rewards it sits beside scale with spend. In our 80-person example it eats $7,200 of $8,640 in base-rate cash.
Brex Essentials is the fairer comparison for a small team, and it makes the decision about rewards and banking rather than software. What Brex Premium and Enterprise include tier by tier is broken down on Brex pricing, and the companies teams move to when Brex stops fitting are compared on Brex alternatives.
Do Rho and Brex require a personal guarantee?
Neither does. Rho states no personal guarantee and no consumer credit report, for any US-incorporated business with an EIN, and Monthly Terms open up once $25,000 sits at Rho or $75,000 across Rho and linked accounts. Brex requires a US EIN, incorporation and operations, and is commonly reported to favor companies with equity funding or meaningful cash on hand.
That makes both cards a route around the founder's own credit file, which helps a company whose founder has a thin or damaged score. It does not help with the next financing step. SBA loans do look at the owners' personal credit, so if that is on the roadmap it is worth starting early on understanding what is dragging your credit score down before a lender pulls it.
Should a startup choose Rho or Brex?
Choose Rho if annual card spend will stay under about $2 million and you are happy to bank there. You get 1.25% to 2% back, no software bill and checking, treasury and bill pay in the same account. Choose Brex if spend is already larger, heavy on travel, rideshare or software, or if you want rewards that do not depend on moving payroll and deposits. Ramp, which pays up to 1.5% set per customer and keeps your existing bank, sits between them, and its tiers are on Ramp pricing.
One thing neither card fixes is the budget conversation. Both set limits per card and both flag out-of-policy charges. A department budget, though, usually spans the new card, an older Amex that still holds the ad accounts, and an ACH to an agency. Knowing on the 9th that marketing is on pace to finish the month 20 percent over means watching all of those at once. That is what trend-based budget alerts do, and the card side of it is on corporate card monitoring.
Before you switch
How to run the Rho vs Brex numbers on your own spend
01
Total last year's card spend
Across every card. If it is near $1 million, Rho's cap matters this year.
02
Split it by Brex category
Rideshare, Brex-booked travel, dining and recurring software. The rest earns 1x.
03
Count paying users
Every Brex Premium user costs $144 a year. Rho costs nothing per user.
04
Settle the bank question
No payroll and deposits at Rho means no Platinum. Model 1.25%, not 2%.
Rho vs Brex questions, answered
Does Rho have a cashback limit?
Yes. Rho says cashback is capped at $1,000,000 in eligible spend per calendar year across all tiers. That limits a year's cashback to $12,500 on standard Daily Terms and $20,000 on Rho Platinum, however much more the company puts on the card.
How much are Brex points worth as cash?
About 0.6 cents each as cash or a statement credit, and about 1 cent through Brex Travel, according to NerdWallet, AwardWallet and Forbes Advisor. At the 1 point per dollar base rate that is roughly 0.6% back. Bonus categories such as 2x on recurring software raise it.
Who owns Brex now?
Capital One, since April 2026. Brex still sells its own card and software plans, and its pricing page lists the same four tiers. If the ownership change is what has you shopping, the move-off options are on our Brex alternatives page.
Can I use SpendNotify with Rho or Brex?
Yes, with either or both. SpendNotify issues no cards. It takes in charges from the cards and bank accounts you already use, by forwarded transaction emails, an iPhone Shortcut for Apple Pay, or a CSV, OFX or QFX statement, and alerts each budget owner by email, Slack or webhook when a department is on pace to overshoot.
Pick the card on the numbers. Watch the budgets on every card.
SpendNotify projects each department's month across Rho, Brex and everything else you pay with, and warns the budget owner the day the pace goes wrong.