Expensify vs Brex: A Finance Lead's Guide for 2026

What this comparison decides

Expense management software is the layer that captures a business purchase, checks it against a policy, and hands a coded record to the accounting system. Expensify and Brex both sit in that layer, and the search for expensify vs brex usually means a finance lead is done browsing and is about to pick. The useful question is which jobs each product documents on the plan you would actually buy.

Neither name in that search is a discontinued product. Expensify's current help still sells a free Submit workspace plus Collect and Control. Brex is still sold as Brex. Cash paid: about $2.56 billion according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (2026). That filing also records 10,646,306 Capital One shares as the stock piece of the same April 7, 2026 close. Capital One's own release, dated the same day, says the acquisition is complete, that Brex was founded in 2017, and that Pedro Franceschi continues as CEO of Brex, according to Capital One (2026). The release does not rename the product and does not publish a new price list. Treat the ownership change as a fact to file, then judge the plans that are still on the public pages.

The category choice comes first. Expensify's public materials center on receipts, reports, reimbursements, and an optional commercial card, with accounting connections that change by plan. Brex's pricing page centers on corporate cards, expense controls, reimbursements, bill pay, travel booking, a business account, and software that is free on one edition and priced on the next. If your ledger is the thing you still need to buy, you are in a different purchase. If vendor bills are the fight and employee receipts are a side issue, read Bill.com, Ramp, and Brex for accounts payable before you force this pair to answer an accounts-payable question.

A short version of the call: choose the Expensify plan whose published connections match your ledger and whose member price you can model, or choose the Brex edition whose entity count and card scope match how you spend. The rest of this guide separates those published facts from the buying judgment.

Key Takeaways

TL;DR: Use Expensify when receipt capture, reimbursements, and a published per-member price decide the buy, and use Brex when the card program, entity count, and bundled bill pay decide it.

• Brex still uses the Brex name after Capital One closed the acquisition on April 7, 2026, with Pedro Franceschi continuing as CEO.

• Expensify still documents Submit, Collect, and Control. The Collect plan is $5 per unique member per month on pay-per-use. Control on an annual subscription is $18 per included member per month, or as low as $9 when the full card discount applies.

• Brex lists Essentials at $0 per user per month and Premium at $12 per user per month. Enterprise and Smart Card are quote-based.

• On Expensify, QuickBooks or Xero is the connection called out for Collect. NetSuite, Sage Intacct, multi-level approvals, multiple corporate card connections, and SAML/SSO are called out for Control.

• A $0 software line on Brex Essentials does not include every Premium control. Multiple custom expense policies, live budgets, HRIS integrations, and advanced SSO sit on the higher editions.

• Workspaces whose first Expensify workspace predates April 1, 2025 stay on legacy Collect rates. Do not budget the newer unique-member price until you confirm which schedule you are on.

Who this is for

This guide is for a finance lead, controller, or accounting manager who already knows the team needs a spend layer and is choosing between these two products. You are likely reconciling card lines and out-of-pocket reports into QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, or Sage Intacct, and you want the public plan limits before a sales conversation. It also fits a bookkeeper who has been asked which tool to standardize on for the next renewal.

Red flags: You need a general ledger, payroll engine, or tax filer as the primary system. You will not connect an accounting file and only want a personal folder of receipt photos. You require local card issuance across many countries and you have not yet confirmed that feature on the edition you can buy.

A clinic finance lead who also sells in-house membership plans has a second coding problem, dues and refunds, that this pair does not solve. That job is covered in in-house dental membership plans. If receipt capture is the only gap and neither product's card model fits, start with Expensify alternatives for growing firms.

How we evaluated these tools

We read public plan, pricing, filing, and review pages on October 13, 2026. We did not operate either product, and we did not interview customers. Prices below are the ones printed on the vendor pages opened in this session. Where a page says custom pricing, the table says Quote-based. SelectHub's scores are reported as SelectHub's scores, in their own table, so they are not mixed into our rubric.

The rubric is aimed at the last-mile decision this reader actually makes. Receipt match matters because a card line without a receipt comes back at close. Approval depth matters because a single approver and a department chain are different operating models. The accounting handoff carries the most weight because a plan that does not name your ledger is a different project. Published price matters because a finance lead should model seats before asking for a quote. Card and entity reach matters because Brex's value is tied to how you issue cards and how many legal entities you run. Reimbursements and bills matter when employees pay out of pocket or vendors send invoices. Export evidence carries a smaller weight because it is the control that keeps an automated post from becoming a silent duplicate.

The pass mark is the lowest bar we would want on that criterion before a plan stays on the shortlist. It is not a score we assigned to either vendor after a lab run. A documented control on the edition you will buy meets the bar. A control that exists only on a higher edition fails the bar for the cheaper edition, even if the brand can do it. That distinction is the whole point of reading Collect against Control, and Essentials against Premium, instead of comparing logos.

Third-party scores are a separate input. Analyst score: 83 out of 100 according to SelectHub (2026). The same October 5, 2026 update gives both products that analyst score, then a user sentiment score of 89 from 7,261 reviews for Expensify and 95 from 1,654 reviews for Brex. SelectHub also lists a G2 score of 4.5 from 5,434 reviews for Expensify and 4.8 from 1,445 reviews for Brex, and it marks 67% of its travel-management requirement as out of the box for Expensify versus 100% for Brex, according to SelectHub (2026). Use those figures as outside sentiment. They do not replace the plan matrix.

SelectHub's own bottom line says Expensify fits a wide range of business types and Brex fits a startup or tech company that wants cards and spending controls in one place. That is their judgment. Our judgment, later in this guide, follows the plan limits and the price page, and it leaves room for a company outside tech when Essentials or Premium still matches the entity and the ledger.

What each company sells today

Read this section as product scope. The price section after it is the bill. The judgment of who should buy comes after both.

Expensify

Expensify documents three workspace ideas. Submit is free and is for an individual who codes expenses and sends them to an approver when the company has not adopted Expensify. The pricing article says Submit does not include approvals, payments, company cards, or accounting integrations. Collect is for organizations that want receipt tracking, reimbursements, a simple approval workflow, and a connection to common accounting software such as QuickBooks or Xero. Control is for organizations that need multi-step approvals, company card management, ERP integrations such as NetSuite and Sage Intacct, HR integrations such as Workday and BambooHR, multiple corporate card connections, custom expense rules, and SAML/SSO. Those splits are listed on Expensify's plan comparison. The comparison table on that page marks multi-level approvals, ERP integrations, HR and payroll integrations, multiple corporate card connections, custom expense rules, and SAML/SSO as Control capabilities.

Best fit is a team that already has card relationships, wants employees to submit receipts and get reimbursed, and can live on QuickBooks or Xero with a simple approval path. Control is the fit when the org chart needs more than one approval step, when NetSuite or Sage Intacct is the ledger, or when SAML single sign-on is a security requirement. The Expensify Card works on both Collect and Control, and the pricing article says the subscription discount benefits attach to eligible Control workspaces.

Limitations are plan-shaped. Buying Collect and expecting NetSuite, multi-level approvals, or SAML will fail the rollout. Annual subscriptions exist on Control, not on current Collect. You can raise the annual subscription size during the term, and you cannot shrink it until renewal. Taxes are extra. Regional prices in GBP, EUR, AUD, and NZD are fixed amounts on the same pricing article, not a daily conversion from the dollar price. A first workspace created before April 1, 2025 stays on legacy Collect pricing, which uses a different schedule from the current $5 unique-member rate.

Implementation starts with the workspace plan, then the accounting connection that plan lists, then the approvers, then one real export that a person reviews. If you want the lower Control rate, confirm the Expensify Card share of approved USD expenses before you put the discounted number in the budget. Downgrading an annual Control workspace to Collect may have to wait until the term ends, which the plan comparison states directly.

Primary evidence is the pricing article and the plan comparison linked above. Those two pages are the ones to reopen on the day you sign, because a sales conversation can describe the brand while the workspace you create only has the plan you selected.

Brex

Brex's pricing page describes a spend platform: corporate cards, expense management, reimbursements, bill pay, travel booking, accounting integrations, and a business account. Essentials lists global card acceptance and one local card program, custom rules, up to two entities with one global entity, accounting integrations, local-currency wires, travel booking, real-time reporting, API access, bill pay, and reimbursements. Premium adds multiple customizable expense policies, dynamic review chains, compliance audit detection, advanced spend-limit approval chains, multi-entity support in the US and internationally, customizable ERP and HRIS integrations, VAT documentation, group travel, and live budgets. Enterprise is custom pricing and adds unlimited US or global entities, local card issuance, a named account manager, an admin center, and customizable implementation. Smart Card is a separate custom-priced offer aimed at procurement, with global cards and local-currency cards in 50+ countries on that bullet list.

The comparison grid on the same page lists unlimited global cards accepted in 210+ countries and territories, reimbursements, multi-level approval chains, and accounting integrations including NetSuite on the editions it compares. It lists multiple custom expense policies, live budgets, HRIS integrations, custom roles, advanced SSO, and security audit logs on the higher editions. It lists SOC 2 Type II and PCI-DSS, plus 24/7 live support, across the compared plans. The page says card rewards are competitive and does not print a reward percent, so this guide does not invent one. The business-account section lists cash management, ACH, checks, and wires as features, and this guide does not quote a yield or a transfer fee because the fee schedule opened beside it did not display those amounts.

Best fit is a company that wants the card and the software in one account, can operate inside Essentials' two-entity limit, or is ready to pay for Premium when it needs several policies, live budgets, HRIS sync, or more entities. Enterprise is the public fit when you need unlimited entities or the local card issuance the Enterprise bullet names, and you will take a quote.

Limitations follow the same edition lines. Essentials is not a silent copy of Premium. A team that needs group travel rules, VAT documentation, or audit logs and then buys the $0 edition will discover the gap in setup. Enterprise and Smart Card have no public per-user price. After the April 7, 2026 close, the product is owned by Capital One and still marketed as Brex. The release does not publish changed underwriting rules or a new plan grid, so any claim about who gets approved for credit belongs in a current application, not in this article.

Implementation means picking the edition that matches entity count and policy depth, connecting the accounting integration the edition lists, and proving one expense can be read and reviewed before anyone schedules a post. Brex's expense API is public. A get-by-id call returns fields a reviewer can use, including original_amount, payment_posted_at, exported_at, and review.compliance_status. Receipt download links expire in 15 minutes, and expense line items are limited to 100, according to Brex (2026). That page also shows the money pattern in which USD 7.00 is stored as 700 in the smallest unit. Build any downstream step around those documented limits.

Pricing checked against the public pages

Pricing checked October 13, 2026.

The Collect plan on Expensify costs $5 per unique member per month on pay-per-use. The Control plan on an annual subscription costs $18 per member included in the subscription size per month, plus $36 per active member above that size per month. Pay-per-use Control costs $36 per active member per month. Those are the standard USD figures, according to Expensify (2026). Collect price: $5 per member. The same article is the source for the Control figures in the table.

The card column is a discount on software, not a second product. Control workspaces on an annual subscription can receive up to a 50% discount based on the share of approved USD expenses made on the Expensify Card. At the full discount, the included-member rate falls from $18 to $9, and the above-size rate falls from $36 to $18. The pay-per-use Control row is published as as low as $18 with the card. Current Collect has no card-discount price on that table. Only Control can use an annual subscription. A first workspace created before April 1, 2025 keeps legacy Collect pricing: $5 per included member per month on an annual subscription plus $10 per active member above that size, or $10 per active member per month on pay-per-use. Legacy Collect bills active members rather than unique members.

The Essentials plan on Brex costs $0 per user per month. The Premium plan on Brex costs $12 per user per month. Enterprise and Smart Card are custom pricing. The corporate-card grid lists acceptance in 210+ countries and territories, according to Brex (2026). Premium price: $12 per user. Brex does not print a software discount tied to card spend on that page, so the discount cells for Brex say Not published rather than a made-up percent.

How to read the bill without fooling yourself: Collect charges unique members added to the workspace, and the current Collect plan is month to month. Control annual charges the subscription size every month even when some of those people are quiet, then charges the pay-per-use rate for active members past that size. You can add size during the year. You cannot cut it until renewal. Taxes sit on top. Brex Essentials at $0 is a real published software price and a real feature ceiling. Premium at $12 is the published price of the deeper policy, entity, ERP, and HRIS list. Enterprise is a conversation, not a cell you can multiply.

A finance lead who puts both brands in one spreadsheet and compares only the cheapest non-zero number will pair Collect at $5 with Premium at $12 and miss the feature mismatch. Pair Collect with Essentials when both can see your ledger and your entity count. Pair Control with Premium when you need the deeper controls. Pair Control's quote-like edge cases, meaning a card discount you might not earn, with Enterprise only after you have the quote in writing.

The handoff into the ledger

The painful week is not the demo. It is the week a card line, a reimbursed receipt, and a vendor bill all describe the same purchase, and someone posts all three. Both products can feed an accounting file. Expensify's plan comparison puts QuickBooks or Xero with Collect and puts NetSuite and Sage Intacct with Control. Brex's pricing page puts accounting integrations, including NetSuite, on Essentials, and puts customizable ERP and HRIS integrations on Premium. The handoff still needs a person when the category, the entity, or the receipt is wrong.

A proposed configuration from US Tech Automations starts when a scheduled pull reads Brex expenses whose exported_at timestamp is empty. The action writes the merchant, the amount, the category, and the spending entity into a review queue and does not post to the ledger. The output is a held list for a named finance reviewer. Prerequisites are an OAuth token that can call the expenses endpoint, or a file an admin already exports, plus permission to create a draft in the accounting file. The reviewer confirms category and entity before any post. Receipt files have to be saved inside the 15-minute window Brex documents for download links, or the queue keeps the expense id and asks the reviewer to open the dashboard. This is a configurable design. It is not a statement that a named customer runs it, and it is not a measured saving.

The same design can watch an approved Expensify report file that an admin exports after the report is approved. US Tech Automations would compare that row with an open card line on vendor and amount, flag a possible double record, and leave both rows unposted until a person marks one as the survivor. Prerequisites are an export from a workspace whose plan includes the accounting connection you rely on, and a reviewer who is allowed to reject a reimbursement or a bill. The output is an exception list. Nothing in that list is paid by the workflow itself.

When NOT to use US Tech Automations: Stay with the tool you already have when one entity, one ledger, and one approver are the whole close and the native export already lands in the right account. Stay there when the team will not grant an API token or a scheduled file, because a review queue with no source is an empty screen. Stay there when the only gap is a monthly CSV that a bookkeeper already finishes inside the accounting app in a single sitting. A configured queue adds a review step. It does not replace a ledger, and it is the wrong project when the native button already does the job.

A 40-member software sketch

Use an illustrative workspace of 40 members, all inside the annual subscription size, with the full card discount earned. On Expensify, the Control annual rate is $18 per included member per month, so 40 times $18 is $720 a month, and the full 50% discount takes that rate to $9, so 40 times $9 is $360 a month. The same 40 people on the Premium plan on Brex, at $12 per user per month, come to 40 times $12, or $480 a month. The gap between $480 and $360 is $120 a month, and it exists only when the Expensify Card discount is actually at the published maximum. A reviewer checking one card purchase would read original_amount in the smallest currency unit, and Brex's expense schema shows that USD 7.00 is stored as 700, then confirm the category before export. The headcount is an illustration. The unit prices are the published ones. If the workspace misses the card share, the Expensify side of this sketch goes back to $720 a month, which is $240 a month above the Premium line. If some of the 40 people sit above the subscription size, those extra people are at the $36 rate, or $18 with the full discount, and the $360 figure no longer applies.

That sketch is software only. It does not include card rewards, because Brex does not print a reward percent on the pricing page and this guide is not using a cash-back percent for the Expensify Card that was not on the pricing article opened here. It does not include taxes. It does not include implementation help, which Enterprise on Brex lists as customizable and which Control on Expensify does not price as a separate public line. It also does not include the cost of a wrong entity mapping, which can erase a year of seat savings in one reconciliation.

Which buyer should pick which product

Choose Expensify's Collect plan when the team needs receipt capture, reimbursement, a simple approval path, and QuickBooks or Xero, and when a published $5 unique-member price is something you want on a month-to-month bill. Choose Control when you need the six controls the comparison table withholds from Collect, or when you are willing to run the Expensify Card at a high enough share of approved USD spend to earn the discount you put in the model. Choose Submit only for an individual sender. It is the wrong workspace for a company that needs approvals and a ledger connection.

Choose Brex's Essentials plan when $0 software, global card acceptance, one local card program, two entities, bill pay, reimbursements, and a NetSuite-capable accounting integration cover the company you have. Choose Premium when you will use more than one expense policy, live budgets, HRIS sync, VAT documentation, group travel, or a wider entity map, and when $12 per user is an acceptable published price for that list. Choose Enterprise when unlimited entities or the local issuance line is a requirement, and treat the price as Quote-based until the order form says otherwise. Choose Smart Card when the purchase is a procurement card program and you are ready to take a custom quote.

Leave both when the accounting system is the actual gap. Leave Expensify's Collect plan when NetSuite or SAML is mandatory. Leave Brex's Essentials plan when the security review requires audit logs or advanced SSO, because those items are listed on Premium and Enterprise. Leave the discounted Control rate out of the budget when you will keep a third-party card and the approved USD spend on the Expensify Card will stay low. The discount moves with that share. It is not a coupon code.

Our analysis, separate from the vendor pages and from SelectHub, is that the tie breaks on the system of record for the card. If the card can stay where it is and the missing piece is the report, Expensify is the cleaner buy. If the company wants one issuer, one set of limits, and the software in the same login, Brex is the cleaner buy, provided the edition matches the entity count. Ownership by Capital One does not, on the documents opened here, change that product split.

Stitching the review in Zapier, Make, or n8n

The real alternative for many finance teams is not a third spend suite. It is a workflow built in Zapier, Make, or n8n, or a small script the company maintains. Those tools can keep a run history, retry a failed call, branch when a field is missing, and store an audit trail when someone configures them to do that. They are a fair option for a team with the skill to own them. The buyer then owns observability, idempotency so the same expense is not posted twice, escalation when a run fails, access control on the token, and the maintenance when a vendor changes a field.

A proposed US Tech Automations design could configure that hold differently. The trigger is an expense whose exported_at is empty or whose review.compliance_status is not an approved state. The action opens one review item with the merchant, the amount, and the entity, and it suppresses a second item when the same expense id is still open. The output is a queue a named person clears. Prerequisites are the API credential or the scheduled export, write access that stops at a draft in the accounting file, and a reviewer who is accountable for the post. Idempotency is handled by the expense id. Escalation is a dated reminder to that reviewer, not a silent retry into the ledger. Access stays on a company token an admin can revoke. That is a design you would configure. It is not a live deployment, and it has no measured close-time result attached to it.

The trade is ownership. A Zapier, Make, or n8n build can be the right call when the map is one trigger and one sheet and the person who built it still works there. It becomes a fragile close when the only documentation is the builder's memory and a failed run sits unseen over a weekend. The configured review queue is heavier on purpose. It adds a human gate and a single id. It is unnecessary when the native export already matches the ledger and a person already looks at it.

Mistakes that change the bill

Teams miss the same handful of facts when they rush this choice.

• Budgeting Collect at $5 for a workspace that has been around since before April 1, 2025. Legacy Collect is a different schedule, at $5 annual plus $10 above size, or $10 pay-per-use, and it bills active members.

• Treating the $9 Control rate as the list price. The list annual rate is $18. The $9 figure is the full 50% card discount, and it moves with the share of approved USD expenses on the Expensify Card.

• Buying Collect because the brand integrates with NetSuite. The plan comparison puts ERP integrations on Control.

• Comparing Premium at $12 with Collect at $5 as if the feature lists matched. They do not. Match Essentials to Collect only after you check entities, rules, and the ledger by name.

• Assuming Essentials includes live budgets, multiple custom policies, HRIS sync, and audit logs. Those are listed on higher editions.

• Shrinking an annual Control subscription mid-term. The pricing article says you cannot decrease subscription size until renewal.

• Forgetting taxes, and forgetting that GBP, EUR, AUD, and NZD prices are their own published amounts.

• Automating the post before a person has checked entity and category. A cheap seat line does not refund a duplicated bill.

• Reading Enterprise's custom pricing as if it were the $12 Premium rate with a different label. It is Quote-based.

• Using a third-party score as a substitute for the plan. An analyst score of 83 for both products does not tell you whether SAML is on the edition you will pay for.

A practical sequence is short. Name the ledger. Name the entity count. Name whether the card must move. Open the two vendor pages and tick only the edition that lists those three. Then put the published price next to the headcount you will actually be billed for, unique members or active members or users, and add tax as unknown until your invoice says otherwise. If the edition that fits is Quote-based, stop the spreadsheet and ask for the order form.

Glossary

• Unique member. The billing unit on current Collect. Expensify charges for unique members added to the workspace on that plan.

• Active member. The billing unit Expensify uses for Control pay-per-use, for people above an annual subscription size, and for legacy Collect. Confirm the activity definition in your workspace before you forecast.

• Subscription size. The member count you commit to on an annual Control subscription. You pay that count each month, and you cannot lower it until renewal.

• Submit workspace. Expensify's free workspace for an individual submitter. It does not include approvals, payments, company cards, or accounting integrations.

• Spend limit. A Brex control on how much a person or a card can spend. Premium adds dynamic approval chains on those limits.

• Entity. A legal entity inside the spend account. Essentials lists up to two, with one global entity. Enterprise lists unlimited US or global entities.

• Quote-based. No public per-user price on the page we opened. Enterprise and Smart Card on Brex are in this bucket.

• original_amount. A Brex expense field. The amount is stored in the smallest unit of the currency, so the schema's USD 7.00 example is 700.

Questions before you commit

Is Brex still sold as Brex after the acquisition?

Yes. Capital One completed the acquisition on April 7, 2026, and the release keeps the Brex name and says Pedro Franceschi continues as CEO. The cash and share counts are in Capital One's April 7, 2026 current report: approximately $2.56 billion and 10,646,306 shares. The release does not publish a replacement price list, so the pricing page remains the source for Essentials at $0 and Premium at $12.

Does Expensify have a free plan?

Yes. The pricing article documents a free Submit workspace for an individual who codes expenses and submits them when the company has not adopted Expensify. That workspace does not include approvals, payments, company cards, or accounting integrations. A company that needs those controls is looking at Collect or Control, not at Submit.

Which Expensify plan connects to NetSuite?

Control. The plan comparison says Collect is aimed at common accounting software such as QuickBooks or Xero, and it says Control includes ERP integrations such as NetSuite and Sage Intacct. The same page marks ERP integrations as absent on Collect. Buying Collect and planning to "turn on NetSuite later" is a plan change, not a setting.

Is Brex software free if we only want the card?

Essentials is published at $0 per user per month and includes global card acceptance, one local card program, reimbursements, bill pay, and accounting integrations. Premium is $12 per user per month. Enterprise and Smart Card are quote-based. Free software here means the Essentials feature list, not the Premium list of multiple policies, live budgets, and HRIS integrations.

What if our Expensify workspace started before April 2025?

Use the legacy Collect schedule until Expensify shows you otherwise. If the organization's first workspace was created before April 1, 2025, legacy Collect pricing applies: $5 per included member per month on an annual subscription plus $10 per active member above that size, or $10 per active member per month on pay-per-use. Current Collect at $5 per unique member applies when the first workspace was created on or after that date.

Can either product replace our accounting system?

No. Both products hand coded spend to an accounting system. QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, or Sage Intacct stays the ledger. The plan has to name the connection you use, or the export becomes a file someone still types in. A review queue in front of that export can hold a bad row. It does not become the ledger.

Should a small team build the check in Zapier instead?

Often, yes, when the map is one export and one reviewer and someone will own the scenario. Zapier, Make, and n8n can store run history, retry, and branch on errors when configured. The team owns the token, the duplicate check, and the repair when a field changes. A configured review design is the better fit when several people post, more than one entity is in play, and you want the expense id to block a second post until a named person clears it.

After the shortlist

Open the pricing article and the plan comparison for Expensify, and the pricing page for Brex, on the day you decide. Tick the edition that names your ledger, your entity count, and your card decision. Multiply only the published unit price by the billing unit that edition uses, and leave Enterprise and Smart Card as Quote-based until a written quote arrives. If the first Expensify workspace is older than April 1, 2025, put the legacy rates in the model before you tell anyone the bill is $5.

Keep a person on the export until category and entity are trustworthy. A proposed queue can hold rows that have not been exported, match a report file against a card line, and wait. The native product still does the capture. The accounting system still holds the books. After the plan and the ledger connection are confirmed, see how US Tech Automations configures this as that review step, with the API or the export file as a prerequisite and a human still responsible for the post.