For Airbase customers and anyone holding a Paylocity for Finance quote
Airbase Alternative and Airbase Pricing for AP Invoice Capture
Airbase now belongs to Paylocity and is priced only by quote. If your bills are approved in QuickBooks, NetSuite or Sage Intacct and paid from your bank, you may only need the invoice reading part. PayablesAgent does that for $49 to $499 a month, with no demo and no annual contract.
Airbase and Paylocity facts come from paylocity.com and airbase.com. Competitor prices are from each vendor's own pricing page.
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The short answer
Airbase was a spend management platform (bill pay, AP automation, expenses, corporate cards and procurement) until Paylocity bought it in October 2024. Today it is sold as part of Paylocity for Finance, with no published price. The best Airbase alternative depends on the piece you use: Ramp or Brex if you want cards and bill pay together, BILL or Stampli for accounts payable, and an invoice capture tool like PayablesAgent if the only real cost is typing vendor invoices into your books.
What happened to Airbase
Most "Airbase alternatives" lists were written before the sale and still describe a standalone startup. That is no longer what you are buying.
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1
2017
Founded in San Francisco
An all-in-one spend platform: bill pay and AP automation, expense reports, corporate cards and procurement in one product.
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2
October 1, 2024
Acquired by Paylocity
Paylocity, a payroll and HR software company, closed the deal to move into the office of the CFO and sell spend tools to its payroll clients.
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3
Today
Airbase by Paylocity
Sold inside Paylocity for Finance next to HR and IT modules. airbase.com sends buyers to Paylocity, and existing clients keep their contacts.
For a current customer, the product itself has kept growing. The question at renewal is different: your contract now sits with a payroll vendor whose pitch is one platform for payroll and non-payroll spend. If you run payroll elsewhere and use Airbase mainly to get bills read and approved, it is a fair moment to price the pieces separately.
How much Airbase costs in 2026
There is no Airbase price list. airbase.com/pricing redirects to paylocity.com/pricing, which has no dollar figures, only a "Request Pricing with a Free Demo" form. The form asks for your employee count in bands from 1 to 30 up to 5,000 and more, which tells you the quote is sized by headcount and by the modules you pick.
Paylocity says its HR, Finance and IT modules can be implemented one at a time. On the finance side that means AP Automation, Expense Management, Corporate Cards, Guided Procurement and Headcount Planning are line items you can include or leave out.
You will see per-employee figures on review and directory sites. None of them come from Paylocity, so treat them as rumors and get your own quote in writing.
Five lines to ask for in an Airbase quote
- 1Annual price of the AP Automation module alone, without HCM or payroll.
- 2Whether the price moves with employee count, user count or bill volume.
- 3Per-payment fees for ACH, check, international wire and same-day options.
- 4Implementation and ERP connector fees as their own line, not folded in.
- 5Contract term, renewal uplift cap and notice period for cancelling.
Put the AP line next to a $149 or $499 monthly capture plan and you know what the rest of the suite is costing you.
What Airbase AP automation includes
From Paylocity's own AP automation page. This is a real end-to-end payables product, which is exactly why it is priced like one.
Invoice capture
Invoices arrive by email, bulk upload or a vendor portal. Rules, OCR and generative AI read the details, fill fields and suggest coding.
Approval routing
Bills route by subsidiary, department, vendor, amount and GL category, tied to the employee record. Approvers act from desktop, Slack, mobile or email.
2-way and 3-way PO matching
Purchase orders, invoices and receipts are matched automatically, so each bill ties back to a PO before it is paid.
Vendor portal and W-9s
Vendors enter contact, bank and tax details themselves. W-9 collection and validation feed 1099 reporting.
Global payments
ACH, check, virtual card, international wire or vendor credits, to 200+ countries in 145+ currencies.
ERP sync
NetSuite, Sage Intacct, QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop and Microsoft Dynamics Business Central, plus automated amortization schedules.
Only the invoice reading, at a published price
Many teams that bought Airbase for AP already approve bills in QuickBooks or NetSuite and pay them by ACH from the bank. For them the expensive manual step is keying vendor, invoice number, dates, terms, tax and every line into the ledger.
PayablesAgent reads those fields and line items from PDFs, scans and phone photos. Excel and CSV come with every plan, QuickBooks Online export with Plus, and the API with Pro for NetSuite or Sage Intacct imports.
- ✓Starter $49 a month for 2,500 pages, one seat
- ✓Plus $149 a month for 10,000 pages, three seats
- ✓Pro $499 a month for 35,000 pages, five seats and the API
Airbase vs Ramp vs BILL vs PayablesAgent
Airbase from paylocity.com, checked October 2, 2026. Ramp from ramp.com/pricing, checked October 2, 2026. BILL from bill.com/pricing, checked October 2, 2026.
| Airbase by Paylocity | Ramp | BILL | PayablesAgent | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Published price | None, quote after a demo | Free plan $0; Plus $15 per user a month plus a platform fee | $49, $65 or $89 per user a month | $49, $149 or $499 a month |
| What drives the bill | Modules and employee count | Users and team size | Users plus per-payment fees | Pages a month |
| Invoice capture | OCR plus generative AI | AI invoice capture, included free | AI capture on all plans | Core product, line items on every plan |
| PO matching | 2-way and 3-way | Three-way match in the Procurement add-on to Plus | Automatic 2 and 3 way on Enterprise | No, match in your ERP |
| Vendor payments | ACH, check, card, wire, 145+ currencies | Bill pay included | ACH $0.59, check $1.99, card, wire | No, pay from your bank or ledger |
| Corporate cards | Yes, separate module | Yes, core product | Spend and Expense, $0 | No |
| Output | Sync to NetSuite, Intacct, QBO, QBD, Business Central | QuickBooks Online and Xero on Free; NetSuite and Sage Intacct on Plus | QuickBooks and Xero sync from Team | Excel and CSV on every plan; QuickBooks Online on Plus; JSON through the API on Pro |
| Buy without a sales call | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
When Airbase is still the right choice
A capture tool does not replace a spend platform in these cases. If one of them describes you, keep Airbase and negotiate the renewal instead of switching.
You already run payroll on Paylocity
Approval chains built from the live employee record, and one vendor for payroll and spend, are the main reasons the combined platform exists.
Cards, expenses and bills in one place
If employees spend on company cards and the AP team pays vendors, one policy engine across both is worth paying for.
International vendors and PO controls
Paying in 145+ currencies and matching every bill to a PO before payment are platform jobs. A capture tool reads documents; it does not move money.
Airbase competitors grouped by the job they do
Airbase covered several jobs, so its competitors come from several categories. Decide which job you are replacing first.
Cards plus bill pay
Ramp, Brex, Spendesk
The closest like-for-like replacements. Ramp has a $0 plan with AI invoice capture and bill pay; Brex and Spendesk quote or tier by features. Choose these if corporate cards are the center of your spend. If global payouts matter too, see Ramp vs Tipalti.
Accounts payable platforms
BILL, Stampli, Tipalti, AvidXchange
Capture, approvals and payments without the card program. BILL and Tipalti publish starting prices; Stampli and AvidXchange quote.
Bill.com competitors · Stampli alternative · Tipalti alternative
Procurement first
Procurify, Precoro, Coupa
If the reason you bought Airbase was guided procurement and purchase requests, these tools start there. Coupa is the enterprise end, listed from $50k a year on AWS.
Procurify alternative and pricing · Coupa alternative and pricing
Invoice capture only
PayablesAgent, Dext, Nanonets
Read invoices into data and leave approvals and payments where they already happen. PayablesAgent is $49 to $499 a month with line items on every plan.
How to test an Airbase alternative before renewal
1
Export a month of bills
Pull last month's vendor invoices as PDFs, including the ugly scans and the long multi-page ones.
2
Run them through capture
Upload the batch and check vendor, totals, tax and line items against the paper.
3
Import into your ledger
Push the export into QuickBooks Online, or the CSV or API output into NetSuite or Sage Intacct, and approve there.
4
Compare against the quote
If the month went through cleanly, the AP module line in your renewal is what you are paying for everything else.
Questions buyers ask about Airbase
How much does Airbase cost?
Airbase does not publish prices. Since Paylocity bought it, Airbase is sold inside Paylocity for Finance, and every price comes from a quote after a demo. The quote form asks for your employee count, and you pick which finance modules to buy: AP automation, expense management, corporate cards, guided procurement or headcount planning.
Is Airbase still a company?
Airbase is now a Paylocity company. Paylocity completed the acquisition on October 1, 2024, and the product is sold as Airbase by Paylocity inside Paylocity for Finance. Existing Airbase clients keep their contacts, and airbase.com points new buyers to Paylocity.
What are the alternatives to Airbase?
For a full spend platform with cards and bill pay, Ramp and Brex are the closest Airbase alternatives. For accounts payable only, look at BILL, Stampli and Tipalti. If you just need vendor invoices read into QuickBooks or your ERP, an invoice capture tool such as PayablesAgent costs $49 to $499 a month.
Do I need Paylocity payroll to use Airbase?
Paylocity says its HR, Finance and IT modules can be implemented one at a time, so the finance tools are sold on their own. The pitch, though, is one platform for payroll and non-payroll spend, and the employee record drives approval routing. Ask the rep to quote the finance module without HCM so you can compare.
Is there a cheaper alternative to Airbase for invoice processing?
Yes, if approvals and payments already happen in QuickBooks, NetSuite or your bank. PayablesAgent reads vendor invoices to the line item for $49 a month (2,500 pages), $149 a month (10,000 pages, 3 seats, QuickBooks Online export) or $499 a month with API access, billed monthly.
Get vendor invoices read without a platform quote
Line items on every plan. Excel and CSV exports, QuickBooks Online on Plus, API on Pro. Monthly billing, no demo required.