Ramp vs. Expensify: A Comparison Of Features, Pricing, And More

Ramp was founded in 2019 with an aim to make it easy for businesses to manage their spend, enjoy simple cashback rewards, and cut costs with real-time insights on wasteful spend. Apart from being a travel and expense platform, Ramp’s products include procurement, AP automation, bill payment, and corporate cards.

What does Expensify do?

Established in 2008 as an expense reporting concept, Expensify later rolled out expense management features, such as receipt scanning, bill payment, corporate cards, and invoicing.

In 2023, the company introduced custom reporting, a chat function for accountants, and expanded its reimbursement capabilities.

Ramp vs Expensify: A comparison of features.

How does Ramp differ from Expensify?

As you can see from the table above, Ramp and Expensify share many of the same features. Here’s a list of areas where the two platforms differ:

• Procurement tools: Unlike Expensify, Ramp provides procurement solutions, such as the ability to build custom intake forms, Price Intelligence, PO creation, and PO matching.
• Multi-entity support: Ramp’s multi-entity support features include the ability to link each card with a single entity, map locations to entities, and make payments from local entities, features that are not available with Expensify.
• Global reimbursement: Ramp supports local issuing and debiting in 33 countries and reimbursement in 40 currencies, while Expensify supports global reimbursements to 190+ countries.
• Free tools: Unlike Expensify, Ramp offers some free tools such as an expense policy template, an invoice generator, an expense categorization tool, and a charge finder.

Key features: Ramp.

The following are Ramp’s core capabilities.

Accounting automation.

AI-powered invoice capturing

Ramp AI extracts invoice details, suggests coding and accounting rules, and identifies duplicate invoices. The system matches invoices to POs while routing expenses to approvers based on the defined conditions. Ramp also facilitates transaction amortization through its NetSuite integration. After approval, bills can be paid via ACH, check, card, and international wire transfer in both USD and foreign currencies. With Ramp Flex, Ramp’s financing option, businesses can choose to pay vendors over 30, 60, or 90 days.

Expense.

Ramp collects and matches receipts with transactions

Ramp users can upload receipts via the mobile app or SMS while the system collects receipts from Lyft and Amazon and generates expense reports. Admins can set custom budgets and design custom approval workflows to stay on top of expenses. They can also generate unlimited physical and virtual cards with spend controls while issuing cards in 33 countries.

Ramp uses AI to flag out-of-policy expenses, auto-locks cards for employees who make non-compliant purchases, and sends reminders for requesting repayments and missing items. Reimbursements can be made in 70 countries and 40 currencies.

Travel.

Admins can set custom travel approval flows

Users can find the best deals on flights and hotels via Priceline, which Ramp partners with. Admins can define custom approval flows based on GL code, team, and amount. Flexible spend controls can be set based on current market rates, while Ramp checks bookings for compliance and categorizes expenses accordingly.

Procurement.

Detailed insights on every purchase

Ramp’s procurement features offer a centralized platform for collaboration and the creation of custom intake forms that adapt to user responses. Users can track vendor details, receive contract renewal reminders, and personalize data tracking with custom fields. Seat Intelligence connects to Okta to monitor software usage trends, while Price Intelligence analyzes past transactions to provide pricing benchmarks.

Ironclad integration allows legal teams to manage contract reviews while managers can approve requests directly in Slack or Microsoft Teams. Ramp also offers a consolidated view of purchase orders and requests, coding line items and syncing them to accounting software.

Ramp integrations.

Ramp offers no-code integrations with major ERPs, banks, and HRIS software.

Accounting software:

• Xero
• Sage Intacct
• NetSuite
• QuickBooks

Security/cloud computing:

• Okta
• Google Suite
• Microsoft Azure

Banking:

• Wells Fargo
• US Bank
• Citibank
• Bank of America

Productivity/HRIS:

• Gmail
• Slack
• Gusto
• ADP Workforce Now

Ramp pricing.

Ramp pros.

• Instant card locking: Ramp supports instant card locking for out-of-policy expenses.
• AI-powered expense management: Ramp uses AI to capture invoices and receipts, auto-populate fields, and flag out-of-policy expenses.
• Price Intelligence: Price Intelligence helps users negotiate better by surfacing pricing data based on past transactions.

Ramp cons.

• Basic AP workflows: Ramp’s AP workflows are not mature enough to support businesses with complex processes.
• No support for batch invoice processing: The software does not batch invoices to allow payments in one go.
• Lacks the ability to tag expense reports: Users can’t tag expense reports that allow for seamless categorization of expenses.

Key features: Expensify.

Here’s a closer look at Expensify’s features.

Expense management.

Expensify offers three types of approval workflows

SmartScan captures receipt details using OCR technology and adds it automatically to relevant expense reports. Users can link their credit card to Expensify and the platform imports card expenses and auto-matches them with scanned receipts. There are three types of approval workflows that can be set up — Submit and Close (no approval needed), Submit and Approve (single approver), and Advanced Approval (multiple layers of approval). Approvals can be set based on amounts, specific categories, and tags. Expensify 2-way syncs transactions with major accounting software, and codes and categorizes expenses for faster month-end closing.

Corporate card.

Admins can use Smart Limits to control unapproved spend

Admins can issue physical and virtual corporate cards and use Smart Limits to specify the amount of unapproved spend at a time. While modifying the spend limits on Expensify Visa Commercial Card, admins have the option of approving unapproved expenses to ensure employees can continue spending when necessary. With every swipe, users can get 1% cash back and can earn 2% back by spending over $250k per month.

Travel.

Expensify enables travel booking and trip collaboration

Expensify integrates with TravelPerk and Booking.com to help companies book business travel. Admins can set travel policies and restrictions for the flight length, price, types of hotels, and the timeframe for booking a trip while creating rules for approving out-of-policy trips. Trip-related discussions and collaborations can be managed on New Expensify, the chat-first version of Expensify.

Payments.

Payments are managed by connecting a business bank account

ACH payments are enabled once the vendor and reimburser connect their respective U.S. bank accounts with Expensify. Indirect reimbursements and bill payments can be made using other payment methods, such as check, cash, credit card, Venmo, and PayPal. Expensify’s paid plan users can make global reimbursements to 190+ countries while the platform supports withdrawals from 24 countries in USD, CAD, EUR, AUD, and GBP. When automatic payments are set up, Expensify automates payments for specified invoices and amounts.

Expensify integrations.

Expensify integrates with various accounting systems, HRIS, and other third-party applications.

Accounting and finance:

• QuickBooks
• Sage Intacct
• NetSuite
•  Xero
• Certinia

Banking:

• ANZ

HR:

• ADP
• Gusto
• Workday
• Deel

Receipt and travel:

• Uber
• Lyft
• Grab
• Delta
• Egencia
• Kayak Business

Expensify pricing.

Expensify pros.

• Seamless collaboration: New Expensify enables discussions on expenses, travel, and invoices.
• Budgeting and custom reporting: A dashboard offers visual insights into spend data while budgeting tools help users control expenses.
• Streamlined reimbursements: Supports global reimbursements and next-day payments.
• User-friendly interface: Easy-to-navigate platform that enhances user experience.

Expensify cons.

Lacks advanced procure-to-pay capabilities: Expensify does not offer P2P features, including advanced AP automation, native PO support, PO matching, and multi-subsidiary support.
Inaccurate receipt scanning: Expensify’s SmartScan feature has received negative feedback for being slow and inaccurate.
Poor support: Expensify users often report long wait times for customer support.
High cost: Most advanced features are available only in the higher priced plan, making it unsuitable for small businesses.

Which is better: Ramp or Expensify?

There’s no easy way to answer this question. If your business has a global presence and is looking to streamline the procurement processes, Ramp would be a better choice. In addition to procurement tools, such as intake forms, Price Intelligence, and PO creation, Ramp has features that support multi-entity management.

If price is the primary consideration, Ramp scores over Expensify by offering a free plan.

Expensify is a better choice if you’re looking for a lightweight platform to manage reimbursements, invoicing, and bill payments. With its chat app built into the upgraded New Expensify, the platform also makes it easy to collaborate on travel, expenses, and payments.

Can these two systems be used together?

No. Expensify doesn’t integrate with Ramp and many of their features overlap, leading to unnecessary costs for redundant capabilities.

To get the best return on your investment, choose an advanced platform that has all the features that Ramp and Expensify offer, and more.

Why chose Airbase over Expensify?

Users can add tags and split expenses across categories

Unlike Ramp and Expensify, which were primarily built for SMBs, Airbase is built for accounting and procurement teams in mid-market and enterprise companies. Compared to the nascent bill payment, approval flows, and AP automation capabilities of Ramp and Expensify, Airbase automates the entire lifecycle of a purchase and stands out as the only true procure, pay, close solution.

Plus, Airbase’s modules Guided Procurement, AP Automation, Expense Management, and Corporate Cards can be bought individually, making it the most cost-effective P2P software.

The table below shows all the areas where Airbase wins over Ramp and Expensify:

See how Airbase represents the next generation of P2P solutions — book a demo with us!