Airbase vs BILL: a bundled spend tool against a published AP price

Airbase changed hands and that belongs at the top of any comparison. It is now part of Paylocity and sold as Paylocity for Finance; airbase.com/pricing redirects to Paylocity's pricing page. Approvals, spend policies and headcount planning draw on the Paylocity employee record, which is a genuine advantage with Paylocity HR and much less of one without it.

BILL is the opposite kind of purchase: narrow, published and self-serve. Essentials $49, Team $65, Corporate $89 per user per month, Enterprise quoted, Spend & Expense with no subscription fee, and a free trial in most cases. Airbase's own alternatives material concedes the gap, noting that Ramp and Brex publish free plans and BILL publishes per-user prices.

Airbase is spend management software: bill pay, corporate cards, reimbursements and guided procurement under one approval workflow, drawing on the Paylocity employee record. BILL is AP and AR automation software: AP, AR invoicing and Spend & Expense cards, with purchase requests, POs and 2-way matching on the $89 Corporate plan. That overlap is real, which is why the two end up on the same shortlist, but the design assumptions underneath differ.

Keep Airbase on the list if this is you: domestic teams, especially Paylocity HR customers, that want spend in one approval workflow. Drop it if this is closer: a company paying many suppliers abroad in local currency. The limitation worth naming up front is that less of the benefit without Paylocity HR, and it is less suited to large international supplier bases paid in many currencies.

Keep BILL on the list if this is you: small businesses paying mostly US vendors from QuickBooks or Xero. Drop it if this is closer: high invoice volumes across entities, or a large international supplier base. Its own limitation is that seat cost climbs with every approver, Essentials only moves CSV files, and it is less suited to multi-entity groups with 3-way matching.

The bundling argument is real but conditional. Cards, expenses and procurement in the same approval chain removes reconciliation work between three tools. BILL does offer cards through Spend & Expense at no subscription fee, so the gap is narrower than it looks; what BILL does not do is tie approval authority to an HR system of record.

The table below carries the facts you can check without a sales call: pricing model, deployment, platform support and trial access. Read it before the demos, then use the sections underneath for the parts that depend on your own environment.

BILL publishes three per-user plans and Airbase publishes nothing, so the pricing row only tells you half the story. Trial access splits the same way: BILL offers one in most cases, Airbase offers product tours instead.

BILL publishes its prices and Airbase does not, which changes how you build the business case for each. Every figure below comes from the vendor's own pricing page, read on 25 September 2026. Nothing here is an estimate, a market benchmark or a range from a third party.

Airbase is now part of Paylocity and publishes no prices; airbase.com/pricing redirects to Paylocity's pricing page and the product is sold as Paylocity for Finance. Trial: No free trial is listed; airbase.com offers interactive product tours instead.

BILL publishes per-user prices: Essentials $49, Team $65 and Corporate $89 per user per month, with Enterprise quoted. Spend & Expense carries no subscription fee. Payment fees sit on top, including $0.59 per ACH payment, $1.99 per mailed check and $19.99 per international USD wire. Trial: A free trial is available in most cases, per BILL's pricing FAQ.

BILL's cost is fully published and worth building out before any call: subscription at $49, $65 or $89 per user per month, payment fees at $0.59 per ACH, $1.99 per mailed check and $19.99 per international USD wire, plus the plan gates. Essentials only moves CSV files; two-way QuickBooks and Xero sync starts on Team at $65; purchase requests, POs and 2-way matching start on Corporate.

Airbase is quoted through Paylocity. Because the value concentrates in Paylocity HR customers, ask for the price both standalone and alongside an HR contract, and ask what happens at renewal if you later leave Paylocity HR. Then model the bundled case with the expense management savings calculator, since the saving has to come from card and expense work rather than from AP alone.

What moves the Airbase number: quoted through Paylocity, with the value concentrated in customers who also run Paylocity HR. For BILL: every approver is a paid seat on Essentials and Team, discounted approver-only users start on Corporate, two-way sync with QuickBooks and Xero starts on Team at $65, and payment fees are charged per transaction. Ask both vendors to put the first-year total in writing, license plus services plus any module you would need in year two, and model it yourself with the expense management savings calculator before the renewal conversation rather than after it.

Rollout on Airbase: contracts and the roadmap now sit with Paylocity, an HR and payroll company; existing Airbase customers keep their current contacts per the notice on airbase.com. On BILL: self-serve setup with no implementation project. That is the difference that shows up in the project plan rather than in the demo.

BILL is self-serve with no implementation project, which for a small finance team is the single biggest practical difference in this comparison. Airbase arrives through a Paylocity relationship, so the integration conversation covers your HR system as well as your general ledger.

The control question is genuinely interesting here and nobody raises it in demos. If approval authority derives from the Paylocity employee record, a change in HR data changes who can approve spend. That can be exactly right or a segregation-of-duties problem depending on how your HR data is maintained. Settle it before signature. For the international AP version of this question, see the Tipalti and BILL comparison.

Plan the first close or first cycle after go-live before you sign. Write down who owns configuration changes, who answers an auditor's question about the records, and what happens to your data if you leave. Starting from an AP automation RFP template makes those answers concrete instead of aspirational.