Airbase vs Stampli: one approval chain against invoice-level depth

Stampli's own alternatives material frames Airbase accurately: cards and procurement come with AP rather than in a higher package, with the contract and roadmap sitting with an HR and payroll vendor. That is the trade in one sentence. Airbase gives you breadth under one approval chain; Stampli gives you depth on the document that is stuck.

Depth here means something specific. Stampli captures invoices, codes them to ERP fields, matches them to POs and routes approvals, and keeps every question on the invoice itself rather than in email. Its AP package includes unlimited entities, locations and vendors. For a team whose week disappears into approval chasing, that is a different product category from spend management.

Airbase is spend management software: bill pay, corporate cards, reimbursements and guided procurement under one approval workflow, drawing on the Paylocity employee record. Stampli is AP automation software: invoice capture, AI coding to ERP fields, PO matching and approval routing, with every question kept on the invoice itself. 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 Stampli on the list if this is you: mid-sized AP teams whose problem is approvals and coding rather than payouts. Drop it if this is closer: a team whose spend is mostly international, or one that needs a price before the first call. Its own limitation is that no published price and no trial, and the features that round it into a spend platform sit in the higher package.

Neither publishes a price and neither lists a trial, which makes this the least transparent pair in the AP cluster. If that is a problem, both vendors' own alternatives material points at the same place: BILL publishes per-user prices, Ramp and Brex publish plans, and Yooz offers a 15-day trial with volume-based pricing.

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.

Both the pricing and trial rows are empty for both products, which is unusual even for this category. What the table can tell you is deployment and ERP coverage, and ERP coverage is where Stampli's claim is strongest.

Neither vendor publishes a price, so the only honest comparison is of what drives each quote. There are no dollar figures to put side by side below, and that is the finding rather than a gap in the research: both vendors' own pages were read on 25 September 2026 and neither carries a price.

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.

Stampli publishes no prices. Its pricing page lists two packages, Stampli for Accounts Payable and Stampli Beyond Accounts Payable, behind a quote request. Trial: No free trial is listed on the pricing page.

Airbase is quoted through Paylocity, with the value concentrated in customers who also run Paylocity HR. Stampli lists two packages, both quoted, with the split mattering more than the number: procurement, Stampli Direct Pay, the Stampli Credit Card and advanced vendor management sit in Stampli Beyond Accounts Payable rather than the AP package.

That split is the thing to price. If you want Stampli to cover cards and procurement as well as invoices, you are buying the higher package, and at that point the bundled comparison with Airbase becomes genuine rather than theoretical. Ask both for the full-scope number and model the spend side with the expense management savings calculator.

What moves the Airbase number: quoted through Paylocity, with the value concentrated in customers who also run Paylocity HR. For Stampli: semi-automated 2- and 3-way matching is included but full matching automation by its Cognitive AI is listed on top, and procurement, Stampli Direct Pay, the Stampli Credit Card and advanced vendor management come with Stampli Beyond Accounts Payable rather than the AP package. 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 Stampli: the AP package includes unlimited entities, locations and vendors, so entity count is not the thing that breaks the scope. That is the difference that shows up in the project plan rather than in the demo.

Stampli's integration claim is the one to test: pre-built integrations with more than 70 ERPs, including on-premises systems. On-premises connectors are where AP implementations slip, so ask for a live demonstration on your ERP version rather than a logo slide. Airbase's integration conversation runs through Paylocity and covers your HR system as much as your ledger.

After launch the adoption risk sits in different places. Stampli's value lands with approvers outside finance, so their behaviour decides whether it works. Airbase's lands with anyone who spends money, and its approval authority derives from the Paylocity employee record, which is a control design decision worth settling explicitly. The BILL and Stampli comparison covers the published-price alternative to both.

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 invoice approval matrix makes those answers concrete instead of aspirational.