Melio: invoicing software platform

Melio publishes five plans and a full transaction fee table: Go at $0, Core at $25/mo, Boost at $55/mo, Unlimited at $80/mo and invite-only Platinum, checked 16 October 2026. Buy it if bill pay is the problem and invoicing is a bonus, because accounts receivable is included free on every plan including Go.

Rajat GuptaEditorial LeadReviewed 16 October 2026Pricing checked 16 October 2026 against the Melio pricing page

Melio in brief

Melio publishes five plans and a full transaction fee table: Go at $0, Core at $25/mo, Boost at $55/mo, Unlimited at $80/mo and invite-only Platinum, checked 16 October 2026.

Price: $0 free forever (Go, one user) · Flat monthly subscription plus published transaction fees
Best for: Small and midsize businesses automating bill pay, with invoicing included
Watch out for: You give up depth on the invoicing side, because that is not what this product is.

The short answer

Buy Melio if you pay more bills than you send invoices and you want both on one account: the accounts receivable side, including branded invoices and payment links, is included on every plan including free Go. Your tier is decided by how many ACH payments you make each month, 5 on Go, 20 on Core, 50 on Boost and uncapped on Unlimited at $80/mo.

Skip it if invoicing is the whole job, because you would be buying an accounts payable platform for its free side feature and paying for ACH allowances you do not need. Skip it if your vendors expect paper or same-day settlement, since an overnight check is $50 and a wire is $10 on top of the subscription. And note that Melio's own footer links to Xero acquisition FAQs, so ownership may be changing.

Where Melio fits

Melio is accounts payable software that happens to include invoicing, and reading it the other way round leads to the wrong decision. The products it lists are accounts payable, accounts receivable and expense management, and the capabilities underneath them are almost all about money going out: pay by card, ACH bank transfers, international payments, fast payments, pay over time, W-9 and 1099 handling, approval workflows, bill capture and a vendor network. The receivable side is real but short: create invoices, get paid by card or bank, create payment links, and on the paid tiers create branded invoices.

The fit is strongest for a small or midsize business whose bill pay has outgrown a bank portal but whose ledger is QuickBooks or Xero rather than an ERP. Melio advertises two-way automatic sync with QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, Xero and NetSuite, and the sync tier matters: Go is limited to a small number of QuickBooks and Xero syncs, unlimited QuickBooks Online and Xero sync starts at Core, QuickBooks Desktop sync starts at Boost, and NetSuite sync is Unlimited only. If your accounting system is the reason you are shopping, that ladder decides your plan before any feature does.

What Melio does that a bank does not is give you choice over the rail and the speed on each individual payment. The published fee table prices a standard ACH transfer, a check, a fast check, an overnight check, an instant bank transfer, a same-day ACH transfer, a wire and a same-day wire separately, and it also lets you pay any bill by card even where the vendor does not accept cards, at 2.9%. That last one is a working capital tool rather than a payment method: it buys you your card's billing cycle at a known cost.

Controls are where the paid tiers earn their keep. Core adds custom approval workflows that can be vendor-based or gradual, batch payments, W-9 collection with TIN validation and 1099 automation through Tax1099. Boost adds advanced user roles, vendor credits on QuickBooks Online and premium phone support. Unlimited adds unlimited seats and dedicated onboarding. For a finance team of three or four, the seat arithmetic is the thing to notice: Core and Boost charge $10/mo per additional user on monthly billing, so a four-person team on Boost at $55/mo can cost more than Unlimited at $80/mo with unlimited seats included.

Two caveats about what you are buying. Melio's pricing page footer links to Xero Acquiring Melio FAQs, so ownership of the product may be changing, and nothing on the pricing page itself ties that to a price change: it is a question to ask rather than a fact to act on. And the published rate card covers the whole accounts payable and accounts receivable platform, which is wider than the invoicing problem this page sits against, so if you are comparing it against a pure invoicing tool you are comparing different things.

Melio pricing

Melio publishes more than almost anyone in this category: five plans, a seat price, and a transaction fee table covering every rail and speed. Read on 16 October 2026, Go is $0 free forever for one user, Core is $25/mo or $20/mo billed annually, Boost is $55/mo or $44/mo annually, Unlimited is $80/mo or $64/mo annually, and Platinum is invite-only custom pricing. Each paid plan is also advertised at $0 for the first 90 days, which is an introductory offer rather than a price. Subscription and transaction fees are separate bills, and for most buyers the transaction side is the one worth modelling first.

What Melio publishes

Go: $0 free forever (No subscription fee, limited to one user)5 free ACH payments a month then $0.50 per payment, pay by ACH, wire or check, pay any bill by card, AI bill capture, a dedicated bills inbox, international payments, expense management, free accounts receivable and invoicing including payment links, and a 6-month free Xero subscription.
Core: $25/mo, or $20/mo billed annually (Monthly or annual, plus $10/mo per additional user monthly or $8/mo annually)20 free ACH payments a month, unlimited QuickBooks Online and Xero sync, batch payments, custom approval workflows, W-9 collection with TIN validation, 1099 automation, AI assistant, priority chat support and branded invoice creation.
Boost: $55/mo, or $44/mo billed annually (Monthly or annual, plus $10/mo per additional user monthly or $8/mo annually)50 free ACH payments a month, everything in Core, advanced user roles, QuickBooks Desktop sync, vendor credits on QuickBooks Online and premium phone support.
Unlimited: $80/mo, or $64/mo billed annually (Monthly or annual, unlimited users included)Unlimited free ACH payments, unlimited user seats at no extra cost, everything in Boost, NetSuite sync, premium phone support and dedicated onboarding.
Platinum: Custom pricing (Invite-only, by contract with sales)For businesses processing over $300K/month in credit card payments. Custom transaction fees and preferred card fees, priority processing and faster settlement, white-glove account management for eligible customers, discounted exchange rates, custom integrations and API access.

Prices as published on the Melio pricing page and checked on 16 October 2026. Each paid plan shows two figures, the monthly rate of $25, $55 and $80 and the annual rate of $20, $44 and $64 per month billed annually, and each is separately advertised as $0 for the first 90 days. Accounts receivable and invoicing are included on every plan, including free Go.

Only Platinum is quoted. For everyone else these four things decide the bill, and the first two matter more than the plan price.

Your monthly count of ACH payments, which is the real tier driver. The free allowance is 5 on Go, 20 on Core and 50 on Boost, with no cap on Unlimited, and every ACH payment above the allowance costs $0.50. A business paying a few hundred bills a month can reach the Unlimited subscription in overage alone, so count your bills before you read the feature lists.
The rails and speeds your vendors accept, which is where the published fee table does its work. An ACH transfer inside the allowance costs nothing, a check is $1.5, a fast check is $20, an overnight check is $50, a wire is $10, and an instant bank transfer or same-day ACH is 1% capped at $75. Paying a bill by card is 2.9%. Price a representative month from your real payment mix rather than from the subscription.
Seats, which are charged on the two middle plans only. Core and Boost both add $10/mo per additional user on monthly billing or $8/mo per additional user billed annually, Unlimited includes unlimited users, and Go is capped at a single user. That makes the choice between Boost and Unlimited an arithmetic question rather than a feature one once you have four or more people in the tool.
Cross-border volume and card volume, which are the two places a negotiation exists. International payments start at a $20 flat fee by ACH in USD, or 1% with a $30 minimum and a $95 maximum for fast USD, and card-funded global payments are 2.9% plus $20. Melio also publishes a tiered discount on foreign-currency card payments, from 2.90% down to 2.70% above a $1 minimum transfer, 2.40% above $50,000 and 1.90% above $100,000. Platinum is reserved for businesses processing over $300K/month by card.

What costs extra

Additional users on Core and Boost: $10/mo per user monthly, or $8/mo per user billed annually. Unlimited includes unlimited users.
ACH payments above the monthly free allowance: $0.50 per payment.
Delivery methods: check $1.5, fast check $20, overnight check $50, wire transfer $10, instant bank transfer or same-day ACH 1% capped at $75, same-day wire 1% with a $10 minimum and $75 maximum.
Paying a bill by credit or debit card: 2.9%, plus the relevant delivery fee for the faster payout methods.
International payments: $20 flat fee by ACH in USD, or 1% with a $30 minimum and $95 maximum for fast USD. Card-funded global payments are 2.9% plus $20.
On the receiving side, bank transfers in are free and card payments in cost 2.9%, a fee that can be covered by you or passed to your customer.
A 6-month free Xero subscription is listed on every plan, including Go.

Implementation and commercial terms

The rows below are what the Melio pricing page and its FAQ confirmed on 16 October 2026. The 90-day offer and the ownership question are the two rows most likely to affect a decision.

Published price: Yes, four plans plus a full transaction fee table. Platinum is invite-only.
Billing basis: Flat monthly fee, monthly or annual, with seats charged on Core and Boost
Introductory offer: $0 for the first 90 days on each paid plan, with unlimited free ACH payments during it
What happens after 90 days: An account that has not subscribed converts automatically to the limited free Go plan
Data on downgrade: Melio says data from premium features is deleted if you stay on Go
Implementation fee: None published. Unlimited lists dedicated onboarding, Platinum lists white-glove account management
Free trial: No conventional trial. The 90-day offer serves that purpose, with no credit card needed
Ownership: The pricing page footer links to Xero acquisition FAQs; nothing on the page ties that to a price change

Budget Melio as a subscription plus a payment run. Take your real monthly bill count against the 5, 20 and 50 ACH allowances, add $0.50 for each payment above whichever one applies, add $10/mo for each extra user if you land on Core or Boost, then price a representative month of checks, wires and card-funded bills from the published fee table. Compare that total against Unlimited at $80/mo with unlimited ACH and unlimited seats, because for a mid-sized payables operation the headline-expensive plan is frequently the cheapest outcome. Then diarise the end of the 90-day offer, because an account that does not subscribe drops to Go and loses premium-feature data.

Source: the Melio pricing page, checked 16 October 2026. Confirm current prices with the vendor before you budget.

What Melio gives up

You give up depth on the invoicing side, because that is not what this product is. Accounts receivable is included on every plan and it covers the basics well: create and send invoices, track payments on desktop or mobile, sync to your accounting software, get paid by card or bank, and share a payment link. Branded invoices arrive at Core. What you will not find is the proposal, contract, scheduling and client-portal layer that HoneyBook and Bonsai build their products around, or the double-entry accounting FreshBooks includes. If invoicing is the acute problem, Melio is a free bonus rather than an answer.

The free Go plan is narrower than free usually means here. It allows one user and 5 free ACH payments a month with $0.50 per payment after that, and the accounting sync is limited rather than unlimited. More importantly, Melio states that if you stay on Go at the end of the 90-day offer you lose access to premium features and any data from those features is deleted. That is an unusual and consequential term: a business that trials approval workflows for three months and then declines to subscribe does not simply lose the feature, it loses the records.

Delivery fees can dominate the bill in a way the subscription never will, and they are driven by what your vendors want rather than by what you choose. An overnight check at $50 and a fast check at $20 are the clearest examples, and a wire at $10 is cheap individually but adds up across a payables run. Vendor payment preferences take quarters to shift, so if your suppliers expect paper or same-day settlement today, the fee table is your real price list and the plan price is a rounding error next to it.

Paying bills by card is a facility rather than a saving. At 2.9%, funding a bill with a credit card to hold onto cash costs about the same as a merchant pays to accept one, plus the delivery fee for anything faster than standard: 2.9% plus $20 for a fast check, 2.9% plus $50 for overnight. Melio prices this honestly and does not oversell it, but the arithmetic only works if the cash you keep is worth more than the fee, and for many businesses the cheaper lever is negotiating terms with the vendor.

The ownership question is genuinely unresolved and worth asking about. Melio's own pricing page footer links to FAQs about Xero acquiring Melio, and Melio already bundles a 6-month free Xero subscription into every plan. Nothing on the pricing page connects that to a change in price, feature set or support model, and it would be wrong to speculate. What is reasonable is to ask, before signing an annual term, what happens to your contract and your published rates if the product changes hands, and to prefer monthly billing until you have an answer.

How Melio compares

Melio sits between two groups that price it differently. Bill pay platforms charge per user and then per payment; invoicing and accounting tools charge per account and meter something else entirely. Melio is unusual in charging a flat subscription with a free seat allowance only at the top, then publishing every transaction fee. Figures below come from each vendor's own pricing page, checked on 16 October 2026, except BILL's, which were checked on 25 September 2026.

Tool	Best for	Price	Where it breaks
Melio	Small and midsize businesses paying bills on QuickBooks or Xero, with invoicing included free	$0 Go, then $25/mo, $55/mo or $80/mo	ACH allowances of 5, 20 and 50, then $0.50 per payment, and premium-feature data is deleted on a downgrade to Go
BILL	AP and AR teams on QuickBooks or Xero wanting approval policies per user	$49, $65 or $89 per user/month	Every approver costs a full seat below the Corporate tier
QuickBooks	Businesses that want bill pay inside the ledger itself	Free at $0/mo, then $38, $85, $140 or $340 per month	Seat caps per tier with no per-user top-up, so a sixth user is a tier jump
Wave	Freelancers who only need to send invoices and get paid	$0 Starter, $19 USD/month or $190 USD/year Pro	No bill pay, no approval workflows and no vendor payment rails

What to test in a Melio trial

Melio does not run a conventional trial. Instead each paid plan shows $0 for the first 90 days with unlimited free ACH payments and advanced automations and no credit card needed, and its FAQ says an account that has not subscribed by the end converts automatically to the limited free Go plan. Ninety days is long enough to run a real quarter, so use it that way, and keep the conversion date in front of you throughout.

Count your payables for one real month before you configure anything. Separate ACH from checks, wires and card-funded bills, then price that month at the published fees: $0.50 per ACH above your allowance, $1.5 per check, $20 fast, $50 overnight, $10 per wire, 2.9% per card-funded bill. That single table tells you which plan you are on and whether Melio is cheaper than your bank.
Connect your real accounting system, not a sample company, and check the sync tier you need. Unlimited QuickBooks Online and Xero sync starts at Core, QuickBooks Desktop sync at Boost and NetSuite sync at Unlimited. Push bills and payments through and inspect the ledger entries yourself, because the sync is the whole reason to use this instead of a bank portal.
Build your most awkward approval path, not your simplest. Custom approval workflows on Core can be vendor-based or gradual, and advanced user roles are a Boost feature. Model a case with a threshold, a stand-in approver and someone who is both requester and approver, and see whether it can be expressed without a workaround.
Price seats both ways while the offer is running. Core and Boost charge $10/mo per additional user monthly, or $8/mo annually, and Unlimited includes unlimited users. Put every person who needs access into the model and compare Boost at $55/mo plus seats against Unlimited at $80/mo flat before you pick, because the answer often inverts the obvious choice.
Settle the two end-of-period risks in writing. Diarise the end of the 90 days and confirm what you will be charged on conversion, remembering that an un-subscribed account drops to Go and that Melio says premium-feature data is deleted if you stay there. In the same conversation, ask what happens to your contract and your published rates given the Xero acquisition FAQs linked from the pricing page footer.

Frequently asked questions about Melio

What does Melio cost per month?

Checked on 16 October 2026, Go is $0 free forever for one user, Core is $25/mo or $20/mo billed annually, Boost is $55/mo or $44/mo annually, and Unlimited is $80/mo or $64/mo annually. Platinum is invite-only custom pricing. Transaction fees are charged separately from the subscription.

Is the Melio free plan genuinely free?

The Go plan is, with limits. Melio says Go has no subscription fees and includes the main features needed to pay and get paid online, including invoicing. It is capped at one user and 5 free ACH payments a month, with $0.50 charged per ACH payment after that.

Does Melio charge a fee per payment?

Yes, by method. Per the fee table on 16 October 2026: ACH inside your allowance is free and $0.50 after it, a check is $1.5, a fast check $20, an overnight check $50, a wire $10, and instant bank transfer or same-day ACH 1% capped at $75. Paying by card costs 2.9%.

Does Melio include invoicing and getting paid?

Yes, on every plan including free Go. Melio's accounts receivable tools cover creating and sending invoices, tracking payments, syncing to your accounting software, and payment links. Bank transfers in are free and card payments in cost 2.9%, a fee you can pass to your customer. Branded invoices start at Core.

Why did Xero acquire Melio?

Melio's pricing page does not say, and nothing verified here explains the rationale. What the page does show, read on 16 October 2026, is a footer link to Xero Acquiring Melio FAQs and a 6-month free Xero subscription on every plan. Ask what happens to your contract and rates before committing to an annual term.

Does Melio charge per user?

On the two middle plans. Core and Boost add $10/mo per additional user on monthly billing, or $8/mo per additional user billed annually. Go is limited to one user and Unlimited includes unlimited seats, so a four-person team is often cheaper on Unlimited at $80/mo than on Boost at $55/mo plus seats.

What accounting systems does Melio sync with?

QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, Xero and NetSuite, with a two-way automatic sync. The tier matters: unlimited QuickBooks Online and Xero sync starts at Core at $25/mo, QuickBooks Desktop sync at Boost, and NetSuite sync only on Unlimited. Go is limited to a small number of QuickBooks and Xero syncs.

What happens at the end of Melio's 90-day offer?

Each paid plan is $0 for the first 90 days. Melio's FAQ says an account that has not subscribed by the end of the period converts automatically to the limited free Go plan, and that if you stay on Go you lose access to premium features and any data from those features is deleted.

Can Melio control who approves a payment?

Yes, from the Core tier at $25/mo. Core adds custom approval workflows that can be vendor-based or gradual, plus W-9 collection with TIN validation and 1099 automation. Boost adds advanced user roles. The free Go plan has one user, so it offers no separation of duties at all.

Can I use Melio without a business?

Melio is sold as business software: its own framing is paying vendors, contractors and business bills, and its onboarding, W-9 collection and 1099 automation all assume a business payer. Nothing on the pricing page addresses personal use, so treat it as a business tool and ask Melio directly about anything else.