Navan: expense management software platform

Navan gives the travel away. Checked 16 October 2026, Navan Business is free for companies up to 300 employees, with no cap on trips booked. The expense side is free for the first 5 monthly expensing users and then $15 per user per month, a rate printed only in the pricing page FAQ. Above 300 employees, everything is quoted.

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

Navan in brief

Navan gives the travel away.

Price: Free for companies up to 300 employees · Free travel plan, then per expensing user per month
Best for: Travel-heavy teams under 300 employees consolidating booking and expense
Watch out for: You give up a knowable price the moment you grow.

The short answer

Buy Navan if travel booking is the loud half of your problem and you have fewer than 300 employees. You get global travel inventory, unlimited policy and approval workflows, self-serve changes and 24/7 travel support agents at no software cost, and you can add expense on top for the first 5 monthly expensing users before any charge starts. For a company whose travellers book their own trips and whose finance team is tired of reconciling them, that is a short payback.

Skip it if you are over 300 employees and need a number you can budget against today, because Navan Enterprise carries no published price at all. Skip it if accounts payable, supplier invoices or purchase orders are in scope, since none of that appears in Navan's published plan contents. And skip it if your travel already runs through a travel management company you intend to keep, because Navan's free travel tier is funded by travel providers' commission fees and only pays for itself if your bookings move onto the platform.

Where Navan fits

Navan is a travel platform with expense management attached, and reading it in that order explains almost everything about how it is priced. Navan Business lists global travel inventory and exclusive rates, unlimited policy and approval workflows, self-serve changes, 24/7 travel support agents, the Navan Rewards program, customizable reports and 30+ HRIS integrations, and it is free to companies with up to 300 employees. Travellers book flights, hotels, car rentals and trains in one place, and Navan says there is no limit to how many trips you can book on the free plan.

The commercial logic behind that is stated plainly on the pricing page: Navan is powered by travel providers' commission fees, so booking is offered at no cost to you. That matters when you model the deal, because Navan's revenue on the free plan depends on your travel actually moving through Navan. A company that keeps a separate travel management company for its complex itineraries and uses Navan only for the simple ones is a worse customer than the pricing implies. The booking volume never appears on your invoice, but it is part of the bargain.

The expense half is where money changes hands, and the rate is easy to miss. Navan Expense is free for the first 5 monthly expensing users and then $15 per user per month. Navan defines an active expense user as anyone who submits a transaction into Navan Expense by manual transaction or by Navan Connect, which means approvers who never submit anything do not count. Payments are flexible by design: Navan cards, Navan Connect for existing Visa, Mastercard and American Express corporate cards, or reimbursements for spend on personal cards. Expense data goes out to most ERPs, and Navan flags out-of-policy transactions automatically rather than at month end.

The 300-employee line is the single most important fact in Navan's packaging, and it is a cliff rather than a ramp. Below it you pay nothing for travel. Above it Navan asks you to request a demo, and Navan Enterprise lists the full suite of Navan Travel and Navan Expense, unlimited travellers and expensing users, global program coverage, corporate negotiated rates, a designated account executive, a dedicated customer success manager, custom implementation and enterprise-grade travel support, with no figure next to any of it. A company at 280 employees and growing is about nine months away from a pricing conversation it cannot currently model.

Where Navan stops is the payables side of finance operations. The published plans cover travel, expense, cards and reimbursements. Supplier invoices, bill pay, purchase orders and three-way matching do not appear, and Navan Events and Navan Payments are presented as platform products rather than priced line items. If the brief is to retire a travel tool and an expense tool, Navan is a strong answer. If the brief is one platform for all company spend including what you owe suppliers, you are shopping a different product.

Navan pricing

Navan publishes part of its price and quotes the rest. Checked on 16 October 2026, the two plan cards show Navan Business as Free for companies up to 300 employees and Navan Enterprise as Let's talk. The only rate Navan prints anywhere is in the pricing page FAQ, where Navan Expense is free for the first 5 monthly expensing users and then $15 per user per month. That is why this record is partial rather than published: the plan cards alone would leave you thinking the product is free, and for a company with more than five people submitting expenses it is not.

What Navan publishes

Navan Business: Free (Free for companies up to 300 employees)Global travel inventory and exclusive rates, unlimited policy and approval workflows, self-serve changes, 24/7 travel support agents, Navan Rewards, customizable reports and 30+ HRIS integrations. Expense management is free for the first 5 users and then $15 per user per month.
Navan Enterprise: Quote-based (Custom contract)Everything in Navan Business plus the full suite of Navan Travel and Navan Expense, unlimited travellers and expensing users, global program coverage, corporate negotiated rates, a designated account executive, a dedicated customer success manager, custom implementation and enterprise-grade travel support.

As published on the Navan pricing page and checked on 16 October 2026. navan.com serves regional sites for France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States; the page read was the United States version and the figure is in US dollars as published.

Four things decide what Navan actually costs you, and only one of them is on a plan card.

Headcount, because it sets the plan rather than the rate. Navan Business is free up to 300 employees. Cross that line and Navan routes you to a demo, and Navan Enterprise has no published price. If you are anywhere near 300, get the Enterprise quote before you roll Navan out, not after, because once you have standardised on it the bargaining power has moved to Navan.
Expensing users, not employees. The charge starts after the first 5 monthly expensing users at $15 per user per month, and Navan counts someone as an active expense user only when they submit a transaction by manual entry or through Navan Connect. Pull last quarter's count of people who genuinely submitted something, because a 120-person company where 30 people ever file an expense is priced very differently from one where everybody does.
Booking volume, which is invisible on the invoice and central to the deal. Navan states that travel providers' commission fees fund the free travel tier. Ask whether the free Business plan carries any adoption condition, because that is the one term the published page does not address.
What Enterprise adds, which is a bundle rather than a single feature. Unlimited travellers and expensing users, global coverage, negotiated corporate rates and named support all arrive together inside one quote. Ask for it itemised against the free Business plan so you can see which of those you are paying for.

What costs extra

No priced add-ons are published. Navan Events and Navan Payments are presented as platform products rather than priced line items, so if either is in scope it belongs in the quote as its own line.
Expense management past the first 5 monthly expensing users, at $15 per user per month, is the one published charge and works as an add-on to a free travel plan rather than a plan of its own.
Corporate negotiated rates are listed as a Navan Enterprise inclusion, so a company that wants Navan to apply its own airline and hotel agreements is buying the quoted tier to get them.

Implementation and commercial terms

The rows below are what the Navan pricing page and its FAQ confirm as of 16 October 2026. Where a row says nothing is published, read it as a question for sales rather than as reassurance.

Published price: Partly. Navan Business is Free up to 300 employees and expense is $15 per user per month after 5 users. Enterprise is quoted.
Billing basis: Free travel plan, then per expensing user per month on the expense side.
Free plan ceiling: 300 employees, with no limit on trips booked below that.
Who counts as billable: Anyone who submits a transaction into Navan Expense by manual transaction or Navan Connect.
Implementation fee: None published. Custom implementation is listed as an Enterprise inclusion and priced inside the quote.
Free trial: No time-limited trial is listed. The free Business plan and the first 5 expensing users take its place.

Budget Navan as one free number and one real one. The travel software is free below 300 employees, so the honest model is your expensing-user count beyond the first five, multiplied by $15 per user per month, plus whatever Enterprise costs if you are near the headcount cliff. Do that arithmetic from last quarter's actual submitters rather than your headcount, because the gap between the two is usually large. Then ask for the Enterprise quote even if you do not need it yet: it is the only way to know what growing into the product costs, and it is cheaper to ask while you can still walk away.

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

What Navan gives up

You give up a knowable price the moment you grow. The free Business plan stops at 300 employees and Navan Enterprise publishes nothing: not a starting figure, not a per-user band, not a platform fee. For a company planning three years of headcount growth, the software line in your model is zero until a date you can predict and then a number you cannot. The remedy is unglamorous and effective: get the Enterprise quote during the evaluation, in writing, at your projected headcount as well as your current one.

You give up pricing that is easy to read. The plan cards say Free and Let's talk. The $15 per user per month expense rate appears only in an FAQ answer further down the page, under a question about whether the Business price changes after a certain number of trips. A finance team that reads the cards and not the FAQ will budget zero for expense management and be wrong. Before you present Navan internally, write the expense rate into your own paperwork so nobody is surprised in month two.

You give up the ability to verify that free travel is cheap travel. Navan's model is funded by travel providers' commission fees, which is a reasonable trade and also means the inventory you are shown is commercially interesting to Navan. Corporate negotiated rates, the mechanism that would let you apply your own airline and hotel agreements, sit in the quoted Enterprise tier. If you already hold supplier agreements worth protecting, test a handful of real routes against your existing channel before you move bookings.

You give up accounts payable entirely. Navan's published plans cover travel, expense, cards and reimbursements. Supplier invoices, bill pay, purchase orders and matching are not in them, and Navan Payments and Navan Events are platform products rather than priced modules. Teams briefed to consolidate all company spend will end up running Navan alongside an AP platform, which is two integrations into the ERP rather than one.

You give up currency certainty unless you check your own region. navan.com serves separate sites for France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. The page read on 16 October 2026 was the United States version, and the expense rate above is in US dollars exactly as published there. Nothing here has been converted. A buyer billing in euros or pounds should read their own regional page and get the rate in their billing currency in writing.

How Navan compares

In travel and expense the first useful cut is how much of the price you can read before a sales call. Navan publishes a free tier and one expense rate. Brex publishes two per-user rates. Ramp publishes a per-user rate and then adds a platform fee it does not publish. SAP Concur publishes two starting per-report figures and says the rate moves with your monthly commitment. Every figure below comes from that vendor's own pricing page, checked on 16 October 2026, and anything unpublished is recorded as unpublished rather than estimated.

Tool	Best for	Price	Where it breaks
Navan	Travel-heavy programmes under 300 employees that want booking and expense in one place	Free up to 300 employees; expense free for 5 users then $15 per user per month	Above 300 employees everything moves to an unpublished Enterprise quote
Brex	Teams wanting cards, expenses, bill pay and travel on one platform with a usable free tier	$0 user/month (Essentials), $12 user/month (Premium)	Product fees exist but are unpublished, and unlimited entities sit in a quoted Enterprise tier
Ramp	Companies that want a free card and expense base with a paid step for NetSuite and multi-entity	$0/mo/user (Free), $15/mo/user (Plus) plus an unpublished platform fee	The Plus platform fee is scaled to team size and never published, so the invoice cannot be modelled
SAP Concur	Large expense programmes where report volume, not headcount, is the natural billing unit	Starting at $7 per report (Base), starting at $11 per report (Plus), unlimited users	No volume breaks are published and travel only appears in the custom-priced Premium tier

What to test on the free Navan Business plan

Navan lists no time-limited trial, and it does not need one: the Business plan is free below 300 employees and expense is free for the first 5 monthly expensing users, so you can run a real pilot on production data at no cost. That makes the pilot's job commercial rather than functional. Prove the workflow, then use the free period to extract the numbers you will need when the free period ends.

Count your expensing users properly before anything else. Pull last quarter's list of people who actually submitted an expense, not your payroll list, because Navan bills only those who submit a transaction by manual entry or Navan Connect. That count minus five, times $15 per user per month, is your software cost today, and it is usually a fraction of what a per-employee model would suggest.
Book three awkward itineraries, not three easy ones. A multi-city trip, a last-minute change and a booking outside policy will tell you more about the approval workflow and the 24/7 travel support agents than a London to New York return will. Watch what happens when a traveller self-serves a change, because that is the task generating the support tickets you want to retire.
Connect Navan Connect to the corporate cards you already hold. Navan supports Visa, Mastercard and American Express corporate cards alongside its own, so test whether you can keep your existing card programme and its rebates rather than replacing it. Confirm that transactions land in Navan, match to receipts, and export to your ERP with the coding your controller expects.
Price a handful of real routes against your current booking channel. Navan's travel tier is funded by travel providers' commission fees, and corporate negotiated rates sit in the quoted Enterprise tier, so if you hold your own airline or hotel agreements this is the test that decides whether free software means cheaper travel.
Ask for the Enterprise quote while you are still free. Get it at your current headcount and at your projected headcount in two years, itemised against what the free Business plan already gives you. Ask what happens at the 300-employee crossover and whether the step lands mid-term or at renewal, and get the answer in an email you can keep.

Frequently asked questions about Navan

How much does Navan cost per month?

Navan Business is free for companies with up to 300 employees, checked 16 October 2026. The expense side is free for the first 5 monthly expensing users and then $15 per user per month. Navan Enterprise, for companies above 300 employees, carries no published price at all.

Why is Navan free for companies of up to 300 employees?

Navan says on its pricing page that it is powered by travel providers' commission fees, so you get access to its travel inventory at no software cost. Travel is the funded half of the model, which is why there is no limit on trips booked below 300 employees. Expense is still charged separately.

What counts as an expensing user in Navan?

An active expense user is anyone who submits a transaction into Navan Expense, either by manual transaction or through Navan Connect. Approvers and viewers who never submit anything are not counted. That definition matters, because the charge starts after the first 5 monthly expensing users, checked 16 October 2026.

What happens when a company passes 300 employees on Navan?

Navan asks you to request a demo, and the conversation moves to Navan Enterprise, which has no published price. Enterprise adds the full Navan Travel and Navan Expense suites, unlimited travellers and expensing users, global coverage, negotiated corporate rates and named support. Get that quote before you cross the line, not after.

What type of company is Navan?

Navan is a cloud corporate travel and expense platform. It sells travel booking across flights, hotels, car rentals and trains, expense management with receipt capture and reimbursements, and payments through its own cards or Navan Connect for existing corporate cards. Navan Events and Navan Payments sit alongside as platform products.

Can I use Navan for personal use?

Navan runs a personal travel side and a Navan Rewards programme that lets travellers earn points toward personal trips, and Navan Edge is pitched at solo business travellers. The core product is bought by a company, though, so personal booking is a traveller benefit rather than a standalone consumer product.

Can we keep our existing corporate cards with Navan?

Yes. Navan Connect works with existing Visa, Mastercard and American Express corporate cards, and Navan also issues its own cards and reimburses spend on personal cards. That means you can keep an existing card programme and its rebates while moving expense capture onto Navan, which is worth testing during the free period.

What controls does Navan give finance over out-of-policy spend?

Navan Business lists unlimited policy and approval workflows, and Navan says out-of-policy transactions are flagged automatically rather than at month end. Expense data integrates with most ERPs and reports are customizable. Confirm the specific approval chain you need during the free pilot, because workflow depth is where products in this category differ most.

Is Navan or Ramp better?

It depends which half of the problem is louder. Navan is travel-first and free up to 300 employees, with expense at $15 per user per month after the first 5 users. Ramp is card-first, free at its entry tier, and charges per user on Plus plus a platform fee it does not publish. Travel-heavy programmes usually prefer Navan.

Does Navan have a free trial?

No time-limited trial is listed. Navan does not need one, because Navan Business is free for companies up to 300 employees and Navan Expense is free for the first 5 monthly expensing users. That free tier works as an open-ended pilot on production data, checked 16 October 2026.