Top 7 SAP Concur competitors to consider of November 2024

While Concur offers a decent travel and expense management solution, it might not be the right fit for every business due to feature limitations, high costs, and complexity.

Here are some key reasons why you might consider exploring Concur alternatives:

Limited Feature Set

Concur’s feature set lacks the functionality, speed, and flexibility that companies need in today’s competitive environment. Growing companies don’t have time to waste on manual expense tasks and slow approvals. They need a native corporate card, real-time expense tracking, advanced reporting, and direct integrations with modern HR, accounting, and productivity systems and software.

User Interface Complexity

The biggest issue with Concur might be its frustrating user interface. With Concur, submitting an expense report is manual and slow, from scanning paper receipts to manually entering expense details like category and attendees. What’s worse, SAP Concur is so cumbersome to use that employees may avoid the system altogether – just in an attempt to get back to work. The value of an intuitive user experience cannot be overstated. It improves adoption, compliance, visibility, even the speed of closing your books.

Scalability Concerns

As you can imagine, the negative impact of low adoption, poor compliance, and user frustration is higher for companies with more spending volume, global travel, and employees. They end up needing whole teams just to get employees to do their expense reports and to answer employees’ questions. And every time you need to call Concur for help, you can expect to be charged for it. User management and reporting are just extremely difficult at scale with SAP Concur.

Pricing Structure

Concur’s pricing is not transparent or up front, with lots of hidden fees and customers feeling “nickel and dimed” for things like travel itinerary changes and service calls. Smaller companies and startups may find that Concur’s costs are simply too high to even consider. It’s important to explore alternatives offering such as Brex travel and expense management, which offer clear pricing and significantly lower fees.

By carefully considering these factors and exploring the alternatives below, you can find the perfect travel and expense management solution that aligns with your business needs and growth trajectory.

Brex is an ideal Concur alternative. Brex offers an AI-powered spend platform comprising corporate cards, business banking, and intuitive software for expense management, travel, and accounts payable. Brex serves companies at every stage of growth, from startup to global enterprise, and customers can choose the whole platform or products a la carte. Brex makes it easy to enable and manage every type of spend globally from one central command center.

Key features

Here are the top 7 features of Brex travel and expense management that spur companies to switch from Concur:

1. Intuitive user experience

SAP Concur is infamous for its poor user experience, but Brex makes it easy for employees to do the right thing with a five-star mobile app, expense policies presented in context, and beaucoup automation. Brex’s AI-powered Assistant answers employees’ questions instead of taking up time from managers. Brex AI can also follow commands so users can offload tasks and further automate expense workflows.

2. Automated expense reports

One of the top complaints about Concur is the amount of manual work required to comply with expense policies. Brex automates the process end to end. Most receipts are auto-generated, and others can be added directly from the user’s mobile device, email, WhatsApp, Slack, and SMS messages. Brex then auto-matches receipts with transactions and populates expense data wherever needed.

“We needed a better card and spend management solution to serve everyone faster and deliver a better experience for end users. That’s why we chose Brex.”

— Josh Pickles, Head of Global Strategic Sourcing and Procurement, DoorDash

3. Automated manager reviews

With Concur, managers must review every line item in an expense report (which means they often skim it and miss policy violations). With Brex, compliant expenses are automatically approved, and Brex AI flags any exceptions, such as expenses that exceed per-diem limits. This makes it easy for managers to manage by exception, saving time and improving the quality of reviews.

4. Real-time visibility

Concur doesn’t offer a unified corporate card and expense management solution. It takes days for third-party card transactions to appear in your Concur dashboard. On the other hand, Brex’s native corporate card allows you to provision spend limits with embedded controls and track spend against budgets in real time. This makes it easy to stop unwanted spend before it happens instead of chasing it after it's gone.

5. Global, multi-entity capabilities

To get the full picture of global spend, teams using Concur have to access siloed systems to gather all of their spending data and manually calculate currency exchange. With Brex, companies can operate anywhere in the world with cards, reimbursements, and billing in the local currency in one platform. This avoids foreign transaction fees and expedites reimbursements for international employees. Brex supports more countries and currencies than anyone else, including the Canadian dollar, euro, pound, and shekel.

6. NetSuite integration

Where SAP Concur has dialed back its NetSuite integration, Brex is literally winning awards. Brex was named a NetSuite Partner of the Year in 2023, and has two-way, direct NetSuite integrations and AI-powered accounting automations that save companies many hours a month.

“With Brex and NetSuite, we’re saving 10-15 hours every month on reconciliation. The integration also enables us to control the reporting our way. We use a lot of custom rules for our GL mapping. With Brex, we were able to customize roughly 100 rules for all these different scenarios and automate our flow of data into NetSuite.”

— Katherine Spillane, Assistant Controller, Avenue One

7. Consumer-grade travel

When you book travel with Concur, it feels like work in every sense. And it’ll cost you extra fees in service calls if you want to change your itinerary. On the other hand, employees who book and manage travel right in the Brex app enjoy an experience as easy as with consumer travel platforms. Plus, your company’s travel and expense policy is auto enforced, and employees can make unlimited itinerary changes and get live support 24/7.

Why people prefer Brex over Concur

From ease of use to 24/7 traveler support to accounting automation, Brex is a clear winner over Concur. Using Brex frees up companies to focus on growth by making travel and expense management almost effortless. As stated in a recent G2 Review, Brex is “a billion times easier and friendlier than Concur. Brex is insanely easy, dummy-proof, and quick to pull relevant info from scanned receipts.”

Thousands of companies are making the switch. Here’s what Alex Moiseev the Financial Controller at fast-growing ecommerce Psycho Bunny had to say: “We chose to switch from Concur to Brex because of Brex’s tech-forward approach to managing spend. We were blown away by Brex’s ability to manage and track compliance in real-time, and automate employee expense reports and our month-end processes all in one system.”

Brex vs Concur

Pricing

Brex offers a generous free package called Brex Essentials that’s ideal for startups and growth companies. It includes global corporate cards, business banking and treasury, bill pay, integrated expense management, Brex AI, real-time spend reporting, accounting integrations, and 24/7 support.

For $12 per user, per month, you can upgrade to Brex Premium to unlock more customization of expense policies and procurement features, additional travel functionality, dedicated admin support, and more. This is a popular choice for midsize companies.

For global, multi-entry enterprises, Brex offers a Brex Enterprise plan that adds on enterprise-grade features such local-currency cards and billing in 50+ countries, locally funded payments in 40+ countries, unlimited policy customization, advanced roles and permissions, custom compliance and audit reports, and top-tier onboarding and support.

It’s notable that the Brex corporate card can be used with any expense software, and their travel and expense software also works with other corporate cards. Companies can choose a packaged solution or a la carte products that work for them.

Airbase offers corporate cards, expense management, and accounts payable capabilities in one platform. Founded in 2017 and based in San Francisco, it provides basic spend control features and integrates with common accounting software.

Key features:

• Physical and virtual corporate cards with customizable controls

• Automated, multi-level approval workflows

• Quality accounts payable automation

• Real-time general ledger sync and reporting

• Easily retrievable audit trails

Why people prefer Airbase over Concur

Airbase’s pricing is customer-dependent and based on annual transaction volume. Currently, Airbase offers three pricing tiers: Standard (up to 200 employees), Premium (up to 500 employees), and Enterprise (up to 10,000 employees).

Given the limit of its upper pricing plan, Airbase may not be equipped to support companies with more than 10,000 employees. Brex stands as a much stronger Concur alternative as it supports companies like DoorDash with well over 10,000 users.

Companies must provide their detailed information just to request a quote. No pricing information is provided up front.

Brex vs Airbase

Pricing:

Airbase’s pricing is customer-dependent and based on annual transaction volume. Currently, Airbase offers three pricing tiers: Standard (up to 200 employees), Premium (up to 500 employees), and Enterprise (up to 10,000 employees).

Given the limit of its upper pricing plan, Airbase may not be equipped to support companies with more than 10,000 employees. Brex stands as a much stronger Concur alternative as it supports companies like DoorDash with well over 10,000 users.

Companies must provide their detailed information just to request a quote. No pricing information is provided up front.

Navan is a travel management platform with AP automation and basic spend controls. Formerly known as TripActions, it was founded in 2015 in Palo Alto. Navan primarily focuses on travel booking and group events, and its spend management capabilities are relatively limited compared to Concur and Concur competitors. Similar to Concur, Navan allows you to “bring your own card” - which leads to delays in data processing and expense visibility. Concur alternatives with native cards, such as Brex, are a better option.

Key features:

• Travel book and management

• Group events

• Touchless invoice processing

• Reed & Mackay travel support (at additional cost)

• Global employee reimbursements

Why people prefer Navan over Concur:

Navan is a travel-first platform that can help to streamline the booking process for employees. Concur, on the other hand, has an archaic travel interface and makes it difficult and costly to get travel agent support. Concur and Navan go head to head on travel features, but Navan wins with a better user experience and customer support.

Pricing:

Navan offers a free plan for small businesses, but any company with over 200 employees will need to pay for a custom solution at a negotiated price.

Expensify provides simple expense tracking and reimbursement management. Built to serve sole proprietors, individual consultants, and small businesses, Expensify offers some superfluous features such as splitting bills and user-to-user chat that might be more trouble than they're worth for larger companies trying to control spend and keep employees focused.

Key features:

• Virtual and physical credit cards

• Expense tracking and management

• Online invoicing software

• Accounting and payroll software integrations

Why people prefer Expensify over Concur

People choose Expensify over Concur for its simple expense tracking tailored to individuals and small teams. Expensify also charges less per active user.

Still, similar to Airbase, Expensify is not built to serve larger companies. Brex, however, is a Concur alternative that can serve any number of employees while providing truly global support.

Pricing:

Expensify offers basic expense tracking for free. However, additional charges apply for other core features such as bill pay and expense approvals, starting at $5/month per user. Their full plan — which can only accommodate companies with up to 1,000 users — starts at $9/month per user.

Brex vs. Expensify

Coupa is a cloud platform for business spend that was founded in 2006 with a focus on enterprise companies. They offer spend management solutions with a heavy focus on procurement and accounts payable. Similar to Concur, Coupa has no native corporate card and relies on third-party card integrations, which delays visibility into spending and prohibits proactive controls. Similar to Concur, Coupa’s travel solution is complicated and not designed to be self-serve.

Key features:

• Procurement solutions

• Supply chain design and management

• Some expense management

• Forecasting and supply management

Why people prefer Coupa over Concur:

Coupa focuses on procurement, invoicing, and expenses, while SAP Concur primarily specializes in travel and expense management, catering to businesses with extensive, high-touch travel needs. Both require you to “bring your own card” and have no native corporate card as part of the solution. Still, Coupa tends to be slightly more popular over Concur for greater ease of use, faster implementation, and better AP automation.

Pricing:

Coupa pricing starts with a very limited free offering and increases to $4,800 a year for the most inclusive package, which includes QuickBooks integration. It’s helpful to note that QuickBooks and other integrations are included with Brex’s free plan, making it a better Concur alternative. In addition, Coupa makes you add on “Premium Support” at $499 a year, and yet it only gives you 6 hours of web conferencing support – perhaps making it even more costly than SAP Concur support.

Egencia is nearly 100% focused on travel management solutions, with basic expense management services added on. Egencia was acquired from Expedia by American Express Global Business Travel in 2022, which added more content and choice for travelers but greater complexity for admins and buyers.

Key features:

• Integrated Amex virtual cards

• Travel booking

• Travel risk management

• Travel management consulting

Why people prefer Egencia over Concur

Companies tend to choose Egencia over Concur if they use Amex cards because the integration is more robust with Egencia being owned by American Express. Some companies also cite a more future-proof roadmap as a reason to choose Egencia over Concur, with Concur being slower and less innovative than most Concur alternatives. Egencia is consistently rated easier to use vs Concur, which is another selling point.

Pricing:

Egencia’s pricing is not revealed on their website, and there is a lengthy form to request more information for a customized proposal. Concur is very similar, but in Concur’s favor, they do offer a try for free option on their site.

Rydoo is a corporate card expense management solution based in Belgium with limited integrations. The company does not have a travel offering. Rydoo has a significant number of European offices, with many features designed to help companies operate within local tax regulations and currencies.

Key features:

• VAT tracking and reimbursement support

• Expense management

• OCR receipt capture

• Mobile app

Why people prefer Rydoo over Concur

Global companies prefer Rydoo over Concur because Rydoo is built from the ground up to work across European countries and in several other areas internationally. It also specializes in helping companies achieve local tax compliance in European countries. Concur, on the other hand, is not as streamlined globally and requires manual currency calculations and is not built to avoid exchange fees.

Pricing:

Rydoo is on the expensive side, with their lowest-price package being a fully self-serve option at €10 per user, per month. If you’re willing to pay in full for the year, that fee comes down a bit to €8 per user, per month. Even the expensive Concur may be a better deal for companies who also want support, and there are more robust free options for T&E such as Brex.

Brex stands out as the best Concur alternative hands down, with easy-to-use corporate cards, expense management, and travel – as well as free banking and bill pay – all in one platform. Brex has tens of thousands of customers of all sizes, from scaling startups to global enterprises – including Atari, Treet, ScaleAI, Flexport, DoorDash, Coinbase, and countless more.

The difference between Concur and Brex is night and day in the words of DoorDash: "The transparency into spend that Brex provides our team is unparalleled. Our finance partners are ecstatic to be able to see how spend is trending at any point in time. We don’t get that with legacy systems." — Jerome Barley, Head of Global Travel & Expense, DoorDash

With Brex, companies have total flexibility and can choose the products they want, when they want them. Brex offers several free products, and paid packages are low compared to other Concur alternatives. In addition, Brex’s robust reward program and partner perks further offset any cost.

Unlike Concur, Brex is a leader in financial services and software innovation, having been named to Fast Company's prestigious list of the World's Most Innovative Companies of 2024. Customers can count on Brex for a future proof solution that helps them grow and thrive over the long haul.

Discover what Brex can do for you with an informative Demo today.