BILL and Ramp charge exactly the same headline rates to pay a vendor: $0.59 per standard ACH payment and $1.99 per mailed check. Ramp waives both, plus same day ACH, domestic wires and SWIFT transfers, when you fund the payment from a Ramp Checking Account. BILL applies its per transaction fees regardless of plan. Brex, the third major platform, charges nothing at all: no transaction fee on ACHs, checks, or domestic and international wires sent from a Brex business account. Expensify, SAP Concur, Coupa and NetSuite publish no per payment fee schedule at all. Figures read from each vendor's own published pricing on August 10, 11 and 13, 2026.
Search for what it costs to pay a bill and you get a range: $0.25 to $1.50 per ACH, sometimes $0.10 to $0.75, sometimes a percentage. Those ranges describe payment processors in general. They do not tell you what your AP platform will actually put on your invoice, and two of the biggest ones now publish the answer in full. This is that comparison, built only from vendor pages, with the gaps marked as gaps.
What BILL and Ramp charge to pay a vendor, side by side
| Payment method | BILL | Ramp |
|---|---|---|
| Standard ACH | $0.59 | $0.59, waived from a Ramp Checking Account |
| Mailed check | $1.99 | $1.99, waived from a Ramp Checking Account |
| Same day or faster ACH | $11.99 (Pay Faster ACH) | $10, waived from a Ramp Checking Account |
| Domestic wire | Not published as a separate line | $15, waived from a Ramp Checking Account |
| International wire, USD | $19.99 | $20 (SWIFT USD), waived from a Ramp Checking Account |
| International wire, foreign currency | Free, FX rate applies | Not published as a separate line |
| Virtual card payment | Free | Not published as a separate line |
| Instant payment | 1.0 percent, $9.99 minimum, $100 maximum | Not published as a separate line |
| Overnight check delivery | $24.99 overnight, $19.99 two day, $14.99 three day | $20, and the checking account waiver does not cover it |
| Check attachments | Not published as a separate line | $1 per page, and the waiver does not cover it |
| Stablecoin payment | Not published as a separate line | No fee |
| Funding a payment by credit or debit card | 2.9 percent | Not published as a separate line |
| Void a check | $25.00 | Not published |
| Failed ACH after the receiver is paid | $50.00 | Not published |
BILL figures read from bill.com/pricing on August 10, 2026. Ramp figures read from ramp.com/pricing and Ramp's published Bill Pay fee schedule on August 11, 2026. Where a cell says not published, that means the vendor does not state a figure, not that the service is free. Both vendors change these schedules, so recheck before you sign.
How much does it cost to send an ACH payment?
Through a business AP platform in 2026, a standard ACH payment costs about 59 cents. Both BILL and Ramp publish exactly $0.59. That is at the higher end of the $0.25 to $1.50 range you see quoted for raw payment processing, because you are paying for the approval workflow, the vendor record and the accounting sync as well as the transfer itself. Your bank's own ACH origination will usually be cheaper per item and will do none of that work.
The interesting part is not the 59 cents. It is that two vendors with completely different business models landed on identical published rates for ACH and checks in the same year. Fees are only half the comparison, and the seat prices sit on the other side of it, which is why we keep a full breakdown of Ramp competitors and what each one publishes. Ramp introduced its fees effective June 1, 2026, matching BILL's existing schedule to the cent. If you are modeling AP costs, treat $0.59 and $1.99 as the going rate for platform originated payments rather than as one vendor's quirk.
Does Ramp charge for ACH payments?
Yes, since June 1, 2026, at $0.59 per standard ACH transaction. Ramp gave active Bill Pay customers who had paid at least one bill before May 1, 2026 a three month grace period. The fee is waived entirely when you fund the payment from a Ramp Checking Account, and the same waiver covers standard checks, same day ACH, domestic wires and SWIFT transfers.
This is the single most out of date fact in circulation about Ramp. A large number of articles still say Ramp Bill Pay is free with no qualification, and they were correct when they were written. Check the date on anything you are using to build a budget. The accurate 2026 sentence is that Ramp Bill Pay is free if you hold operating cash at Ramp and metered if you do not, which is a reasonable trade and a materially different statement. The full breakdown, including the platform fee Ramp names but never publishes, is on our Ramp pricing page.
Is BILL.com ACH free?
No. BILL charges $0.59 per ACH payment, and its pricing page states that per transaction fees apply regardless of plan. That last phrase matters more than the amount. Your Essentials, Team or Corporate seat price is a floor, not a total, and there is no tier you can buy your way onto that removes the payment fees. A separate detail worth correcting: the $0.49 ACH figure repeated across comparison sites is stale, as is the $9.99 international USD wire. BILL publishes $0.59 and $19.99. We walk through the whole schedule, including the accountant programs, on our BILL.com pricing page.
Does Brex charge for bill pay?
No. Brex states that it does not charge any transaction fees when sending domestic wires, international wires, ACHs or checks via a Brex business account. That makes it the outlier among the three major platforms that publish anything at all, and it is the single most under-reported fact in this comparison. Third party banks and the recipient's bank can still charge their own fees on a wire, which is true of every vendor here, but Brex itself takes nothing per payment. If that fee structure is what is pulling you toward Brex, it is worth seeing how the rest of the field prices against it in our comparison of Brex competitors on published pricing.
Put the three side by side and the usual ranking inverts. For years the shorthand was that Ramp is the free one and BILL is the one that charges. As of June 1, 2026 both charge $0.59 per ACH and $1.99 per check, and Brex charges neither. A company paying 300 bills a month, split evenly between ACH and check, pays roughly $387 a month at BILL, the same at Ramp unless it funds from a Ramp Checking Account, and nothing at Brex.
| Payment method | BILL | Ramp | Brex |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard ACH | $0.59 | $0.59, waived from a Ramp Checking Account | No fee |
| Mailed check | $1.99 | $1.99, waived from a Ramp Checking Account | No fee |
| Domestic wire | Not published as a separate line | $15, waived from a Ramp Checking Account | No fee |
| International wire, USD | $19.99 | $20 SWIFT USD, waived from a Ramp Checking Account | No fee |
| Foreign currency markup | FX rate applies, no separate markup published | Not published as a separate line | Up to 3 percent FX rate markup |
The catch is in the last row, and it is a large one. Brex applies an FX rate markup of up to 3 percent on any transaction that has to be converted into another currency. If your payables are domestic, Brex is genuinely the cheapest of the three to move money through. If a meaningful share of your spend is in euros or pounds, up to 3 percent will cost you far more than $0.59 a payment ever could, and the vendor with no transaction fees becomes the expensive one. The full plan and fee breakdown, including the fourth pricing tier most comparisons omit, is on our Brex pricing page.
What is the cheapest way to pay a vendor bill?
On BILL, a virtual card payment is free and an international payment in the vendor's own currency is free with the FX rate applied, so both beat ACH on the fee line. On Ramp, funding from a Ramp Checking Account takes almost everything to zero. The general rule across both: the cheapest payment is the one that runs on the vendor's own rails, and the most expensive is the one that runs fast. Speed is priced brutally. BILL's Pay Faster ACH is $11.99 against $0.59 for standard, roughly twenty times the cost for the same money moving a day or two sooner.
Card funding is the one to watch. BILL charges 2.9 percent to fund a payment by credit or debit card. On a $20,000 invoice that is $580, against 59 cents by ACH. If anyone on your team has the ability to fund bills by card, put a control on it before it becomes a habit.
Why mailed checks cost more than the sticker price
At $1.99 each, checks look cheap. They are not, once you count the surrounding fees. On BILL, voiding a check is $25.00 and voiding a returned check is $3.00. A failed ACH after the receiver has already been paid is $50.00, and a re-debit after failed funding is $25.00. On Ramp, check attachments are $1 per page and are one of only two fees the checking account waiver does not cover, so a remittance pack of five pages costs more than twice the check itself.
Run the arithmetic at your own volume, because it stops being a rounding error faster than people expect. Two hundred mailed checks a month is $398, which is more than four BILL Essentials seats. Two hundred ACH payments is $118. Moving even half your check volume to ACH pays for a seat or two, and it is usually a vendor onboarding problem rather than a technical one: you need bank details, a W-9 and, for anyone doing work on your premises, a current certificate of insurance on file before the first payment goes out.
What Melio and Tipalti charge, read on August 20, 2026
Two names that belong in any bill pay fee comparison and are usually left out. Melio prices the seats low and meters the payments; Tipalti prices the platform higher and does not publish the meter at all.
| Vendor | Plan cost | Included payments | Payment fees beyond the allowance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Melio Go | $0, limited to one user | 5 free ACH per month | $0.50 per ACH after the allowance. Card 2.9%. Fast check adds $20, overnight check $50, same day wire $10. |
| Melio Core | $25 a month, or $20 billed annually, plus $10 per extra user ($8 annually) | 20 free ACH per month | Same schedule: $0.50 per ACH after the allowance, card 2.9%. |
| Melio Boost | $55 a month, or $44 billed annually, plus $10 per extra user | 50 free ACH per month | Same schedule. International ACH is a $20 flat fee in USD. |
| Tipalti Accounts Payable | From $99 a month, unlimited users | Not stated | Not published. Tipalti states there is transaction pricing per invoice and per payment on top of the plan, without printing a rate. |
| Tipalti Mass Payments | From $249 a month, unlimited users | Not stated | Not published, described only as transaction pricing for payments. |
Melio is the clearest illustration of why seat price alone tells you nothing. The free plan is genuinely free for one user and five payments a month, and it is the cheapest option on this page for a business paying a handful of vendors. Cross into forty or fifty payments a month and the $0.50 charges plus the $25 or $55 plan land you close to a BILL seat, without BILL's approval structure. Tipalti sits at the other end: $99 a month buys unlimited users, which is unusual and genuinely good value for a wide AP team, but the per invoice and per payment rates are the part you cannot model until sales quotes them.
Two more worth checking before you shortlist. Stampli's pricing page carried no dollar figure at all when we read it on August 20, 2026, and AvidXchange does not publish a pricing page: avidxchange.com/pricing returned a 404 the same day.
What about Expensify, SAP Concur, Coupa and NetSuite?
They do not publish a per payment fee schedule, and that is worth stating plainly rather than treating as free. Expensify's billing documentation publishes seat prices, Collect at $5 per unique member per month and Control at $18 per member on an annual subscription or $36 per active member on pay per use, with no per transaction table. SAP Concur publishes pricing per expense report, starting at $7 on Base and $11 on Plus with unlimited users, which is a different meter entirely and not a payment fee, and one we compare against every per-seat rival in our roundup of Concur competitors. Coupa and NetSuite publish no list pricing at all. Rippling publishes none either.
If payment fees matter to your budget and a vendor does not publish them, ask for the schedule in writing before signing and get it attached to the order form. A vendor that publishes its fee schedule is easier to model than one that does not, which is a genuine point in BILL's, Ramp's and Brex's favor even when the numbers themselves are not the lowest. Silence is not a discount, and on a signed contract it is usually the opposite.
How to budget AP payment costs without guessing
Price it in three parts and stop multiplying seats by a rate. First, count last quarter's payments by method: how many ACH, how many checks, how many wires, how many rushed. Most finance teams have never pulled this and are surprised by the check count. Second, apply the published fee for each method and add the seat cost separately, because the two are independent. Third, price the conditions: on Ramp, whether you intend to hold operating cash there, and on BILL, whether anyone can fund by card.
Then ask the question underneath all of this, which is what you actually needed to buy. Payment fees only apply if the platform is moving your money. If your real problem is that receipts arrive as photos, coding takes a week and nobody notices a duplicate subscription until renewal, that is expense software, not a payment rail, and it does not need a per transaction meter at all. Expenditure reads every receipt, codes it to the right GL account from your own chart of accounts, checks each transaction against your policy as it lands and flags duplicate subscriptions and price creep before they renew, on the cards and banks you already have. It issues no cards, extends no credit and never moves or holds your money, which is precisely why there is no payment fee schedule on this page for us.
For the wider vendor comparison, including which platforms are worth their seat price once you add the payment line, see our guide to the best expense management software in 2026 and the honest breakdown of where BILL wins and where it does not. Every published entry price and fee schedule in this category sits side by side on our AP automation solutions comparison. If you are automating the approval and coding side rather than the payment side, start with AP automation software and the wider category overview at accounts payable software. If you are specifically weighing BILL against the field, we compare the eight main rivals on published prices in BILL competitors and Bill.com alternatives.
Every figure on this page came from the vendor's own published pricing on August 10 or August 11, 2026, and none of it is a third party estimate. Pricing in this category changes without much notice, so treat this as a dated snapshot and verify anything you are about to sign. This is software and insight rather than financial, tax or accounting advice.