The right Emburse alternative depends on which Emburse product you are leaving, because Emburse sells three different ones. Emburse Spend, the tool for small and growing teams, publishes $8 and $12 per active user per month, with a Custom tier quoted by sales. Emburse Professional, which was called Certify until September 2024, and Emburse Enterprise, formerly Chrome River, publish no price. Every figure below comes from each vendor's own pricing page.
That split matters more than any feature grid. A six-person team leaving Emburse Spend is usually after a lower per-head price or better coding, and the published per-member tools make that easy to check. A 400-person company leaving Emburse Enterprise is replacing a travel and expense system with approval chains and multiple currencies, and a cheap self-serve app is the wrong comparison for it. The table covers both, and it says plainly where a vendor publishes nothing.
Emburse alternatives compared on published pricing
| Alternative | Published US price | Minimum or cap | Best fit when leaving Emburse |
|---|---|---|---|
| Expensify | Collect $5 per member per month flat, no annual commitment. Control $18 list, $9 at the full Expensify Card discount | No annual commitment on Collect | Emburse Spend Basic teams that mainly need receipt capture at a lower price |
| Zoho Expense | Free for up to 3 users. Standard $4 per user monthly or $3 annual. Premium $6 or $5 | Free plan capped at 3 users. Autoscans capped at 20, 200 or 1,000 per user per month | The lowest published per-user rate, especially for teams already on Zoho |
| Sage Expense Management (formerly Fyle) | Growth $11.99, Business $14.99 per active user per month, billed annually | 5 users on Growth, 10 on Business. Enterprise custom at 250 or more employees | Sage Intacct companies that would otherwise need Emburse Spend Plus |
| SAP Concur | Base from $7 per report, Plus from $11 per report, Premium custom | Unlimited users. Concur says price varies with monthly commitment | Emburse Professional or Enterprise customers with heavy travel |
| Navan | Business free for companies up to 300 employees. Navan Expense free for 5 users, then $15 per user per month | Enterprise is quoted | Companies that used Certify mainly for travel booking |
| Ramp | Free at $0 per user per month. Plus $15 per user per month plus a platform fee based on team size | The platform fee has no published figure | Teams willing to move their card spend to a new card program |
| Brex | Essentials $0, Premium $12 per user per month | None published | Startups that want the card, account and expense tool in one place |
| BILL Spend and Expense | $0 per user per month | Comes with BILL's corporate cards and credit lines from $1,000 to $5M | Teams happy for card spend to fund the software |
| Expenditure | Priced at $12, $21 and $33 per seat per month billed yearly | Priced per person, no receipt meter | Teams whose real problem is coding and policy, not capture |
Which Emburse product are you replacing?
Emburse was formed in January 2020 when six travel, expense and payables companies combined: Abacus, Captio, Certify, Chrome River, Nexonia and Tallie. Several of those names are still in use, which is why a search for Certify alternatives and one for Emburse alternatives can return different shortlists for what feels like the same product.
Emburse Spend is the self-serve product. It is sold to companies based in the United States and Australia at $8 per user per month on Basic and $12 on Plus, with a Custom tier above them. A user is anyone who submits an expense in the month, approvers excluded. The 15-user billing minimum that older versions of the price list carried is no longer published. Our Emburse pricing breakdown works through what active-user billing and annual user bands do to a team's invoice.
Emburse Professional is what Certify became on September 18, 2024. It is aimed at small and medium-sized organizations, covers travel booking, AP automation and ACH through Certify Payments, supports more than 140 currencies, and is priced by quote. Emburse Enterprise is the former Chrome River, built for large organizations and also quoted. Emburse states that the functionality of both did not change with the rename.
What is a good alternative to Certify?
For a small or midsize US company, Expensify and Zoho Expense are the closest published-price alternatives to Certify: Expensify Collect is a flat $5 per member per month and Zoho Expense Standard is $4 per user per month. If Certify was mainly your travel tool, Navan is the stronger match, because its Business plan includes booking at no software cost for companies up to 300 employees.
The honest caveat is that Certify has no published price, so you cannot know you are saving money until your current renewal quote sits next to these numbers. Pull the last invoice before you pull a shortlist.
Is Certify better than Expensify?
Neither is better across the board, and on price they are hard to compare because only Expensify publishes one. Expensify Collect is $5 per member per month with no annual commitment, and Control lists at $18. Certify, now Emburse Professional, is quoted by sales but covers travel booking and AP automation that Expensify Collect does not attempt.
A practical way to decide: if the people who file expenses also book their own travel, and your finance team pays suppliers from the same system, Emburse Professional's wider scope can earn its quote. If your expenses are mostly card receipts and the occasional reimbursement, Expensify's published rate is the cheaper place to start. We price that choice for 10, 25 and 50 people, next to Concur, in Certify vs Expensify pricing for teams.
Certify vs Concur and which costs less
SAP Concur is the only one of the two with a public price. Concur Base starts at $7 per expense report and Plus at $11, both with unlimited users, and Concur notes the price varies with monthly commitment. Certify is quoted per contract. Because Concur meters reports rather than people, it gets cheaper for companies where many employees file rarely.
The same logic applies against Emburse Spend. With 15 people each filing one report a month, Emburse Spend Basic is $120 and Concur Base starts at $105. With the same 15 people filing three reports each, Concur Base starts at $315 while Emburse Spend stays at $120. Count reports per person before you decide which meter suits you.
What is cheaper than Emburse Spend for a small team?
Expensify Collect and Zoho Expense, at every team size. The table prices each option at published monthly rates for the number of people who actually submit expenses. Zoho Expense is shown at its monthly Standard rate, and its annual rate is $1 lower per user. Sage is billed annually.
| Monthly cost by people submitting | 5 | 10 | 15 | 25 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Emburse Spend Basic | $40 | $80 | $120 | $200 |
| Emburse Spend Plus | $60 | $120 | $180 | $300 |
| Expensify Collect | $25 | $50 | $75 | $125 |
| Zoho Expense Standard | $20 | $40 | $60 | $100 |
| Sage Expense Management Growth | $59.95 | $119.90 | $179.85 | $299.75 |
| Navan Expense | $0 | $75 | $150 | $300 |
| Brex Essentials | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 |
Two things stand out. With no published user minimum, Emburse Spend Basic now sits in the middle of the field: dearer than Expensify Collect and Zoho Expense at every size, cheaper than Sage Growth, and cheaper than Navan from 15 people up. Plus at $12 lands close to Sage, so for a NetSuite or Sage Intacct team the deciding question is which tool codes expenses better, not which one is cheaper. And the $0 rows are not free the way a spreadsheet is free: Brex's software comes with its card and account, so the real price is moving your card program. If you are weighing the whole field rather than just Emburse's rivals, our guide to expense management software for small business compares it on the same published numbers.
Why do companies look for Emburse alternatives?
We are not going to quote review-site complaints, because they are anecdotes. The reasons that show up in Emburse's own published terms are more useful, since they are the ones that will still be true in your contract.
- Annual user bands. On an annual plan you commit to a user band, and the Emburse Spend help center says submitters above it are billed at $8 or $12 each on a separate monthly invoice.
- Plus goes through sales. Basic offers a trial to very small organizations, but Plus, the plan NetSuite and Sage Intacct teams need, starts with a sales call.
- Two countries on Emburse Spend. It is available to companies in the United States and Australia only, in English.
- No published price above Spend. Certify and Chrome River customers renew against a quote, which makes a published alternative easy to benchmark.
- The 50 reimbursement line on Basic. A team paying more than 50 ACH reimbursements a month, or running NetSuite or Sage Intacct, is on Plus at $12.
What to check before you switch from Emburse
Your renewal terms. Find the order form and look for an auto-renewal clause and a written notice window. If a non-renewal notice has to be signed and delivered weeks before the term ends, send it out for electronic signature early, because missing that window buys you another year of the product you are trying to leave.
Your receipt history. Export approved reports with the receipt images attached, not only a CSV of amounts. An auditor asking about last year's travel wants the image, and you will not have access to the old system forever.
Your coding rules. The category mappings and approval thresholds you built in Emburse are years of small decisions. Write them down before the switch so the new tool reproduces them, rather than rediscovering each one at month-end.
Your card program. Emburse Spend works with the cards you already carry. Several alternatives price their software at zero because they want your card spend. Decide whether you are willing to move it before you compare seat prices.
How Expenditure fits
Expenditure is not a like-for-like replacement for Emburse Professional or Emburse Enterprise. We do not book travel, we do not pay suppliers, and we never move or hold money. What we do is the step after the money is spent: we read each receipt to line-item level, decide which GL account the charge belongs to from its context, check it against your expense policy as it lands, match it to the card transaction, and export one clean coded record for QuickBooks, Xero or NetSuite, on the cards and banks you already use.
That is the right layer if you are leaving Emburse because expenses still reach the books coded wrong, and the wrong one if you need a travel and AP suite. Expenditure is priced at $12, $21 and $33 per seat per month billed yearly. If QuickBooks is your ledger, our page on QuickBooks expense report software covers the Advanced upgrade most add-ons are really competing with, and our Zoho Expense vs Expensify pricing comparison goes deeper on the two cheapest published options above.
Prices for Emburse, Expensify, Zoho Expense, Sage Expense Management, SAP Concur, Navan, Ramp, Brex and BILL were read on each vendor's own site. Vendor pricing changes without notice, so verify at the source before you sign. This article is software and market information, not accounting, tax or legal advice.