Which expense tool you should choose comes down to one question: are you willing to change the cards your business already uses? Ramp and Brex are free but issue their own corporate cards, and their expense data flows mainly from those cards. Expensify, Dext, Zoho Expense and SAP Concur work with any card, but expect someone to photograph or forward each receipt. ExpenseBot is the third route: it captures spend from the receipts already sitting in Gmail, on the cards you already have, and writes every expense to a Google Sheet in your own Google Drive. Enterprises with 500+ staff and an existing ERP generally still land on Concur or Emburse.
📊 At a glance
| Tool | Card requirement | Where expense data comes from | Data stored | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExpenseBot | None — keep existing cards | Gmail receipts + photo + Google Photos | Your own Google Drive | Google Workspace teams, 1–50 |
| Expensify | None (cheapest tier wants their card) | Photo SmartScan + email forward | Expensify servers | Established teams with approvals |
| Ramp | Ramp corporate card for the free tier | Ramp card feed | Ramp servers | US startups issuing cards |
| Brex | Brex card for the free tier | Brex card feed | Brex servers | VC-backed startups |
| SAP Concur | None | Photo + email forward | SAP servers | Enterprise, 500+ |
| Dext | None | Photo + email forward | Dext / IRIS cloud | Accountants and bookkeepers |
| Zoho Expense | None | Photo + autoscan | Zoho cloud | Budget / Zoho ecosystem |
🧭 The four questions that actually decide it
- Do you have to change cards? Ramp and Brex's free tiers assume you spend on their cards.
- Where does the data come from? Card feed (amount, no receipt) vs photo capture (only what someone remembered) vs email (where most business spend already documents itself).
- Who does the work? Employees submitting, the accountant, or the software — the tool a client won't use is worth nothing.
- What happens at tax time, and who holds the data? ExpenseBot's output is a Google Sheet in your Drive, readable whether or not you keep subscribing.
📊 Compare ExpenseBot to a specific tool:
- vs Expensify - Data sovereignty, Google-native, FREE for accountants
- vs Ramp - Works with any credit card, no card switching
- vs SAP Concur - 30-second deploy vs a months-long implementation
- vs Dext · vs Hubdoc · vs Zoho Expense
- Head-to-head: vs Ramp · vs QuickBooks Self-Employed · vs Bench · vs Shoeboxed
🎯 Why Teams Choose ExpenseBot: ✅ CASA Tier 2 certified (Google's highest security) ✅ Data stored in YOUR Google Drive ✅ 30-second deployment ✅ $10/user/month transparent pricing ✅ FREE forever for accountants ✅ Google Workspace native
🔗 Full comparison hub: ExpenseBot Comparisons