Two years using Ramp with a 35-person team. Full breakdown: Ramp review.
What free actually means
Ramp's $0 subscription is real — they earn on interchange. What you give up: no out-of-pocket reimbursements without extra steps, 1.5% + $5 foreign transactions, credit limits tied to your bank balance (not a traditional credit line).
Where Ramp wins
Accounting sync. QuickBooks and Xero two-way sync, with GL code auto-suggestions that learn your chart of accounts. Monthly close that used to take two days now takes four hours.
Receipt matching. Employees forward receipts to a Ramp email; the system matches them to transactions automatically. Receipt chase emails dropped by 80%.
AP bill pay. Ramp added vendor invoice payment — upload an invoice, route for approval, pay by ACH. Not as robust as BILL for complex approval trees, but handles 90% of use cases.
Where Ramp loses
Credit limits. We hit $80K/month limits with $400K in bank balance. Brex uses a different underwriting model and gave us higher limits. If you need to put large one-time purchases on a card, Brex or a traditional business Amex may be a better fit.
Ramp vs Brex after the Capital One deal
See our Ramp vs Brex breakdown for the post-acquisition picture.
Verdict
Best free expense management for most SMBs. If you have high international spend or need large credit lines, evaluate Brex or a business Amex.
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