Airbase Pricing After Paylocity and What AP Costs Now

Short answer: Airbase no longer publishes pricing. Its pricing page now redirects to Paylocity's, which shows no dollar figures and asks for your business email, phone, company, zip code, job title and employee count before a sales rep quotes you. Airbase's bill pay, cards, expense and procurement tools are sold as Paylocity's finance suite, so the price you get depends on the bundle and your headcount.

That matters most if your Airbase contract is up for renewal, or if you were about to buy it for accounts payable alone. Below is what changed, what you are now buying, how to negotiate, and what a published price AP tool costs by comparison.

What happened to Airbase pricing

Paylocity announced a definitive agreement to buy Airbase on September 4, 2024 and closed the deal on October 1, 2024, for roughly $325 million according to CPA Practice Advisor. Airbase had built a spend platform for small and midsize companies covering bill pay and AP automation, expense management, corporate cards and procurement. It was also, in its own words, the first spend management platform to sell its accounts payable product on its own.

Today airbase.com/pricing returns a permanent redirect to paylocity.com/pricing. That page is a form headed "Request Pricing with a Free Demo", with employee count bands of 1 to 30, 31 to 99, 100 to 499, 500 to 1,499, 1,500 to 4,999 and 5,000 or more. There is no plan list and no dollar figure anywhere on it. Software directories that once quoted Airbase tiers are now quoting old numbers, so do not budget from them.

What Paylocity's AP automation includes now

Paylocity's pricing page describes its Accounts Payable Automation module as AI based touchless invoice capture and coding, automated two way and three way PO matching, approval workflows that mirror your org structure and policies, scheduled payments by ACH, check, wire or card, and real time visibility into payables and vendor data. Around it sit expense management, corporate cards with cash back, guided procurement and headcount planning.

That is a capable suite. The catch is the packaging. Paylocity is an HR and payroll company first, and the pricing form is the same one a payroll buyer fills in. If you already run payroll on Paylocity, a combined quote may be good value. If you do not, you are starting a sales cycle with a payroll vendor to buy AP software.

Airbase pricing compared with published AP tools

The fastest way to judge a Paylocity quote is to put it next to vendors who show their price. All figures below come from each vendor's own pricing page.

For the full field, including vendors that publish nothing at all, see our AP automation pricing comparison. If Routable is on your shortlist, our breakdown of Routable pricing by plan shows that its $1,250 Growth plan leaves out invoice OCR.

How to negotiate an Airbase renewal under Paylocity

Treat the renewal as a new purchase, because commercially it is one. A few things are worth doing before the call.

Split the quote by module. Ask for AP automation, corporate cards, expense management and procurement priced separately. Bundles hide which part you are paying for. If 80% of your Airbase use is bill pay, you want to see the AP line on its own.

Bring your volumes. Bring monthly bill count, the share paid by ACH, check and wire, international payees, active card holders and expense reports per month. A vendor that prices by headcount will default to your total employee count. Your AP volume may justify a much smaller number.

Ask what changes on the roadmap. Ask whether the Airbase product you use today is the product you will be on in two years, and whether any migration would be at Paylocity's cost. Get the answer in the order form, not in an email.

Line up a fallback with a visible price. A shortlisted vendor whose price is on its website is your best leverage. If the quote comes back above what a published tool costs for the same invoice work, you can walk without a second round of demos.

When staying on Paylocity makes sense

Stay if you run Paylocity payroll and HR and use the cards and expense side heavily. One vendor for payroll, reimbursements, cards and bill pay removes a lot of reconciliation between systems, and that is worth paying for. Stay too if your approval chains are complex. Paylocity describes workflows that mirror your org structure, which is more than a single threshold.

Leave if you bought Airbase mainly for accounts payable and the renewal quote now comes wrapped in HR bundles, or if your finance team never touched the cards. When a change of system also changes who approves what, record the new approval controls and the evidence your auditor will want in a compliance tracker before the cutover, so the switch does not open a gap in your control testing.

What switching AP to AutoPayables looks like

AutoPayables does one job: getting vendor bills from the inbox to a paid, recorded entry in your ledger. It reads invoice PDFs and photos, suggests a GL account for every line, matches bills two and three way against purchase orders and receipts, flags duplicates, and sends anything above your dollar threshold to an approver with a full log. Approved bills sync to QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite and Sage. Payment runs produce a NACHA ACH file for your bank, check PDFs and a Positive Pay file.

It is not a like for like replacement for everything Airbase did. We do not issue corporate cards, we do not run employee expense reports, we have one approval threshold rather than multi level routing, and we do not move money ourselves. A team that relied on Airbase for all four should keep a card and expense tool alongside us. A team that bought Airbase to stop keying invoices can usually move AP over in a day by uploading last month's bills and checking the coding. Our Airbase alternatives page compares the wider field, and self serve AP automation lists which vendors let you start without a sales call.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Airbase cost?

Airbase does not publish a price any more. Since Paylocity's acquisition closed on October 1, 2024, airbase.com/pricing redirects to Paylocity's pricing page, which is a demo request form with no dollar figures. Your quote depends on which finance modules you take, your employee count band and whether you also buy Paylocity payroll.

Is Airbase still available after the Paylocity acquisition?

Yes, as part of Paylocity's finance suite. Paylocity lists expense management, corporate cards, AP automation and guided procurement under its finance products. New buyers go through Paylocity's sales process rather than a separate Airbase one.

Does Airbase have a free trial?

No public trial is offered. The only path on the pricing page is a form that leads to a free demo with a sales rep. If you want to test AP automation on your own invoices first, AutoPayables lets you process your first 20 real bills before choosing a paid plan.

What is a cheaper alternative to Airbase for accounts payable?

If you mainly used Airbase for bill pay, a dedicated AP tool with a published price is usually cheaper. AutoPayables costs $49 a month for 200 invoices or $149 a month for unlimited, with capture, GL coding, PO matching, duplicate checks and approvals included. Cards and employee expenses would need a separate tool.

Can I buy Airbase AP automation without Paylocity payroll?

Paylocity's pricing page presents its HR, finance and IT products as separate groups, so you can ask for a finance only quote. Ask for the AP module priced on its own and in writing, because bundled quotes make it hard to see what bill pay alone costs.

Ready to see what your own invoices cost to process? Create your account, upload last month's bills and compare the result with your renewal quote, or check AutoPayables pricing first.