Equals Money vs Pleo: Pricing, features, and the best choice for your business in 2026

Key takeaways

• Equals Money is a money movement and spend management platform for businesses. With Equals Money, you can manage your bills from end-to-end and pay out in 140+ currencies – great for businesses with global vendors.

• Pleo is a spend and expense management platform, founded in 2015 and serving some of Europe’s largest businesses. They aim to empower teams through a combination of prepaid cards, corporate cards, and detailed spending controls.

• Airwallex combines the best of Equals Money and Pleo with some added extras. Spend management, purchase orders, bill pay, expense management, multi-currency accounts, low-cost international transfers, payment acceptance, and billing – all in one platform.

Expenses aren’t much fun at the best of times. If you’re still using spreadsheets or physical receipts to track expenses, you’ll know what a drain it can be on your time and energy. Platforms like Equals Money and Pleo can give you that time back, with their brilliantly useful technology and automations.

In this article, we’ll explain all the features that matter and compare them, then take a closer look at each platform’s pros and cons and make the case for Airwallex – a third option that compares attractively to both Equals Money and Pleo.

Equals Money vs Pleo: Quick feature comparison

You’ll find much more detail on the features Equals Money and Pleo offer below, but for a quick side-by-side – use the table below.

Spend management isn’t the most exciting part of running a business, but the impact it has is hard to match. By automating your spend management, you’ll win back more of your time, trim unnecessary costs, and empower your employees to spend sensibly.

Disconnected spend management is costing your business – this is how.

Pros and cons: Equals Money vs Pleo

Let’s forget the comparison for a second and, instead, focus on the positives and negatives of each platform in its own right. They both have plenty of benefits and good elements, but it’s just as important that you get to understand their limitations and issues.

Pros of choosing Equals Money

As well as spend management, Equals Money also offers multi-currency business accounts. As well as managing your spend, you can use Equals Money for your treasury management and day-to-day expenditure. Centralising your financial tools with one provider can make life simpler and more fluid.

Equals Money has a wide network for international transfers, offering major, minor, and exotic currency pairings at competitive FX rates. This is where the platform really shines, as it was built for money movement before spend management.

Equals Money assigns an FX specialist to every customer, so you have a direct line to your dealer and can work through any problems with a human at the end of the phone. This can be invaluable when you’re processing high-value payments or need certain guarantees ahead of an exchange.

Cons of choosing Equals Money

Although Equals Money’s multi-currency account is a good thing, its status as a paid-for extra is less positive. A greater concern is its opaque pricing – the only price listed on the Equals Money website for its multi-currency account is ‘custom’. If you’re only choosing Equals Money over Pleo for its business accounts, there are other places you can look that will offer fairer and more transparent pricing.

Equals Money’s integrations are limited, with only Xero and SAP Concur listed on their website. Having so few integrations naturally restricts the number of businesses that can use Equals Money to its full potential. Without a proper back-end integration, the flow of information between Equals Money and accounting software like Sage (or others) is going to be restricted. You might have to rely on third party automation software or process data manually between the two. That’s not an efficient system, which feels contrary to the entire purpose of tools like this.

Equals Money does lots of things quite well, but isn’t a standout performer for any of them. Dedicated spend management platforms like Pleo have a more holistic product, while fintechs like Airwallex offer more powerful business accounts, payment acceptance, and general financial infrastructure. In a competitive market, there are plenty of other providers that can stand in place of Equals Money – many of them with cheaper and more transparent pricing.

Pros of choosing Pleo

The idea of “doing one thing well” (often attributed to Steve Jobs) seems to have been taken to heart at Pleo. They built a spend management platform and perfected it, offering brilliantly granular control and visibility on company spending. If you’re looking for a single-minded solution to your spend, then Pleo is one of the best options.

Pleo has plans and provision for companies of all sizes, making it a scalable spend management solution for your business’ full lifecycle. Their customer list ranges from pre-revenue startups to European giants like Just Eat and E.ON. ¹¹

Pleo’s customer reviews are, generally, extremely positive. At the time of publishing, they are rated 4.7/5 on G2, 4.1/5 TrustPilot, and 4.8/5 on Capterra. Reviewers reference helpful staff, a general problem-solving attitude, and effective dispute resolution. ^{12 13 14}

Cons of choosing Pleo

Pleo’s lack of (currently available) a cash management or treasury product is a drawback for many businesses. Pleo can do lots of things for your finance function, but it can’t act as your main account for everyday spending. For businesses that want a simpler system – with all or most features in one place – Pleo may fall short.

Pleo has no FX engine to speak of. Its accounts payable product can payout in 50+ currencies, but their fees are a flat 2.49% on its Starter plan. This is somewhere between 1.5 and 4x more expensive than with a fintech like Airwallex. If international businesses make up any meaningful percentage of your supply chain, you’ll be paying more than you need to with Pleo.

To move from Pleo’s cheapest plan to second-cheapest will cost you an extra £35.50/month – a 373% increase. For reference, the next step’s increase is 142% and includes 0.5% cashback for eligible customers. If your business begins to outgrow their Starter plan, you’ll need to be prepared to pay a lot more.

Why Airwallex is the best choice for global spend management

There is a third option: Airwallex. Pleo is all-in on spend and expense management, while Equals Money has built out more features like multi-currency accounts and international transfers. Airwallex goes another step further, providing a truly unified finance platform.

Airwallex matches Pleos’ expense management features: Multi-currency cards, OCR scanning, real-time visibility, fraud and compliance tools, logic- and role-based approvals flows, and a 360º view of all your expenses from around the world.

It’s much the same story with Equals Money: Airwallex has comparable international accounts and transfers, covering dozens of currencies and hundreds of countries and regions. A key point here is that Airwallex business accounts are part of your monthly subscription. Equals Money charges you separately for its multi-currency account.

Then, unlike Equals Money and Pleo, Airwallex can process payments and recurring billing for your business – facilitating and optimising your revenue, not just your spend. With Airwallex, you get a single source of truth for making, managing, and spending money in your business.

What is Equals Money?

Equals Money is a money movement platform for businesses. They also offer personal accounts. Users can hold 38 currencies on balance and send transfers in 140+ currencies. They also offer a range of other financial products and services, including spend management software, expense management, and banking-as-a-service.

See how Equals Money compares to Airwallex.

What is Pleo?

Pleo is a spend and expense management tool, providing businesses with virtual and physical cards with customisable spending controls, as well as accounts payable and reimbursement functions. Businesses use Pleo to track, control, and analyse their company and employee expenditure.

See how Pleo compares to Airwallex.

A closer look at Equals Money and Pleo features

You’ve seen the top-line overview of both providers, now we need to take a more detailed look at their differences and where each one performs best in a few key areas.

Expense cards and spend controls

Pleo was built as a spend and expense management platform, whereas Equals Money was founded to help businesses with money movement. Pleo naturally has an advantage when it comes to cards and spend controls.

That’s not to say that Equals Money does a bad job with expense cards and controls – in fact, they have some interesting features that many businesses will find useful. Vendor and value restrictions prevent out-of-policy spending, receipt annotations help solidify your audit trail, and prepaid cards can act as a credit card alternative.

Pleo offers all of this and more, though. Their per-employee, -vendor, and -purchase limits mean you can have granular control over your company’s expenditure, strengthened by instant notifications and auto-reports at intervals of your choosing. An added bonus is that you can earn up to 0.75% cashback on your Pleo card spend.

Best of the two: Pleo

Finance automation and accounting integrations

Both Equals Money and Pleo offer a good spread of features for automation and efficiency. A few examples include OCR reading, auto-matching and reconciliation, and layered logic for approvals and limits.

On accounting integrations, Pleo is far ahead of Equals Money. Equals Money advertises just two integrations: Xero and SAP Concur. Great if you use either platform, but there are some popular names missing from their partner list. For users of FreeAgent, Quickbooks, Sage, and FreshBooks (and others), Equals Money has a key piece of the finance puzzle missing.

Pleo, on the other hand, lists 61 integrations on its website. In terms of coverage, there’s no debate.

Best of the two: Pleo

Pricing and cost efficiency

Comparing Equals Money vs Pleo on pricing requires a few caveats. Equals Money offers more products than Pleo, but its pricing is a bit more complicated as a result.

With Equals Money, you can get expense and spend management plus a multi-currency business account, international transfers, and corporate FX. These features are a paid add-on, separate from their spend and expense management products.

For equivalent spend management packages:

• Pleo costs £114/year or £9.50/month.

• Equals Money costs £250/year (annual plan) or £25/month (monthly plan).

Pricing for Equals Money accounts isn’t stated on their website, but is charged as a separate product. So, Pleo is cheaper than Equals Money, but Equals Money can offer more – for an unknown price.

Best of the two: Pleo (if you only want spend management)

International spending and FX costs

Global supply chains, team travel, and distributed teams – UK businesses have plenty of reasons to be sending and spending money in different currencies. When comparing Equals Money vs. Pleo on international spend and FX costs, one provider is clearly superior.

Equals Money’s multi-currency account can hold more than six times as many currencies as Pleo’s (currently unreleased) product. With an Equals Money card, you can spend in 21 currencies with 0% FX fees and 1.5% charged on all others. Pleo, in comparison, charges a flat 2.49% FX fee on their Starter plan, 1.99% on others, and 1.49% on enterprise plans. They claim to let customers pay in 50+ currencies, but how FX fees are applied to these is unclear.

Pleo’s FX fees (2.49%, 1.99%, or 1.49% depending on your plan) also apply to invoice payments made using their accounts payable feature. 

Best of the two: Equals Money

Final verdict: which you should choose in 2026

If you want a tool that handles spend management – plain and simple – Pleo makes a lot of sense. It’s cheaper and well-appointed for businesses of all sizes.

If you want a spend management platform that also includes a business account, Equals Money fits the bill. The only catch is, it’s going to cost more – and you won’t know how much more unless you contact their sales team.

If you want a spend management platform that includes business account, payment acceptance, billing, embedded finance, and more – choose Airwallex. In one clear, upfront package, you can get the full financial infrastructure you need to run, grow, and scale your business around the world.

FAQs

Can I make payments with Pleo?

Pleo lets you manage card spend, reimburse employee expenses, and manage your accounts payable via your Pleo Wallet. You cannot get paid into your Pleo Wallet – you can only fund it by topping it up from an external account. In this way, it’s not like a full business bank account or e-money account.

Can I use Pleo to take payments?

No, Pleo doesn’t offer a payment gateway product. Pleo is designed for managing your company’s own spending, including employee expenses. If you want to accept payments from your customers, you’ll need to use a payment processor like Airwallex.

How do I open an Equals Money account?

To open an Equals Money account, you fill out an enquiry form on their website – sharing your company details, products of interest, and estimated annual card spend (among other information). If you already use Equals Money for spend management, you don’t automatically have a multi-currency account. This is unlike platforms like Airwallex, which bundle all of these features into one subscription.

How many cards do I get with Equals Money?

Equals Money offers 1-20 physical cards on its lowest tier plan, 21-50 on its middle tier, and 51+ for enterprise customers. For virtual cards: The lowest tier gets up to 50 for free, the middle tier up to 100, and enterprise customers more than 100.

Sources and references

1. https://equalsmoney.com/expense-cards

2. https://www.pleo.io/en/business-expense-cards

3. https://www.pleo.io/en/virtual-cards

4. https://equalsmoney.com/spend-management-software

5. https://www.pleo.io/en/spend-controls

6. https://www.pleo.io/en/integrations

7. https://equalsmoney.com/pricing

8. https://www.pleo.io/en/pricing

9. https://equalsmoney.com/business-accounts/multi-currency-business-account

10. https://www.pleo.io/en/cash-management

11. https://www.g2.com/products/pleo/reviews

12. https://www.trustpilot.com/review/pleo.io

13. https://www.capterra.co.uk/software/160720/pleo

14. https://www.pleo.io/en/customers