Ramp vs Brex vs Stampli: P2P automation platforms compared

Implementing a complete procure-to-pay (P2P) solution makes procurement and accounts payable (AP) faster and easier. By streamlining procurement cycles, automating AP workflows, and offering real-time visibility into the entire process, an integrated solution saves you time while improving compliance.

However, choosing the best P2P software platform from the available options isn’t always straightforward. In this article, we’ll make your decision easier by comparing Ramp, Brex, and Stampli. We’ll analyze their capabilities, performance, and customer reviews so you can choose the best one for your team.

The comparison: Ramp vs Brex vs Stampli

The best P2P solutions make both procurement and AP seamless, simplifying the purchasing cycle and eliminating time-consuming manual processes. To choose the best software platform for your organization, look for a solution with these essential factors:

• Procurement request and approval workflows: How does the system handle purchase requests, approvals, and purchasing policies before spending happens?
• Invoice processing intelligence: Does the software use automation or AI tools to capture invoice data, manage coding, and detect fraud or other issues?
• Payment flexibility and control: How effectively does the software manage payment methods, apply payment safeguards, and allow control over timing?
• Enterprise resource planning (ERP) integrations: Does the solution connect with your existing financial operations without requiring custom-built integrations?
• Vendor management and communication: How well does the system centralize vendor documentation and communication across procurement and AP processes?

Stampli, Ramp, and Brex are all popular financial technology platforms with advanced procurement and AP capabilities. Let’s take a closer look at each one.

What is Stampli?

Founded in 2015, Stampli is a complete P2P solution that supports the entire purchasing cycle from procurement intake to payment. Stampli is for procurement teams that need to connect every dot in the financial workflow, providing complete visibility and control over each step. It uses AI throughout the process to learn and streamline your company’s procurement and payment workflows.

What is Ramp?

Ramp is a corporate card company that added basic AP tools later, offering limited automation at a low entry price. But that price comes with a cost: rigid workflows, manual workarounds, and inefficiencies that drain your team’s productivity.

Ramp’s one-size-fits-all approach means finance teams must adapt to its constraints, not the other way around. Designed for card-based spend management, Ramp’s AP tools lack the depth, flexibility, and customization needed for modern AP teams seeking real efficiency and control.

What is Brex?

Brex is a fintech platform that was founded in 2017. Initially a corporate card solution, it now combines purchase cards with payment and procurement capabilities. Brex is for finance teams at high-growth startups that need scalable digital-first solutions to manage expenses and procurement.

Brex’s card-centric approach means its AP and procurement tools primarily support card-based spend management. As a result, it doesn’t offer the configuration options that dedicated P2P solutions offer for complex procurement workflows and enterprise AP automation.

Stampli vs Brex vs Ramp: Key features

Stampli key features

Stampli’s features give finance teams complete control over the P2P process, covering the full lifecycle from purchase request to invoice payment. It automates procurement workflows and integrates with ERPs, simplifying everything from purchase requests to invoice processing.

Stampli offers:

• No-code integration and integrations with over 70 ERPs — including two-way synchronization with Sage, Oracle, QuickBooks, NetSuite, Microsoft, SAP, and more.
• Purchase order (PO) management that includes creation, approvals, and exports to your ERP that maintain configuration.
• Workflow automations that automate the entire procurement process, including procurement intake forms, invoice processing, approvals, and payment workflows.
• Stampli Direct Pay automates payments and integrates with Stampli’s AP system, consolidating ACH, check, wire transfer, and virtual card payments into a single platform.
• Dynamic approval workflows that you can configure to your organization’s needs — including Stampli Trays that support custom routing to relevant teams.
• Budget management that offers real-time visibility and control over organizational spending, integrating budget oversight into approval workflows.
• Vendor management that centralizes vendor interactions, document management, and compliance, integrating them into your P2P workflow.

Ramp key features

Ramp positions itself as an intake-to-pay solution. But beneath the surface, it’s a spend management tool built around its corporate card business — not purpose-built AP automation. While it advertises ERP integrations and AI features which are new, many capabilities are either basic, bolted on, or require rigid workarounds that don’t scale with your business.

Ramp offers:

• Procurement intake forms that capture basic procurement information but lack customizable logic or workflow flexibility. As your business grows more complex, these limitations force teams to create manual workarounds.
• PO creation and automated one-to one matching, with more complex PO scenarios requiring manual resolution. Ramp’s fixed workflows can’t handle edge cases – leaving you to do the heavy lifting.
• Three-way matching that supports basic matching logic. Dropship scenarios, partial receipts, and item/GL splits can break the flow, leading to exceptions and manual rework.
• Invoice processing that extracts and transfers basic data but lacks adaptability for nuanced invoice formats or exceptions. Much of the heavy lifting remains manual, especially with Ramp’s new, unproven AI.
• ERP integrations and two-way sync with some ERPs, but syncs are limited to daily updates which can lead to lag, outdated records, and reconciliation issues. Ramp’s lack of integration experience can even lead to ERP data conflicts, overwriting your vendor data instead of respecting your ERP as the source of truth.

Brex key features

Brex positions itself as a unified spend platform with P2P capabilities. But it’s fundamentally a corporate card company with AP features built around spend management rather than a comprehensive procurement solution.

Brex offers:

• Brex AI for invoice processing, which handles basic extraction and PO matching but focuses more on spend categorization and policy enforcement and less on complex procurement workflows.
• Procurement cards with credit limits and spend controls that support expense management — but without fully integrated purchase requisition or PO creation workflows.
• Bill payment automation for payment scheduling with multiple payment options but lacks advanced invoice processing, exception handling, and procurement integration.
• Custom approval workflows for purchase requests and invoices to simplify compliance, but flexibility is limited.

Pricing

When evaluating P2P pricing, take care to review both the overall cost and the plan structure. Consider how many users or entities the plan supports, the length of the contract (monthly or yearly), and which features it includes.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of pricing for Stampli, Brex, and Ramp.

Stampli pricing

Instead of offering multiple plan tiers, Stampli provides straightforward monthly or annual plans with custom pricing. All plans include full P2P functionality as well as unlimited users, entities, and vendors.

Stampli plans include comprehensive AP automation features spanning intake, approvals, payments and reconciliation. Plus, Stampli delivers the capabilities that actually reduce your manual workload and scale with your business: real-time ERP sync, flexible workflows, AI-driven PO matching, and self-service portals.

Ramp pricing

Ramp advertises a free plan, but key AP capabilities like procurement tools, advanced workflows, and ERP customization are locked behind paid tiers. As your needs grow, so would your costs.

In addition, Ramp’s entry-level pricing features non-customizable workflows that don’t work with your processes. So rather than providing true automation, your team has to work around limitations and compromise on controls.

Brex pricing

Brex also has a free plan with features like bill pay, global card acceptance and one local card program, and AI-powered custom roles. But AP automation features, advanced approvals, and customizable integrations require a paid plan.

However, Brex’s entry-level pricing also has limits. You’d need the enterprise plan for fully customizable implementation services, unlimited US or global entities, and personalized support.

Customer ratings

Satisfaction Score

The G2 Satisfaction Score analyzes user reviews to show how well each software solution meets customer needs. It measures customer satisfaction on a 10-point scale, focusing on aspects like usability, implementation, support quality, and business partnership.

Ease of setup, usability, and administration

Stampli has the highest Satisfaction Score on G2, with a rating of 99 for AP automation. While G2 has designated both Stampli and Ramp as Leaders in this category, Ramp’s Satisfaction Score (82) lags far behind Stampli’s.

Quality of support

Users rate Stampli highest for quality of support, rating the platform 96% in this area. Customers say, “Customer support is fast and has excellent follow up. We have monthly meetings with our representative who is always looking for suggestions on ways to improve their product.”

Brex earns a 92% for quality of support.

When to choose Stampli

Stampli is the ideal choice for your business if you want a reliable, user-friendly and powerful P2P solution that supports the full purchasing cycle with AP automation efficiencies at its core. It streamlines the entire procure-to-pay process, connecting every step from request to reconciliation.

Plus, Stampli is strong in AP automation, and the platform’s AI assistant Billy the Bot learns from your processes to streamline manual AP workloads, help your finance team work more efficiently, and reduce errors. Together, these features and capabilities make Stampli a strong Ramp and Brex alternative.

You want an integrated P2P solution

Stampli provides a complete P2P platform covering the full purchasing lifecycle. While other platforms with less robust P2P features create a handoff gap between Procurement and inferior AP offerings, Stampli fully connects the dots and stands out due to it’s superior AP automation product.

From PO creation and expense management to invoice processing and direct pay, Stampli handles each step. Since Stampli also streamlines approval workflows, it saves time for all users and spend stakeholders, and limits errors.

You need centralized vendor management

Manage vendor relationships in one place with Stampli. Unlike other platforms, Stampli centralizes vendor communications and automates document collection and tracking.

With Stampli’s streamlined vendor onboarding, you can set up customizable forms and workflows, collecting documentation automatically. Stampli’s Advanced Vendor Management portal also gives vendors self-service access to invoice status and payment details.

You require ERP integrations with two-way sync

Stampli offers 70+ ERP integrations and accounting software platforms. This number includes several complete integrations that fully adapt to your P2P and AP processes and preferences.

With Stampli’s two-way sync for major ERPs, you never have to enter data in both your ERP and your P2P platform. And with Stampli’s real-time data sync, you can rest assured that both platforms are always up to date.

You need complete AP automation

Stampli has deep AP automation experience, including automated three-way matching between POs, receipts, and invoices as well as duplicate invoice detection to prevent double payments. In a head-to-head Stampli vs Ramp comparison, Stampli’s AP automation features and user ratings come out ahead.

Billy the Bot actively learns your company’s invoice coding patterns, automatically applying codes, cost centers, and approval routing rules. As Anthony Fernandes, Group Controller of Alden Renewables, explains, “With Stampli’s AI, I have just this one person doing AP, and doing it in just 20% of her time. That’s a 25X boost in efficiency — AND this person spends the remainder of her time on much more strategic activities.”

You want best-in-class customer support

Numerous case studies from Stampli customers and independent user reviews recognize the platform for consistently excellent customer support. 

Customers say, “I use this product every single day and if I ever have challenges their top-tier customer service team is instantly chattable — who are all accountants btw.”

When to choose Ramp

Ramp might have a low entry price. But it’ll cost your team in terms of productivity.

Essentially an add-on to the company’s corporate credit card business, Ramp’s basic AP functionality requires you to adapt your processes to their one-size-fits-all system. That means your finance team ends up with limited customization, manual workarounds, and disconnected workflows that compromise efficiency.

You just need corporate cards

Ramp’s free plan includes unlimited corporate cards with expense policy enforcement and card issuing controls. While this plan does include AP features, it doesn’t support the full procurement lifecycle.

You want to manage corporate travel

In addition to business credit cards, Ramp’s free plan supports travel bookings and receipt matching. While this plan has basic approval policies, keep in mind that it doesn’t offer any customization options.

When to choose Brex

Similar to Ramp, Brex is primarily a corporate credit card provider with spend management features tacked on. And while it offers AP automation and compliance controls, its P2P capabilities aren’t nearly as comprehensive as an end-to-end solution. 

If you’re looking for a fully customizable solution or an AI-powered platform that leans from your processes, you’re better off looking elsewhere.

You have complex global business requirements

Brex supports multi-currency transactions and region-specific compliance needs, making it a fit for international organizations with extensive compliance requirements. The platform maintains separate spending policies and approval flows for various business entities. This works for organizations that need to maintain separate financial controls.

You need strong travel management integrations

With its travel management capabilities, rewards program, and cashback options, Brex is a good match for organizations that require substantial business travel. Because the platform enforces travel policies during the booking process and categorizes expenses automatically, it simplifies reporting and reconciliation.

Stampli: The #1 choice for P2P automation

Stampli’s complete P2P solution optimizes the entire process from purchase request to reconciliation. By connecting every step of the process, organizations can gain complete visibility into procurement workflows and control over spending.

Billy the Bot, Stampli’s intelligent AI assistant, learns your organization’s spending patterns and processes, improving automation. With Stampli’s automated workflows and approvals, Procurement can save time, ensure compliance, and reduce errors.

These AI- and automation-powered capabilities help companies like Purple document 100% of invoices properly and achieve 63% faster invoice approvals — even with a highly regulated P2P process.

Want to learn more about how Stampli can support your complete P2P process? Schedule a demo to see Stampli in action.