Brex pricing (2026)

Last updated October 2026

Brex pricing overview

Brex is a corporate card and spend management platform built for startups, growth-stage companies, and mid-market finance teams. Since Capital One completed its acquisition of Brex on 7 April 2026, the platform sits within a bank holding company, though its deposits still flow through Column N.A. and its Vault sweep network. The pricing model itself has not changed.

How the tiers break down

Brex offers three main plans: Essentials, Premium, and Enterprise. The Essentials plan is free. Premium costs $12 per user per month. Enterprise requires a conversation with sales, and Brex does not publish a price for it. There is no free trial, and there is no annual billing discount on Premium. The corporate card itself carries no annual fee on any tier.

Per-user pricing and what it means at scale

The per-user model matters because it makes Brex progressively more expensive as headcount grows. A ten-person team on Premium pays $1,440 per year. A fifty-person company pays $7,200. A hundred-person company pays $14,400. This is a meaningful cost difference compared to platforms that charge a flat monthly rate regardless of team size. For early-stage companies with five or fewer employees, the gap is small. For companies scaling past thirty or forty cardholders, the arithmetic deserves a careful look.

If you are evaluating whether Brex fits your budget, you can sign up and start on the free Essentials plan to test the platform before committing to Premium.

Brex Essentials tier

What Essentials includes

The Essentials plan is Brex's free tier, and it is more capable than most free plans in the corporate card space. It includes global card acceptance with one local card programme, corporate cards with no annual fee, bill pay, employee reimbursements, travel booking through Brex Travel, real-time reporting, accounting integrations with QuickBooks and Xero, local-currency wire transfers, AI-powered custom spend rules, and access to the Brex API. You can run up to two entities, one of which can be a global entity.

Who Essentials suits

Small teams and early-stage startups. If your company has fewer than ten cardholders and does not need multi-entity support, layered approval chains, or advanced compliance tooling, the Essentials plan covers the fundamentals. You get working corporate cards, basic spend controls, and enough reporting to keep your books in order. For a seed-stage or Series A company where the finance function is handled by one or two people, this is a solid starting point.

Founders testing the platform. Essentials lets you evaluate Brex's card issuance speed, credit limits, and rewards structure without paying anything. If you later decide you need the Premium features, upgrading is straightforward.

What Essentials does not include

Essentials lacks live budgets, dynamic expense review chains, AI-powered compliance audit detection, advanced approval workflows, multi-entity support beyond two entities, customisable ERP and HRIS integrations (such as NetSuite), VAT documentation, group travel rules, and the ability to set multiple expense policies. These omissions are not trivial. If your finance team needs layered controls or you operate across multiple international subsidiaries, you will outgrow Essentials quickly.

Get started with Brex Essentials for free.

Brex Premium tier

What Premium adds

Premium costs $12 per user per month and adds the controls and compliance features that growing finance teams tend to need. The headline additions are live budgets, advanced approvals with dynamic spend-limit chains, AI-powered compliance audit detection, multiple customisable expense policies with category rules and role-based exceptions, dynamic expense review chains, customisable ERP and HRIS integrations including NetSuite, VAT documentation support, group travel rules, and multi-entity support for both US and international subsidiaries.

The case for upgrading

Finance teams with more than one approver. Once you have department heads, managers, and a CFO who all need different visibility and approval authority, Essentials' single-layer controls become a constraint. Premium's dynamic approval chains let you route spend approvals based on amount thresholds, categories, and team hierarchies. This is the feature that most commonly triggers an upgrade.

Companies with international operations. If you are running entities in multiple countries, Premium's multi-entity support and VAT documentation features eliminate manual workarounds. The same applies if you use NetSuite rather than QuickBooks or Xero for accounting, since the NetSuite integration is a Premium feature.

Teams that want proactive compliance monitoring. The AI-powered compliance audit detection scans expenses for potential policy violations, duplicate charges, and out-of-policy spend. For companies preparing for their first audit or tightening controls ahead of a fundraise, this feature can save dozens of hours of manual review.

Whether the per-user cost is reasonable

At $12 per user per month, Premium is priced in the middle of the corporate card and expense management market. Compared to standalone expense management tools like Expensify or SAP Concur, Brex's Premium tier bundles card issuance, spend controls, and accounting integrations into a single platform at a competitive rate. The question is whether your team uses enough of the Premium features to justify the upgrade over Essentials. If the only Premium feature you need is the NetSuite integration, the cost may feel steep for a small team. If you need three or four of the Premium features, the price is reasonable.

Sign up for Brex and choose the plan that fits.

Brex Enterprise tier

What Enterprise includes

Enterprise is Brex's custom-priced tier for larger organisations. It includes everything in Premium, plus customisable implementation services, an admin centre for centralised management, a named account manager, local language support, local card issuance and collections in additional markets, and unlimited US or global entities. Pricing is negotiated directly with Brex's sales team and is not published.

Who Enterprise is built for

Companies with more than a few hundred employees. Enterprise makes sense when you need dedicated onboarding support, a named account manager who knows your setup, and the ability to issue cards with local collections in markets beyond what the self-serve plans support. The unlimited entity count is relevant for holding structures and companies that operate subsidiaries across many jurisdictions.

Organisations with complex compliance requirements. The admin centre and customisable implementation services allow Enterprise clients to tailor Brex to their internal controls, reporting cadence, and audit requirements. If your company has specific SOX compliance needs or detailed internal control frameworks, this is the tier where Brex will work with you to configure the platform accordingly.

How to evaluate the Enterprise quote

Brex does not publish Enterprise pricing, so the cost will depend on your headcount, entity count, and the level of implementation support you require. When negotiating, it is worth benchmarking against the cost of Premium at your current headcount. If Premium at 200 users costs $28,800 per year, Enterprise needs to offer enough additional value in implementation, support, and local card issuance to justify whatever premium Brex quotes above that figure. Ask for a breakdown of one-time implementation fees versus ongoing per-user or flat-rate costs, and clarify whether the named account manager is included in the base price or comes at an additional charge.

Brex credit card rewards

The Exclusive rewards programme

Brex's rewards programme is called Exclusive, and it offers competitive earning rates in categories that matter to startups and growth companies. The default earning structure, which settles monthly, awards 7x points on rideshare, 4x on flights and hotels booked through Brex Travel, 3x at restaurants, 2x on recurring software subscriptions, and 1x on everything else.

Daily settlement variants

Brex also offers daily settlement plans tailored to specific industries. The Software variant awards 8x on rideshare, 5x on Brex Travel, 4x on restaurants, and 3x on recurring software. The Advertising variant awards 8x on rideshare, 5x on Brex Travel, 4x on restaurants, and 1.5x on advertising spend. The Life Science variant awards 8x on conference registration, 5x on Brex Travel, and 2x on lab supplies. These daily settlement plans require that your balance is paid each day rather than at the end of the month.

How points are worth

Through Brex Travel. One point equals one penny, which makes high-category earn rates particularly valuable. If your team books travel regularly through Brex Travel, the 4x or 5x multiplier on flights and hotels translates to a 4% or 5% return on that spend.

As a cash redemption. One point equals 0.6 pennies when redeemed as a statement credit or deposited into a Brex business account. This is a significant discount from the travel redemption value, and it means cash-back-oriented companies should compare the effective return against cards that offer a flat 1.5% or 2% cash back.

Through airline transfer partners. Brex supports point transfers to airline loyalty programmes at roughly a 1,500:1,000 ratio. This can offer strong value for teams that concentrate travel on a single airline, though the transfer ratio means you need to be strategic about when transfers make sense.

A note on category earn caps

Brex has not published category earn caps, which is a positive. Some competing programmes cap bonus earning at a certain spend threshold per quarter or per year. The absence of published caps means high-spend categories like software and travel can accumulate points without a ceiling, though Brex reserves the right to adjust programme terms.

Sign up for Brex to start earning rewards.

Hidden costs and what is included

No annual card fee

The Brex corporate card has no annual fee on any tier. This is worth stating plainly because some competing corporate card programmes charge per-card fees in addition to software fees.

Foreign transaction costs

Brex markets itself as having no foreign transaction fee, but there is an FX markup of up to 3% on non-USD transactions. This is worth knowing if your company makes significant international purchases. A 3% markup on foreign spend is in line with many consumer credit cards and higher than some business banking platforms. If international spend is a large part of your card volume, ask Brex whether the FX markup can be negotiated on Premium or Enterprise.

Late payment penalties

Brex is a charge card, not a credit card. Balances are due in full, either daily or monthly depending on your settlement plan. If a statement goes 30 days past due, Brex charges a late fee of 2.99% of the delinquent balance or $38, whichever is higher. This is a one-time fee per delinquent statement, not a recurring charge. There is no revolving APR because the card does not allow revolving balances.

Cash advances and ATM withdrawals

Neither is permitted. The Brex card is strictly for purchases. If your team needs cash access while travelling, you will need a separate banking relationship for that.

Yield on idle cash

Brex offers yield on cash held in your Brex business account through a money market fund. As of late 2026, the published yield is approximately 3.68% to 3.70% APY, though this has been declining gradually in line with broader rate movements. FDIC sweep coverage through the Vault network extends up to $6 million. There is no published minimum balance requirement to earn yield, which is a differentiator from some competitors that require $250,000 or more in deposits before yield kicks in.

Brex vs Mercury pricing comparison

The fundamental pricing difference

Brex charges per user. Mercury charges per company with unlimited users. This single structural difference drives most of the cost comparison between the two platforms.

Cost comparison by team size

For a five-person team. Brex Essentials is free. Mercury's free plan is also free. Brex Premium costs $720 per year. Mercury Plus costs $287 per year. At this size, both platforms are affordable, and the choice comes down to features rather than price.

For a twenty-person team. Brex Premium costs $2,880 per year. Mercury Plus still costs $287 per year. The gap is now meaningful. Mercury's per-company pricing starts to look considerably more attractive if your primary need is banking and bill pay rather than advanced spend controls.

For a hundred-person team. Brex Premium costs $14,400 per year. Mercury Plus costs $287 per year. Mercury Pro, which adds a dedicated relationship manager and NetSuite automations, costs roughly $3,050 per year. Even Mercury's most expensive plan is less than a quarter of the cost of Brex Premium at this scale.

What Mercury offers that Brex does not

Mercury is closer to a traditional business bank account. It offers checking and savings accounts, free ACH transfers, free domestic wires, and basic invoicing on the free plan. Mercury also received conditional OCC approval in April 2026 to organise Mercury Bank, N.A., which would make it a nationally chartered bank if the remaining FDIC and Federal Reserve approvals come through. Mercury's yield on idle cash ranges from 3.12% to 3.89%, though it requires a $250,000 minimum balance.

What Brex offers that Mercury does not

Brex's strength is its corporate card programme and spend management platform. The rewards programme, with multipliers up to 7x or 8x in bonus categories, has no equivalent on Mercury. Brex's expense policies, dynamic approval chains, and compliance audit detection are more sophisticated than Mercury's card controls. If your primary need is controlling and monitoring employee spending across a growing team, Brex's tooling is deeper.

Which to choose

The two platforms solve overlapping but distinct problems. Mercury is a business bank account with cards attached. Brex is a corporate card and spend management platform with a cash account attached. Many companies use both: Mercury as the primary operating account for payroll, vendor payments, and cash management, and Brex as the corporate card platform for employee spend. If you must choose one, Mercury is typically the better fit for companies that prioritise banking features and cost efficiency at scale. Brex is the better fit for companies that prioritise rewards, spend controls, and a polished expense management workflow.

You can explore Mercury's offering through their signup page, or start with Brex to evaluate its card and spend management platform.

For a more detailed comparison, see our full Mercury vs Brex breakdown and our Mercury pricing guide.

Who Brex is best for

Venture-backed startups

Series A through Series C companies with 10 to 100 employees. This is Brex's core market and where the platform delivers the most value relative to its cost. The combination of a no-annual-fee corporate card, strong rewards in startup-relevant categories, and increasingly sophisticated spend controls maps well to a company that is hiring quickly, spending on software and travel, and building out its finance function. The free Essentials plan is a natural starting point, with Premium available once the team needs layered approvals and compliance tooling.

Companies with significant travel and software spend

Teams where rideshare, flights, hotels, and SaaS subscriptions are major expense categories. Brex's rewards multipliers are specifically tuned to these categories. A company spending $50,000 per month on software and travel could earn meaningful returns through the rewards programme, particularly when redeeming through Brex Travel at the full 1 cent per point value.

Finance teams that want a single platform

CFOs and controllers who prefer consolidation. Brex bundles corporate cards, expense management, bill pay, reimbursements, travel booking, and accounting integrations into one platform. For finance teams that would otherwise stitch together a card provider, an expense tool, and a bill pay service, Brex's integrated approach reduces the number of vendors and logins.

Companies that may outgrow Brex

Large organisations with complex banking needs. If your company needs robust treasury management, payroll processing, or lending products, Brex is not a full-service bank. The Capital One acquisition may eventually expand the product set, but as of late 2026, Brex remains focused on cards and spend management. Companies with more than a few hundred employees and sophisticated banking needs may find that Brex works best as one piece of a broader financial stack rather than the centrepiece of it.

For more on whether Brex fits your company's needs, see our Brex review and our guide to the best business bank accounts for startups.

Is Brex worth it?

On the Essentials plan

For early-stage companies, Brex Essentials is straightforward to recommend. The plan costs nothing, the corporate card has no annual fee, and the rewards programme is available on all tiers. If you are a startup with a small team and you need corporate cards, there is very little risk in signing up. The card issuance process is fast, the spending limits are often more generous than traditional business credit cards, and the accounting integrations work well for companies using QuickBooks or Xero.

On the Premium plan

Premium is worth it when your finance team has outgrown single-layer controls and needs dynamic approvals, live budgets, and compliance monitoring. The $12 per user per month cost is reasonable for teams of 10 to 50 people, where the total annual spend on Premium ranges from $1,440 to $7,200. At these levels, the time savings from automated compliance checks and streamlined approvals can justify the cost on their own. Beyond 50 users, the annual cost exceeds $7,200, and you should weigh it against flat-rate alternatives.

On the Enterprise plan

Enterprise is worth it if you need a named account manager, customised implementation, and local card issuance in additional markets. The cost is not published, so the value proposition depends entirely on the quote you receive. If your company has 200 or more employees and operates in multiple countries, Enterprise's features address real complexity. If you are a 50-person company being upsold to Enterprise, push back and ask whether Premium with a few custom configurations would suffice.

The bottom line

Brex is a strong platform for companies that value sophisticated spend controls and a competitive rewards programme. It is not the cheapest option at scale, and it is not a replacement for a full-service business bank account. The free Essentials plan makes it easy to evaluate without commitment. Sign up and test it with your team.

Organising your finances alongside Brex

Keeping receipts and expense documentation in order

One of the practical challenges of any corporate card programme is managing the documentation that goes with it. Receipts, invoices, contracts, and expense reports accumulate quickly, and Brex's built-in storage handles some of this but not all of it.

A cloud drive for financial documents. Fabric works well alongside Brex as a place to store and organise receipts, vendor contracts, and expense documentation that lives outside the Brex platform. At $8 per month on an annual plan, it provides a lightweight cloud drive where your finance team can keep supporting documents organised and accessible. If your team is already using Brex for spend management, pairing it with a simple document store can fill the gap between what Brex tracks and what your accountant or auditor needs access to. You can learn more about how Fabric works at fabric.so/info/environment.

For guidance on setting up your business banking and card infrastructure from scratch, see our guide on how to set up a business bank account.

Frequently asked questions

Is Brex free?

The Essentials plan is free, with no per-user charge and no annual card fee. Premium costs $12 per user per month. Enterprise requires a custom quote from Brex's sales team.

Does Brex charge an annual fee on the corporate card?

No. The Brex corporate card has no annual fee on any plan tier. The per-user charges on Premium and Enterprise are software fees for the spend management platform, not card fees.

What credit score do you need for Brex?

Brex does not perform a personal credit check. Approval is based on your company's financials, including revenue, cash on hand, and spending patterns. You need a US EIN and a US business presence to apply.

Can you use Brex as a bank account?

Brex offers a business cash account with FDIC sweep coverage up to $6 million and yield of approximately 3.68% to 3.70% APY on idle balances. It supports wire transfers, bill pay, and ACH. It is not a chartered bank, though its parent company Capital One is a bank holding company. For full-service business banking, many companies pair Brex with a separate business bank account.

How does Brex compare to Mercury on price?

Mercury charges per company with unlimited users. Brex charges per user. For small teams, both are affordable on their free plans. As headcount grows, Mercury's flat pricing becomes considerably cheaper. A 50-person team on Brex Premium pays $7,200 per year, while Mercury Plus costs $287 per year regardless of team size. See our Mercury vs Brex comparison for the full breakdown.

What rewards does the Brex card earn?

On the monthly Exclusive programme, Brex earns 7x points on rideshare, 4x on Brex Travel bookings, 3x at restaurants, 2x on recurring software, and 1x on all other spend. Points are worth 1 cent each when redeemed through Brex Travel and 0.6 cents when taken as cash.

Does Brex have a sign-up bonus?

Brex periodically offers sign-up bonuses. Recent promotions have included up to 90,000 bonus points for new accounts. Check the current offer when you sign up.

Can you carry a balance on the Brex card?

No. Brex is a charge card, not a credit card. Balances must be paid in full, either daily or monthly depending on your settlement plan. There is no revolving APR. Late payments incur a fee of 2.99% of the delinquent balance or $38, whichever is higher.

Does Brex charge foreign transaction fees?

Brex markets itself as having no foreign transaction fee, but applies an FX markup of up to 3% on non-USD transactions. This is worth factoring in if your company makes significant international purchases.

Is Brex a good fit for freelancers or sole proprietors?

Brex is designed for incorporated businesses, not freelancers or sole proprietors. The platform requires a US EIN and evaluates approval based on business financials. If you are a solo operator looking for a business card, a traditional business credit card or a platform like Mercury may be a better fit.

What happens now that Capital One owns Brex?

Capital One completed its acquisition of Brex on 7 April 2026. As of late 2026, the Brex platform, pricing, and rewards programme have not changed. Deposits still flow through Column N.A. rather than directly through Capital One. Over time, the acquisition may bring changes to underwriting, product features, or integration with Capital One's broader financial products, but nothing has been announced.

Can you integrate Brex with NetSuite?

Yes, but only on the Premium or Enterprise tier. The Essentials plan supports QuickBooks and Xero integrations. If your company uses NetSuite as its ERP, you will need to upgrade to Premium at minimum.

How much FDIC coverage does Brex provide?

Brex provides up to $6 million in FDIC sweep coverage through its Vault sweep network, which distributes funds across multiple partner banks. This is higher than the standard $250,000 per depositor per bank that a single bank account provides.