Video Summary:

Pleo vs Soldo: Which Expense Management Platform Is Better?

Expense management platforms are becoming essential tools for businesses looking to control employee spending, streamline reimbursements, and improve financial visibility. In the UK, two of the leading contenders are Pleo and Soldo.

Both platforms offer prepaid company cards, expense tracking, and integrations with accounting tools, but they differ significantly in pricing, features, and target users.

This article breaks down the key differences to help you decide which is right for your business.

Overview:

• Pleo: A feature-rich expense management platform with advanced automation, credit options, and cashback incentives.
• Soldo: A more affordable and flexible solution focused on core expense management with strong customization options.

Pricing Comparison

Pleo Pricing

Note the pricing page was accurate at the time of filming but may have since changed. You can see the latest version by clicking here. 

Pleo offers three main paid plans:

• Essential: £45/month (3 users included; +£13 per extra user)
• Advanced: £109/month (+£17 per extra user)
• Beyond: £219/month (+£20 per extra user)

Key notes:

• Annual billing unlocks cashback (0.5%–0.75%)
• Credit limits available (up to £500,000 depending on plan)
• Free trial available only on the Essential plan

Click here to see current Pleo pricing

Soldo Pricing

Note the pricing page was accurate at the time of filming but may have since changed. You can see the latest version by clicking here. 

Soldo is significantly cheaper upfront:

• Standard: £21/month + VAT
• Plus: £33/month + VAT
• Unlimited: Custom pricing

Key notes:

• 30-day free trial on Standard and Plus plans
• No advertised cashback or credit facilities

Click here to see current Soldo pricing

Features Breakdown

Core Features (Both Platforms)

Both Pleo and Soldo provide:

• Physical and virtual company cards
• Apple Pay & Google Pay integration
• Receipt capture via mobile app
• Accounting integrations
• Real-time expense tracking
• Spend controls and approvals

Pleo’s Strengths

Pleo stands out with its advanced capabilities:

• Credit lines (up to £500k)
• Cashback rewards on annual plans
• AI-powered expense reviews
• Advanced approval workflows
• Multi-entity management
• Vendor-specific cards (up to 500)
• Detailed analytics and insights

It also includes:

• Mileage tracking and reimbursements
• Invoice scanning with OCR
• Budgeting tools and sub-accounts
• Phone support (higher tiers only)

Soldo’s Strengths

Soldo focuses on flexibility and affordability:

• Lower pricing across all tiers
• Multiple wallets for budget control
• Fuel cards and subscription cards
• Amazon Business integration
• Custom integrations (Unlimited plan)
• Strong support access across all plans

Additional highlights:

• Multi-currency spending (Plus plan and above)
• Expense reports (Plus and above)
• Vehicle and fleet management (Unlimited only)

Key Differences

Cost vs Capability

• Soldo is far more affordable and better for small businesses.
• Pleo is more expensive but offers deeper functionality and automation.

Credit & Cashback

• Pleo offers credit lines and cashback incentives.
• Soldo does not provide these features.

Advanced Features

• Pleo excels in automation, AI insights, and enterprise-level controls.
• Soldo keeps advanced features behind its custom “Unlimited” plan.

Free Trials

• Soldo: Free trial on Standard and Plus
• Pleo: Free trial only on Essential

Which Should You Choose?

Choose Pleo if:

• You need access to credit or cash flow support
• You want advanced automation and AI insights
• You manage multiple entities or large teams
• You value cashback rewards

Choose Soldo if:

• You want a budget-friendly solution
• You need simple expense tracking and card controls
• You run a small or medium-sized business
• You prefer flexibility with wallets and integrations

Final Verdict

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer:

• Pleo is a powerful, premium solution suited for scaling companies with complex financial needs.
• Soldo is a practical, cost-effective choice for businesses that need solid expense management without the extra complexity.

Ultimately, the best choice depends on your budget, required features, and how advanced your expense workflows need to be.

 

Full Video Transcript

Today we have a showdown between two of the biggest kind of expense management platforms in the UK. It’s a very competitive space right now, so we’re going to look at Pleo. Versus Sodo. And they offer a range of kind of expense management and prepaid kind of cards. And basically, everything you want to be able to do to control your employee spending.

So, let’s start with Pleo. So, we’re going to look at their prices here, and then we’re going to look at the monthly prices amount, the discount you get with the with our yearly or annual plans here. So, their cheapest plans, serves of 45 pounds per month include. Three users, you can add an additional user for 13 pounds per month.

They have their advanced plan, which is 109 pounds per month, which again has three users, 17 pounds for additional user per month. And then their beyond plan of just 219 pounds per month, three users included as well, and 20 pounds additional users per month. You can try their central plan for free to get started, and then you have to book demos with their other ones here.

So, they have, reimbursements, mileage flexible card limits, up to 25 vendor cards workflows. And you can even get a credit limit up to 20,000 pounds with their advance plan. You can get you, sorry you don’t, I don’t know if you go. If you go annual, yeah, you get that 5% cash back. But if you’re doing a monthly thing, you don’t get that 5% cash back.

There’s multi-entity management, advanced card controls. You get a hundred vendor cards, budgets, you get phone support and credit limit up to 250,000 pounds. And again, if you’re on the yearly plan with a beyond, it’s just a hundred 199 pounds per a month. And you get this 0.75% cash back and you get x AI expense reviews, spending insights, and there might, you might be able to get a limit of up to 500,000 pounds.

So, let’s see what you get with all of these plans here. So, you have essential advance and beyond. So, we have three users across the board. Maximum users are unlimited. Again, you can just pay more for each person. You get physical and virtual cards across all of that, you can, it integrates with Google Pay and Apple Pay, which is great across everything.

Vendor cards. You have different for different things for different vendors. So, 25, 100 and 500 monthly withdrawals available for free across everything, temporary virtual cards and their advance and beyond. Plans useful if you want to sign up for a trial and you don’t want to have to monitor that cash back 0.5% and 0.75%.

Again, as you saw, you have to be on the annual panel, and they actually say four eligible customers. Automated receipt reminders across everything, email capture across everything out of. Pocket expense reporting across everything, direct reimbursements across things here, mileage across everything.

Invoice payments point. We have 95 pence per invoice, and you get 50 free on the beyond plan. Basically, you scanning invoices with OCR across everything. A duplicate invoice detection across everything. Invoice approval flows across everything advanced flows on their more advanced plans and purchase orders are just on their beyond.

Real time overview, all expenses, everything. Spend analysis, individual card limits per purchase, temporary limits approval, workflows and spending guidelines, again, are standard across everything. Guideline assistance and advanced approval workflows are available on their advance and beyond.

Plans. Vendor locks and vendor cards for their more advanced plans, budgets on their advanced and beyond plans sub accounts, one on essential and advance, and 10 on beyond AI expense review, which is on beyond, which I guess looks at, what do they say here? Just looks at uses AI to basically see probably if you can reduce expenses, recurring offender tracking across everything.

And then if you want advanced stuff only on their beyond plan. You’ve got different transfer rules here overdraft for, again, for eligible customers. I’m sure that requires credit checks. So, 20,250,000, 500,000, depending on which plan you’re on. Custom accounting exports and custom categories and tags and auto kind authorization across everything.

Auto vats, building on advance and beyond, and OCR for receipts, just on the advance and beyond. Again, external bookkeeper access. So, on all plans, internal controllers and everything, team management and everything. Reimbursement only users on these things here. Multi-entity management on advance and beyond.

You’ve got accounting integrations, which you’d really want to have with this. So, they have NetSuite and HRIS integrations. Bank statements across everything, transaction statements single sign on. I’ve got support, got help centre, email support and live chat across everything. Phone support only on advanced and beyond.

If you want more onboarding and concierge support and business review and customer success management. Those are only at the on the Beyond plans here. And then finally, if we’re looking at for an exchange fee, we have 1.9% sorry, 1.99% SAL and Advanced, but dropping down to 1.149% on Beyond. And again, same things for invoice payments and everything.

So, you can try their central plan for free. And then there’s, but demos with the other two here. So that is Pleo is quite advanced expense management and card management service. So, we’ve got Sodo, here they are. So, you can customize everything here. We’re going to keep it at three just to keep it simple because they have their standard thing here is three as well, so keep it here.

So, they are cheapest. Plan is their standard plan had just 21 pounds per month plus vat. They have their plus plan at 33 pounds per month plus a VAT. So again, in terms of pricing, that is pretty competitive. And then they have their unlimited plan here, which is price and request. So again, you’ll talk to one of their salespeople there.

But let’s look at the standard and plus plans here. So, they have one wallet, three users, and three physical or virtual solo cards. And you can do up to 20 outbound bank transfers per month. And they, here you have three company wallets, three users and three physical or virtual cards and up to 30 bank transfers per month.

You can say user permissions spend with Apple and Google Pay and Pleo capture receipts using the mobile app. Connect to your accounting software, which is definitely something you’d want. And you get access to support during business hours. You and then in their plus plan, you get wallets for team manage team budgets, multicurrency spending, which is useful.

Again, then you’ve got the OCR receipt capture. You can integrate with your Amazon Business Centre. So that’s, you’re selling an Amazon, that’s a big plus for solo. You’ve got you can export data using various templates they have, and then you have additional support. And then here they have a bunch of things here, so you can know, you can integrate with SAP Concur, integrate with a hundred software systems, a bunch of integration things here.

So, if you want some, a really bespoke thing that integrates in with your thing here that you’re probably going with unlimited. So that’s. Jump down here to see what we have here. Governance, you’ve got a main wallet, a user wallet, company wallets all these sorts of things here. You’ve got, all sorts of things here, which a lot of them only seem to be available in the unlimited plan here. So, spend controls, advanced card rules and everything, but card ruled presets only on unlimited request and approvals. So, we’ve got request, pre-approval spend is standard and they’ve got advanced but not available on the standard plan.

Here we’ve got request funds. All these things are not available on standard. And only available unlimited. So, let’s just. Close that up. So, let’s look at payments. So, we’ve got single user employee cards across everything, multi-user company cards across everything, temporary virtual cards across everything.

A fuel card, which is really handy across everything. So, if you’ve got if you’re running a fleet or anything like that, good to have that subscriptions and online ads card, which is good if you’re a marketing sort of thing here. So, they’ve got a lot of different business types covered here.

Instant card issuance, which is useful Apple and Google Pay support, which is great. You definitely want to have that and bank transfers to pay someone. Again, all of those available in all the plans, which is really nice to see. There’s, in terms of reviewing things, again, you’re plus and unlimited plans have a lot more options here.

So, like a few things like vehicle management is only available on the unlimited plan, mileage, reimbursement, only available plus and unlimited plans. Advance reminders only on the unlimited plans. Expense reports are only available and plus unlimited. And we’ve got all sorts of things here, VAT rates and all that across everything, at least.

Splitting transactions only on plus and unlimited. So yeah, we, that, that’s those things there. And in terms of support, they’ve got a knowledge base for everyone. They’ve got live chat, email support and training webinars for everyone. Customer reporting though, you’re going to unlimited. And if you want a customer success manager, again, you’re on their only other highest tier plan, which is exactly like PEO and tailored trading and onboarding again with their Unlimited plan here.

No questions here. So, they’d not, it’s expense management, not a bank account. Hold on here. And they’d all sold are no longer offers for they did at one point, but they do offer 30-day trial on their plus and standard plans. In terms of figuring out which one’s better for your business, it’s really going to depend on which features you need.

Obviously their, even on their yearly build, yearly sort of thing, they’re their cheapest plan for Pleo is 39 pounds per month, whereas. The, even their plus plan for soldo is 33 pounds per month plus VAT, I’m sure this is probably VAT exclusive would be my guess. But they don’t offer things like cash back or anything like that.

At least not standard. They don’t advertise that sort of thing. And they don’t seem to have a credit limit as well. So, if those are features you need, Pleo would definitely be worth a look If you just need a more basic kind of standard platform here. Sodo got your options here.

I’ll link to both of them in the notes. Obviously, the fees for these sorts of things tend to vary over time, so if they’ve changed since I’ve made this video, you can go check them out and see what their current pricing. Is here and seeing if they’re still offering a free trial for their plans here.

Obviously Sodo has free trials for both their standard and plus plans, whereas for Pleo it’s just on their essentials plan. So, if you’ve used either of these kinds of expense management card platforms, I would love to know what your thoughts are about each of them. And if you could just leave a comment in the comment section below, I’ll look forward to reading those.

Thanks. Bye.