LemSubs vs Brex

Enterprise-grade corporate cards and full spend platform — powerful, but priced and built for funded startups upward

Brex pioneered the modern corporate card category and has since evolved into a full finance platform — corporate cards, expense management, travel booking, bill pay, and a treasury product. The SaaS spend visibility is solid: every card charge is auto-categorized, vendor pages show all your seats, and Brex AI surfaces optimization opportunities like duplicate vendors and inactive seats.

For a Series A+ startup that wants one platform for cards, T&E, and AP, Brex is genuinely best-in-class. For everyone else, the math gets uncomfortable. Brex sunset its global card program in 2022, so cards are US/Canada-only.

The Premium tier ($12/user/mo) adds up fast — a 10-person team is paying $1,440/year before any of the SaaS-specific features kick in. Onboarding requires underwriting, entity verification, and a credit check. And like Ramp, the SaaS visibility is bounded by what flows through Brex — anything on personal cards, partner billing, or non-Brex payment rails is invisible.

LemSubs handles just the subscription side, in any country, on any payment method, for $7.99/mo flat. We don't pretend to replace Brex if you need cards, travel, and AP — we just don't make you pay for that whole stack to get clean subscription visibility.

The common pattern: Brex for the platform, LemSubs for the complete subscription picture. **Decision framework.** Choose Brex if you're a funded US/Canada startup that needs cards + travel + AP in one place and the per-user fee is a rounding error against your burn.

Choose LemSubs if you're bootstrapped, international, or just want the subscription-management layer without buying the full finance platform. Run both if you're a Brex customer with meaningful spend on personal cards or non-Brex rails — Brex sees what's on Brex; LemSubs sees what you tell it.

Brex pricing

Brex Essentials free; Brex Premium $12/user/mo; Brex Enterprise custom (typically $30K+/yr)

Brex is best for

VC-backed startups (Series A onward) and mid-market companies who want corporate cards, expense management, travel booking, and bill pay consolidated into one finance platform.

Where Brex wins

• Best-in-class corporate cards with high credit limits for funded startups
• Travel + expense + AP + cards in one consolidated platform
• Strong AI categorization and Brex AI suggestions
• Integrated rewards program and points-to-cash conversion
• Excellent NetSuite, QBO, and Xero integrations
• Pry runway modeling bundled in

Where Brex falls short

• Cards US/Canada-only since the 2022 global sunset
• Premium tier $12/user/mo gets expensive past 5 employees
• Sees only Brex-paid vendors
• Heavy onboarding — credit check, underwriting, entity verification
• Overkill if you only need subscription visibility
• Recently dropped its smallest-customer segment (forced churn made headlines in 2022)

Moving from Brex to LemSubs

1. In Brex, navigate to Vendors -> Export and download the CSV
2. Sign up for LemSubs and start the 14-day Pro trial (no card required)
3. Use Smart Import to load the Brex CSV — vendor, amount, category, and last charge date auto-map
4. Add subscriptions Brex doesn't see: founder personal cards, Stripe Connect payouts, partner-billing arrangements, ACH
5. Enable overlap detection and the renewal calendar to catch seat sprawl and surprise renewals
6. Set per-category Workspace Budgets (Teams plan) and let the dashboard surface overspend before month-end close
7. If you also use Pry inside Brex for runway modeling, feed your cleaned LemSubs subscription totals into the Pry recurring-expense line for accurate forecasts

Frequently asked questions

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