Payhawk vs Pleo (October 2026): an independent comparison by team size, contract and DATEV

Payhawk or Pleo: the verdict

Payhawk vs Pleo: comparison table

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Payhawk vs Pleo: what it costs per year

Pricing by headcount: Pleo is cheaper up to 9 users, the two meet at 10, Payhawk publishes nothing above 20 employees

Payhawk publishes one price. The Growth Program costs 149 pounds per month for companies with one entity in the UK or the EEA and fewer than 20 employees. It includes 10 cards and 10 seats (8 for employees, 2 for admins or accountants). It also covers up to 15 invoices and 15 reimbursements per month, AI data extraction and basic ERP sync. Procure-to-pay, multiple entities and budget tracking are excluded. Larger companies get a modular quote on an annual or multi-year term, and Payhawk states that it charges no flat setup fee.

Pleo's German price page lists Start at 8 euros per user per month with monthly billing. Build costs 14 euros and Optimise 18 euros per user per month, with annual billing and at least 3 users. Its UK page shows the same numbers in pounds. Build adds reimbursements, mileage allowances, approval workflows and AI spend policies. Optimise adds budgets, cashback, HRIS integrations and 100 AI expense reviews per month.

Here is the arithmetic. Pleo Build costs 42 euros per month for 3 users, 126 euros for 9, 140 euros for 10, 210 euros for 15 and 350 euros for 25. Optimise costs 450 euros for 25 users. Payhawk's bundle stays at 149 pounds while you fit its limits. We do not convert currencies, so treat 10 users as a rough tie. Note that Payhawk's 10 seats include 2 admin seats, which leaves 8 employee seats.

Two checks follow. First, ask Pleo whether admins and bookkeepers count as paid users, because Start is described as one user plus one admin. Second, the German page lists 1 dedicated card for Start, 15 for Build and 50 for Optimise. We could not tell whether that limit applies per company or per user, so confirm it before you plan a team of 30 on Build.

Fees beyond the subscription: Payhawk shows one currency markup, Pleo shows a table by plan

Payhawk's price page states currency exchange at the interbank rate plus 0.3 percent for euros, pounds, US dollars and Swiss francs, and 0.7 percent for Danish kroner and Polish zloty. Its homepage claims 1 percent average cashback on cards, a vendor figure we could not test. Fees for payments and for other currencies are not listed.

Pleo lists more line items. Reimbursements cost 0.90 percent in Build and Optimise. Foreign exchange on card spending costs 2.00 percent in Start, 1.75 percent in Build and 1.49 percent in Optimise. Local payments cost 1.50 euros in Start. Build includes 10 free local payments per month and Optimise 20, then 0.95 euros each. International transfers cost 8 euros in Start and 6 euros in Build and Optimise.

These numbers are not directly comparable. Pleo's rate applies to card spending in a foreign currency, while Payhawk's markup sits on its currency exchange line. Ask Payhawk whether the 0.3 percent also covers card purchases abroad. For reimbursements, a team that pays back 5,000 euros per month pays Pleo 45 euros in fees. Payhawk's price page lists no reimbursement fee, but its Growth Program caps reimbursements at 15 per month.

Contracts: one month's notice at both, the committed term is billed at both, and the laws differ

Pleo's master service agreement for the EEA, effective September 7, 2026, runs until one side ends it. The customer can terminate with one calendar month's notice free of charge unless an order form sets a fixed term. On termination the customer still owes all amounts for the remainder of that term. Pleo may terminate with two months' notice and must give two months' notice of changes that hurt the customer. Danish law and Danish courts apply. Multi-entity accounts exist, but each entity becomes a customer under the agreement.

Payhawk's terms on its website set a similar structure. The customer terminates with one month's notice and pays everything owed for the rest of the current subscription period. The agreement renews automatically on the same terms. Payhawk may change fees with one month's notice, except for third-party cost increases, which need only reasonable notice. Invoices are due within 10 days, and late amounts bear interest of 4 percent above the base rate. Liability is capped at the fees paid in the 3 months before the claim. English law and English courts apply, and EEA payment services come from Payhawk Financial Services UAB.

Our own calculation shows what the term clause means. Suppose 10 users sign up for Pleo Build on an annual term and leave after 3 months. If the term is committed, the remaining 9 months come to 1,260 euros. A Growth Program bought for 12 months and left after 3 costs 1,341 pounds for the remaining 9 months. Both figures are our reading of the clauses, so confirm them with the vendor in writing.

Foreign governing law is a reason to have counsel read the liability and termination clauses before signing, not a reason to rule either vendor out. We did not extract Pleo's liability cap, so we make no comparison on it.

AI: Pleo's live features check policy, Payhawk's agents follow the modules you buy

Pleo's AI page lists as available a Policy Assistant, Auto-Review that flags out-of-policy spending, Expense Capture, Receipt Recognition and categorization that learns from earlier bookings. Invoice data extraction and an MCP connection to outside AI tools are listed too. MCP (Model Context Protocol) lets an assistant such as Claude read and act on data in another product. Auto-approval and reconciliation carry a Coming soon label. The price page ties AI spend policies to Build and 100 AI expense reviews per month to Optimise.

The Next Web reported on June 12, 2026 that Pleo's Policy Agent is live and that agents for accounts payable, treasury and accounting would enter beta from July 2026. We found no Pleo page that confirms those three agents, so we treat them as not generally available.

Payhawk's price page names four agents that switch on with modules: Financial Controller, Procurement, Travel and Payments. Its Fall '26 Edition, announced September 15, 2026, made two more generally available. Playbooks are ready-made procedures for closing books, chasing receipts, budget control and audit preparation that run in Claude or ChatGPT on live Payhawk data through the Payhawk MCP. The Implementation Agent connects ERP and HR systems and sets up workflows. Payhawk says early customers went live in under an hour.

One item is still in preview: retrieval of invoices from vendor portals, announced March 2, 2026, with general availability planned for later in 2026 at no extra cost. Payhawk's data processing addendum states that language models run on Google Cloud in Belgium and Germany and that customer data is not used to train general-purpose models. For a team with simple needs, Pleo's policy checks cover the main task. Payhawk's agents pay off only if the matching module runs in the platform.

Data, licenses and audit evidence: Payhawk lists more reports, Pleo names its regulator

Payhawk's trust page lists ISO 27001, SOC 1 Type 2, SOC 2 Type 2, PCI DSS Level 1, CSA STAR Level 1 and an audit under IDW PS 880. That standard is the German auditing standard for software that handles accounting data. The page also claims DORA compliance. Data of German customers sits in Frankfurt and data of all others in Brussels, on AWS and Google Cloud, without replication across regions. SAML single sign-on and multi-factor authentication are supported, and annual penetration tests have a downloadable summary.

Pleo's trust page names PCI DSS, Google's Cloud Application Security Assessment, a HackerOne bug bounty and a CAIQ self-assessment. We found no ISO 27001 or SOC report named there. Customer data is stored and processed in Ireland (eu-west-1). In the contract, Pleo Financial Services A/S appears as an electronic money institution supervised by the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority, and its UK entity is authorized by the FCA. Cards are issued under a Mastercard license.

Both vendors publish a data processing addendum. Pleo gives 30 calendar days' notice before a new sub-processor handles data, allows an objection within 15 days and allows one audit per year with three weeks' notice. Payhawk gives 30 days' notice, lets you terminate on 30 days' notice if an objection cannot be resolved, and allows one audit per year with 30 days' notice. Pleo's sub-processor list, last updated May 29, 2025, names Anthropic (AI product enablement) and HubSpot as US sub-processors. Payhawk's addendum lists Payhawk EOOD as platform provider, Merge API in Sweden for HR integrations and Duffel in the United Kingdom for travel.

Payhawk's country page adds a limit: the product is not available to micro-enterprises or small charities in the UK as defined in the UK Consumer Duty rules. A very small UK team should ask whether it can buy the Growth Program at all.

Germany, Austria and Switzerland: DATEV works differently, e-invoices are due and the works council has a say

Pleo pushes data one way into DATEV through two routes: DATEV KR (Buchungsdatenservice) and DATEV Unternehmen online. Pleo calls itself a DATEV Corporate Partner, and one of the two routes needs an accountant to operate it. Payhawk connects to DATEV DUO in both directions. Master data flows into Payhawk, and payments and reviewed expenses flow back, with receipts going to DATEV Belege online.

Payhawk's setup needs your chart of accounts, supplier master data, tax rates and the cost centers KOST1 and KOST2. Payhawk states that it cannot change data in a period that DATEV has locked. Its homepage does not mention DATEV, but its integration page does, and so does the list of the Implementation Agent. If your tax advisor works in DATEV, ask both vendors for a test export.

Since January 1, 2025, German companies must be able to receive e-invoices. According to the finance ministry's guidance, issuing them stays optional until December 31, 2026, and until December 31, 2027 for companies with prior-year turnover up to 800,000 euros. Payhawk lists EU e-invoicing on its homepage, and Pleo lists invoice data extraction as live. Neither page states which formats it supports, so ask. Pleo's contract says it digitizes receipts under the tax and bookkeeping rules of Germany and Austria among others, for tax purposes only.

For Switzerland the picture is less clear. Payhawk's country page lists Switzerland, Austria and Germany with German-language support. Pleo's global page lists only six countries, while its contract covers receipt rules for more markets, so we could not confirm Swiss availability. Companies in Germany should also involve the works council early. Card data per person can fall under § 87 (1) no. 6 of the Works Constitution Act, which gives the works council a say over technical systems that can monitor employee behavior.

Vendor momentum: Payhawk reports growth, Pleo reports job cuts, and neither settles the choice

Payhawk said on July 8, 2026 that it had passed 100 million dollars in annual recurring revenue, with payment volume up 95 percent year over year. It cites more than 6,000 customer companies and describes a 24-month rebuild around AI agents. In 2022 TechCrunch reported a 1 billion dollar valuation after a 100 million dollar extension led by Lightspeed. All 2026 figures come from Payhawk itself and are not audited.

Pleo cites more than 40,000 customer companies and over 800 employees. Tech.eu reported about 50 job cuts in June 2026, in product, tech, design and data roles. It was Pleo's third reduction after about 100 roles in 2025 and about 15 percent of staff in 2022. The Next Web put its implied valuation at 1.62 billion dollars in 2025, against a peak of 4.7 billion in 2021.

Growth or cuts do not decide a purchase, but cards and customer funds make continuity a fair question. Ask each vendor how customer funds are safeguarded and what happens to your data if the service is wound down. If Spendesk is also on your list, read Payhawk vs Spendesk and Pleo vs Spendesk.

Who should pick Payhawk and who Pleo

The bottom line

Count employees and entities first. With 3 to 9 cardholders, Pleo's list price is the lower one, and its plans are easy to compare. With 10 to 20 people in one entity, compare Pleo Build with the 149 pound bundle. With several entities, audit demands, travel or procurement, ask Payhawk for a quote, and ask both vendors about DATEV, exit costs and your works council before you sign.