Expense Apps for German Businesses Compared

An expense app captures receipts from a photo, calculates meal per diems and mileage itself, routes spending for approval and sends everything to DATEV or your accounting software. For small businesses in Germany, list prices vary widely (as of November 2026, pricing pages retrieved on 4 November 2026): Expensify is free for individuals and costs €5 per member per month on its team plan, Pleo €8 to €18 per user per month, Circula from €15 per license with a minimum of 10 licenses, and Candis from €599 a month for the package that calculates per diems. Moss and Spendesk only quote on request. If you work alone and rarely travel, you often don't need one. Everything here is vendor information, not tested here, so there is no winner, only criteria.

German per diem rates for 2026 and a report template are in Per Diem Germany 2026: Rates and Template. If you only want to photograph receipts, Receipt Scanning Apps: The Best Tools fits better. This article covers apps for travel expenses and company cards, and when an AI employee like Peter can do the remaining work instead. There are no affiliate links in this comparison.

Expense apps compared

Pleo, Circula, Candis and Expensify don't say on their pricing pages whether amounts include VAT. Usage fees come on top: Pleo charges 2.00 to 1.49 percent on foreign currency card payments, Circula 2 percent on the Visa rate, and Moss and Spendesk price by transactions.

All six take receipts in a mobile app and read them with text recognition; at Pleo, receipt OCR is listed from Build, while pulling receipts from your inbox ("Fetch") is on every plan. Large companies also look at SAP Concur: its US pricing page says "Starting at $7 per report", and there is no German pricing page.

Accounting software instead of an app: Lexware Office, sevDesk, DATEV

• Lexware Office costs €7.90 to €32.90 a month plus VAT for the whole business, not per user, cancellable monthly. Its app scans receipts and creates a booking suggestion, and invoices from up to 20 registered senders arrive by email. Per diems aren't calculated according to the pricing page; travel expenses run through partner extensions, see Lexoffice Integration: The Main Routes.
• sevDesk lists €25.90 a month plus VAT as the regular price of its Buchhaltung plan (a time-limited discount was running when retrieved). Receipts come in via app and are matched to transactions; no per diem feature is listed.
• DATEV lists travel expense solutions from partners in its marketplace, including Pleo, Moss and Circula; Circula calls itself the successor to DATEV Reisekosten Classic. The free DATEV Upload mobil app photographs receipts and sends them to DATEV Unternehmen online or DATEV Meine Steuern. It doesn't calculate per diems.

Which accounting software suits your business is covered in Accounting Software for Small Businesses.

A worked example for five people

Suppose five people regularly submit travel expenses and the business calculates at list price, without VAT and without transaction fees:

This shows how prices are built, not which vendor is cheapest. Circula says it only charges a license for months in which someone submits, approves or reviews expenses, and offers "special models for small teams" on request. Candis prices by the number of incoming invoices.

Six criteria that decide

1. Does the app apply German travel expense law? The domestic meal allowance is €14 for more than eight hours away and for arrival and departure days, and €28 for each full day (Section 9(4a) EStG, as of November 2026). Meals provided cut it by €5.60 for breakfast and €11.20 for lunch or dinner, 20 or 40 percent of the full-day rate. Five of the six vendors say they calculate this. Test it during the trial with a real trip, including a hotel breakfast and a day abroad.
2. Minimum users and term. Pleo requires at least three users from Build, Circula at least ten licenses, and Candis commits you for 12, 24 or 36 months.
3. The route to DATEV. According to the DATEV marketplace, Pleo and Circula transfer receipt data and receipts to DATEV Unternehmen online via Rechnungsdatenservice 1.0. DATEV itself says it only checks "the error-free import of the output file" ("das fehlerfreie Einlesen der Output-Datei"), not the vendor's features. Ask your accountant which route they accept before you buy. The basics are in DATEV Integration: The Basics.
4. The app's card or your bank's card. All six vendors offer their own company card. At Pleo, Moss and Spendesk it's part of the base offer; at Circula and Candis it's a separately priced module. If you already have a bank card, ask how its statement gets in.
5. Archive under GoBD, the German rules for digital bookkeeping records. Candis speaks of "GoBD-certified archiving" for ten years, Circula sells GoBD-compliant storage as an add-on. Such labels describe the vendor's archive, not your process; see Digital Receipt Filing That Holds Up.
6. An interface for AI. Pleo and Spendesk list MCP connections that give AI tools access to spending data. That gives an AI access to financial data, which needs rules.

This reflects the vendors' pages and is not tax advice for your case.

Which expense app fits which business size

• Alone, with few trips a year: no dedicated app. Capture receipts in your accounting software and use the per diem template. Expensify is free for individuals but doesn't mention DATEV.
• Two to nine people who travel: look for per-user pricing without a high minimum that includes reimbursements and per diems, and check that your accountant can process the export.
• Ten people or more, or travel abroad: travel policies, manager approval and foreign per diems start to matter. With Moss and Spendesk, comparing means requesting quotes, because there are no list prices.
• Lots of incoming invoices as well: then a tool that handles invoices and expenses together is the more likely fit.

Where an AI employee is enough instead of an app

An expense app with its own card asks for the receipt at the moment of payment. If the card runs through your bank instead, and the card statement, receipts and bookkeeping sit in different systems, the matching at month end remains. That's the part Peter handles for me. He has been running in my business since August 19, 2026, works in my bookkeeping interface in the browser and matches a CSV export of the card statement line by line against the receipts. In his first run he screened 116 receipts and matched 38 of 40 correctly, in just over an hour. My bookkeeper otherwise needs about 9 hours a month for the same groundwork. He flagged the other two as open instead of forcing them. He doesn't book entries; final approval stays with me and my accountant.

If you already have a bank company card and accounting software with receipts, few people travel and the effort is mostly matching, a new system with its own card may be more than you need. An AI employee like Peter works in the systems you already have. He doesn't calculate per diems today, though: "Pre-sort travel expenses" is only listed on his page as another possible use, and he takes on such additional steps only once they have been taught, tested and approved. What that looks like on a worked test case is shown in Credit Card Reconciliation: An AI Test Run. If many people travel and need approvals on the road, an app fits better, and the two can coexist. Why a person stays at the approval step is explained in Human in the Loop: Meaning and Examples.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free expense app?

For individuals, yes: Expensify's free plan covers receipt scanning, mileage and reports. For teams, the others mainly offer trials; Moss mentions a free start with cards or invoices. DATEV Upload mobil is free but calculates nothing (as of November 2026).

Which expense app calculates German per diems automatically?

Pleo, Circula, Candis (from Plus), Moss and Spendesk say they calculate German meal allowances themselves. Expensify's pricing page doesn't say so. Test it with a real trip before you commit.

Which expense app connects to DATEV?

Pleo, Circula, Candis, Moss and Spendesk state a DATEV connection; Pleo, Moss and Circula are listed in the DATEV marketplace. Agree with your accountant beforehand which transfer they accept.

Do I need an expense app as a freelancer?

Usually not. Without employees there are no approvals or reimbursements to handle; your accounting software's receipt feature and the per diem template are enough.

What to do next

Take your last three months and count two things: how many travel days with per diems there were, and how many card items had no receipt at month end. Many travel days point to an app that calculates per diems, many open card items to clean matching. Then test two vendors with the same real trip. If a business meal was part of it, you also need the right receipt, see Business Meal Receipts in Germany: Template.

How Peter was trained, with a written process description, a learning mode and approval, is something I show in my community AI Employee Framework. Bring your expense workflow to the live call.