Comparison · Expensify details checked
An Expensify alternative for personal expenses: Sorayli vs Expensify
If an employer reimburses your expenses, use Expensify. Its free personal account also scans receipts with no monthly limit. If the receipts are your own and you want an Expensify alternative, Sorayli fits better. It has monthly budgets and a subscriptions list, and it saves each item on a receipt with its own category. Neither app needs your bank login, and Sorayli has no bank connection at all.
Sorayli vs Expensify, feature by feature
Expensify's column comes only from Expensify's own website, help center and app store listings, read on September 24, 2026. The small numbers link to each source at the bottom of this page.
| Feature | Sorayli | Expensify |
|---|---|---|
| Reading a receipt | It reads the shop, the date, each item with its quantity and price, and the subtotal, tax, discounts, total and currency. The subtotal and tax are used to check the arithmetic; the app does not show them. Before you save, the review screen lets you correct the shop, the date and each item's name, amount and category. How receipt scanning works | Its pages describe SmartScan reading the merchant, date, total and currency.1 |
| Receipt scans | 10 a month on Free. Pro and Family have no monthly limit, with fair-use caps of 300 scans a month on Pro and 800 on Family. | Unlimited on a free personal account.2,3 |
| Receipts by email or text | No. Scan with the iPhone or Android app, upload a photo on the web, type a purchase in, or import a CSV file. | Forward receipts to an Expensify email address, or text a photo to 47777 from a US number.1,4 |
| Categories | Each item gets a suggested category you can change. Every plan. | Its pricing page says expense categorization needs a paid plan. Anyone can create a free Submit workspace, which Expensify describes as a plan for employees and which includes categories and tags.2,5 Its receipt-scanning page says it uses your policies and past behavior to categorize expenses as they are created.1 |
| Budgets | Monthly budgets for one category, such as groceries, or for all your spending. Pick an alert point from 50% to 100% (80% to start); you are alerted there and again at 100%, by email, iPhone notification or both. Alerts come from a scheduled check, not the moment you pay. Free includes 2; Pro and Family have no limit. How budgets and alerts work | Its Classic help center documents budgets for Control workspaces only: a workspace admin sets monthly or yearly caps per category or tag.6 |
| Subscriptions | Mark a charge as recurring and it joins your subscriptions, with monthly and yearly totals on the web. Sorayli does not find recurring charges on its own. | Not described on the Expensify pages we read. |
| Questions about your spending | Ask in plain language, such as how much went on groceries last month, and get an answer from your own transactions. With Write mode on, you can also add a purchase by describing it in words. Each message uses one AI credit; Free includes 10 a month. | Concierge, its AI assistant, can create an expense from a chat message and look up answers about expenses in the workspaces you can access.7 |
| Bank and card connections | None. Sorayli never asks for a bank login. | Optional. Two personal cards are free; more need a paid workspace (Collect or above). Expensify says it supports over 10,000 banks in the US, Canada, the UK and the EU.8 It matches scanned receipts to transactions from a connected card.1 |
| Currencies | Each purchase keeps its original amount and currency. Sorayli converts it to your base currency at the latest daily rate it has on or before the purchase date. This works on every plan; changing your base currency later takes Pro or Family. How multi-currency tracking works | Expensify says SmartScan handles more than 160 currencies. Its Classic help center says workspaces convert expenses at the daily average rate for the purchase date.1,9 |
| Expense reports and reimbursement | No. Sorayli has no expense reports, approvals or reimbursement. | Yes. The free Submit workspace sends reports to an approver at your employer. Automatic reimbursement needs a paid workspace.5,3 |
| Accounting software | No integrations. | Accounting integrations need a paid workspace.3 |
| Mileage | Not tracked. | Distance tracking in miles or kilometers, free.3 |
| Export | On the web, Pro and Family can export transactions as CSV or account data as JSON. Receipt photos are not included. | Free, to CSV or a spreadsheet.3 |
| Where it runs | Web, iPhone and Android. | Web, iPhone, iPad, Apple Vision and Android.3,10,11 |
| Price for one person | Free, or Pro listed at $9.99 a month or $69.99 a year. | A free personal account, or Collect at $5 a member a month, billed month to month.12 |
Choose Expensify if
- Your employer reimburses you, or you send expense reports to an approver.5
- You scan more than 10 receipts a month and want to pay nothing. Its personal account has no scan limit.2
- You want card transactions pulled in and matched to your receipts.8,1
- You forward e-receipts by email, log mileage, or need an accounting integration.3
- You want an iPad or Apple Vision app. Sorayli runs on the web, iPhone and Android.10
Choose Sorayli if
- You want a receipt split into its items, each saved as its own transaction with its own category. A receipt-wide discount is spread across them, so they add up to what you paid. Expensify's pages describe SmartScan reading the merchant, date, total and currency.1
- You want a monthly budget for a category such as groceries, with an alert when spending reaches the percentage you pick (80% to start). Free includes 2. Expensify documents budgets only for Control workspaces.6
- You want the charges you mark as recurring gathered in one list on the web, with their monthly and yearly totals.
- You want an app with no bank or card connection at all, rather than one where connecting is optional.
What Expensify's business features mean at home
Most of what Expensify sells is built for a company paying back its staff. Here is what each of those features does, and whether it matters when the money is your own.
- Expense reports and approvals
- An employee submits expenses and an approver signs them off; the free Submit workspace exists for exactly that.5 At home there is nobody to approve and nobody to pay you back, so this whole step goes unused.
- Payments, company cards and accounting integrations
- These are what the paid plans add for a business.12 A household has no payroll, no company card and no ledger in QuickBooks to sync.
- Receipt scanning
- This part is useful at home, and Expensify's personal account scans with no monthly limit.3 Its pages describe SmartScan reading the merchant, date, total and currency.1 For a budget, the items matter more than the total: a $60 supermarket run can be $45 of food and $15 of cleaning supplies.
- Budgets
- Expensify documents budgets for Control workspaces, its top business plan.6 In Sorayli a monthly budget per category, with an alert at the point you pick, comes with every plan; Free includes 2.
What a household needs instead is a record of what it buys, by category, measured against a limit each month. That is what Sorayli is built around: each line of a receipt saved with its own category, budgets with alerts, and a list of the charges you mark as recurring.
What each costs
Listed prices on September 24, 2026. Sorayli's are in US dollars. Expensify's are its US prices; it sets separate fixed prices in other currencies.12
What free gets you
- Sorayli Free
- 10 receipt scans and 10 spending questions a month, 2 budgets, a subscriptions list on the web and as many typed-in purchases as you like. No card needed to sign up.
A year for one person
| Plan and what it includes | Cost for 12 months (USD) |
|---|---|
| Sorayli Free10 scans and 10 spending questions a month, 2 budgets | $0 |
| Sorayli Pro, billed yearlyNo monthly limit on scans or spending questions (fair use: 300 scans and 500 questions a month), unlimited budgets, export on the web | $69.99$5.83 a month |
| Sorayli Pro, billed monthlyThe same as Pro billed yearly | $119.88$9.99 × 12 |
| Expensify personal accountUnlimited SmartScans, email forwarding, distance tracking, CSV export3 | $0 |
| Expensify CollectAdds categories, tags and more than two connected cards3,8 | $60$5 × 12, month to month |
| Expensify Control, annualAdds budgets6,12 | $216$18 × 12 |
For one person who wants paid features, Expensify Collect costs less than Sorayli Pro: $60 over 12 months, against $69.99 for a year of Pro. Collect is billed month to month, with no yearly option for new workspaces.12 Sorayli also has a Family plan; this page compares plans for one person.
An example: you want one budget for groceries and one for eating out. Sorayli Free includes 2 budgets, so that costs $0. In Expensify, budgets are documented only for Control: $216 for 12 months at $18 a member a month on an annual plan, or $36 a member a month without one.12,6
Who each one is for
Expensify's home page calls it spend management software, and its pricing page offers paid plans for managing business expenses.13,2 It welcomes personal use too: its free-features page mentions tracking household spending without a workspace.3 Sorayli is for your own spending. It has no expense reports, approvals or reimbursement.
Keeping your bank out of it
Sorayli has no bank or card connection of any kind. You scan, type or import what you spend. Expensify does not require a connection either: it says you can import card transactions from a spreadsheet or a statement file instead.14 Our guide to tracking expenses without linking your bank sets out a weekly routine.
Moving over from Expensify
Expensify exports expenses to CSV.3 Sorayli's CSV import, on the web and in the iPhone and Android apps, finds columns by their headings, such as Date, Title, Amount, Currency and Category. Rename Expensify's columns to match in a spreadsheet, then import. Columns it does not recognize are ignored, and a row with no date is dated the day you import it. The phone apps show what they will import before they save anything. Receipt photos do not travel in a CSV file.
05 · FAQ
Questions about Sorayli and Expensify
Open any question for the full answer.
Ready to try it?
Free, no card, no bank login.
Is Expensify free for personal use?
Yes, with limits. Expensify says anyone can use a personal account for free, with unlimited SmartScans, email forwarding, distance tracking, typed-in expenses and CSV export.3 Its pricing page says features such as categorization need a paid plan, though a free Submit workspace includes categories and tags.2,5 Its own guide to tracking personal expenses has you create a workspace, which starts a 30-day free trial and then asks for a billing card.15
Does Expensify read line items and tax?
Expensify's pages describe SmartScan reading the merchant, date, total and currency.1 We found no Expensify page that says whether it reads each item or the tax, so this page makes no claim either way. Sorayli reads each line with its quantity and price, plus the subtotal, tax, discounts and total. It uses the subtotal and tax to check the receipt's arithmetic; the app does not display them.
Can I use Expensify as a budgeting app?
Not on the free plan. Expensify documents budgets only for Control workspaces, its top business plan.6 Its personal account tracks and exports what you spend, which works as a record, but it won't tell you when a category is close to its limit. Sorayli includes 2 monthly budgets with alerts on Free.
What is the best Expensify alternative for personal expenses?
It depends on how you want spending to get in. If you want receipts read item by item and no bank connection at all, Sorayli is built for that. If you would rather link your bank and have transactions arrive on their own, compare YNAB and Monarch Money, which both do.
Is there a Sorayli app for Android?
Yes. Sorayli is on Google Play, and it also runs in a web browser and as an iPhone app, all on one account. Expensify has an Android app too.11
Sources
Expensify's own pages, read on September 24, 2026. Expensify changes its plans and prices, so check its pricing page before you decide. Sorayli is not affiliated with Expensify.
- Receipt Scanning App, use.expensify.com
- Pricing, expensify.com
- Use Free Features in Expensify, Expensify Help
- Troubleshoot SmartScan Issues, Expensify Help
- Submit Workspace, Expensify Help
- Set budgets (Expensify Classic), Expensify Help
- What Concierge can help you do in Expensify, Expensify Help
- Connect Personal Cards, Expensify Help
- Set currency (Expensify Classic), Expensify Help
- Expensify on the App Store, apps.apple.com
- Expensify on Google Play, play.google.com
- Understand Expensify Pricing, Expensify Help
- Expensify home page, expensify.com
- Import Personal Card Transactions From a Spreadsheet, Expensify Help
- Track Personal Expenses, Expensify Help