Engine vs. Navan
Both platforms book hotels, flights, and cars. See where they differ.
Trusted by these great companies
33,000+ BUSINESSES THAT HAVE DITCHED LEGACY TRAVEL MANAGEMENT FOR ENGINE.
| What’s included | Navan | Engine |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Expense fees kick in after 5 users and scale with your headcount. | No platform fee, no booking fee, and no membership fee. |
| Invoicing | Employees pay, submit expenses, and finance reconciles after the fact. | One monthly invoice with every stay already tagged to the right project. |
| Cancellations and flexibility | Non-refundable bookings stay non-refundable, even when trips get declined. | FlexPro (paid add-on) lets your whole company cancel or modify any hotel until noon on check-in day and get the full amount back as a travel credit. |
| Cost tracking | Costs get categorized through expense workflows, usually after the charge posts. | Custom Fields let travelers tag every booking with job codes or PO numbers at checkout, and it flows to invoices automatically. |
| Hotel selection | Navan publishes over two million lodging properties, sourced largely through GDS, NDC, and aggregator connections. | 1M+ hotels worldwide, with 12.5% average hotel savings, up to 70% in select cases. |
| Flights | Global flight booking across a wide range of airlines, with strong international content and integrations. | Hundreds of airlines (GDS + NDC) via a unified booking platform. |
| Meeting and event booking | 85,000+ managed events annually, with AI-assisted venue sourcing and a dedicated high-touch M&E team. | Meeting and event marketplace with dedicated planning support. |
| Customer support | Navan’s Ava AI handles routine self-service requests, with escalation to a live agent for more complex issues. | Eva, Engine’s AI assistant, handles routine questions and cancellations, with escalation to a live agent 24/7 by phone, chat, or email. |
| Group bookings | Navan’s own glossary defines a group booking as ten or more travelers, handled by a self-serve Team Travel tool or its Groups and Meetings team. | Engine books up to 8 rooms in a single self-serve booking with one approval and one invoice, and 9 rooms or more goes to Engine’s Groups team. |
| Rewards and card | Corporate card with Navan Rewards, including loyalty on hotel and airline spend. | Engine X gives you up to 10% back on hotels and cars and 1.5% on everything else, with no annual fee (other fees may apply). Loyalty passthrough on hotel, airline, and rental programs included. |
| Implementation | The business tier is self-serve. Enterprise implementations can take several months, depending on the scope. | Sign up and book your first hotel the same day, no contracts or IT integration required. |
HOW WE MAKE BUSINESS TRAVEL EASY
Flexibility guaranteed
Modify or cancel any reservation and get a refund when you book with FlexPro, a paid add-on
Consolidated invoices
Eliminate individual receipts and reimbursement cycles with DirectBill
Inventory & savings
Save an average of 12.5% with exclusive rates at over 1M hotels
Real-time visibility
Track travel activity & spend patterns across the entire organization
Double up on rewards
Import loyalty numbers to stack Engine + hotel rewards
Travel policy enforcement
Your custom policy is enforced at the time of booking
ENGINE ISN’T RIGHT FOR EVERY TEAM.
NEITHER IS NAVAN. HERE’S THE HONEST DIFFERENCE.
Choose Engine if …
- You need hotel bookings confirmed and project-coded the same day you sign up, with no implementation project.
- You want one consolidated invoice instead of expense reports and card reconciliation for every hotel stay.
- You book non-refundable rates to save money and need a way to cancel without losing the spend.
- You manage travel across multiple job sites, projects, or cost centers and need reporting that reflects those divisions automatically.
- You want a fixed-cost platform with no per-user fees that grow every time you hire someone new.
Choose Navan if …
- Your company needs a single system for travel booking, expense management, corporate cards, and AP automation under one login.
- Your team runs complex international flight itineraries where Navan’s deeper global content is the priority.
- Your organization needs managed meetings and events at scale, including the BoomPop venue-sourcing and Reed and Mackay high-touch planning.
- Navan’s enterprise reporting and spend analytics across the full T&E stack match what your finance team needs.
See Engine in action
We have some great interactive demos
BUILT FOR THE WAY REAL TEAMS TRAVEL
Healthcare
Navan’s expense and card workflows require clinical staff to pay out of pocket and reconcile after the fact, across multiple facilities and booking occasions.
Direct Bill eliminates personal card use entirely. One consolidated invoice covers all stays, with no expense reports for hotel spend.
Professional services
Navan’s expense and card workflows require post-booking reconciliation to tie hotel stays to specific client engagements or billing codes.
Engine’s Custom Fields tag every booking with client codes or PO numbers at checkout, so every hotel night flows to the right project automatically without a manual step.
Energy
Navan’s per-user expense fees scale fast when field crews rotate across project sites and headcount fluctuates by season.
Engine charges no platform fee and no per-user fee, and FlexPro covers the whole company when crew deployments shift without notice.
"We avoided $40K+ in hotel modification fees in 6 months."
Best decision we made. We can manage costs and personnel more efficiently. The rates are great, the support is great, and our travelers love being able to link their reward accounts.
Frequently asked questions
Navan Expense is free for the first 5 monthly expensing users, then charges per active user beyond that. A 50-person company with 45 active expenses pays roughly $600 per month for Expense alone. Engine charges no platform fee, no booking fee, and no membership fee. Revenue comes from supplier commissions, so the platform cost does not scale as your team grows.
With Navan, non-refundable rates are not refunded when an approver declines a booking, and Navan’s own trip fees are also non-refundable on cancellation. Engine’s FlexPro subscription covers the entire company for unlimited hotel cancellations and modifications until noon on check-in day, even on non-refundable rates. Refunds come back as a travel credit valid for one year.
Navan’s Business tier is self-serve, but Enterprise implementations can take significantly longer. One G2 reviewer in IT and Services described an experience that took more than three months from promised launch to actual go-live. Engine offers same-day setup with no IT integration required, so teams can book their first hotel the day they sign up.
Engine’s Custom Fields let teams tag every booking with job codes, PO numbers, or project names at the point of checkout. Those codes flow automatically to invoices and reports, so finance teams can pull project-level data without manual reconciliation. Navan handles cost tracking through its expense and card-based workflows, which typically require categorization after the charge posts.
Yes. Engine offers Engine X, a Visa commercial card with up to 10% back on hotels and cars and 1.5% back on everything else, with no annual fee (other fees may apply), and both physical and virtual card options.
Navan’s AI assistant, Ava, handles routine customer interactions before escalating to a human agent. Engine follows a similar model: Eva, Engine’s AI assistant, handles routine questions and cancellations, with escalation to a live agent available 24/7 by phone, chat, or email.
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See comparison*Earn up to 10% back in points on qualifying Engine travel purchases. Actual reward rates vary by purchase category and may change. Points have no cash value and are redeemable for rewards through our program.
Engine X Visa® Commercial cards are powered by Stripe and issued by Fifth Third Bank N.A., Member FDIC.