Melio

What Melio actually does

Melio sits between your bank account and your vendors' preferences. You upload or forward a bill, choose how to fund the payment (bank transfer or card) and Melio delivers it however the vendor wants — ACH to their account, a posted cheque, even a wire — without the vendor needing a Melio account. The genuinely clever part is the decoupling: you can pay by credit card (for a 2.9% fee) even when the vendor only accepts bank transfers or cheques, which turns supplier bills into a cashflow instrument — you buy 30-odd days of float on your card and the vendor still gets paid the boring way.

Around that core, the paid tiers add approval workflows, automations and team seats, and the platform syncs with accounting software so bills do not get keyed in twice.

Who it's for

US small businesses that pay vendors by bank transfer or cheque and are tired of doing it manually through a bank portal. The free Go plan fits a business paying a handful of bills a month; the paid tiers fit teams that need approvals and multiple users. Because payments fund from a US bank account, this is a US-business product first — international payments exist (a flat $20 for USD transfers abroad) but they are an extra, not the point. If most of your payments leave the country, a dedicated international account is the better primary tool.

Pricing reality (verified July 2026)

Melio runs four self-serve plans, and the annual rates are 20% below monthly:

• Go — free, 1 user, 5 free ACH payments a month.
• Core — $25/month, or $20/month billed annually. 20 free ACH a month, extra users $10/month each.
• Boost — $55/month, or $44/month annually. 50 free ACH a month.
• Unlimited — $80/month, or $64/month annually. Unlimited free ACH and unlimited users.

Past your free allocation, ACH costs $0.50 per payment. The rest of the fee schedule is where you should pay attention: cheques are $1.50 each, wires $10, instant transfers and same-day ACH 1% (capped at $75), and paying by card costs 2.9% regardless of how the vendor receives the money. International USD transfers are a flat $20.

The plan maths is straightforward. A business making 20 vendor payments a month on Go would pay 15 x $0.50 = $7.50 in overage — so Core at $20/month annual only wins once you value the approval workflows and extra automations, not on ACH fees alone. Annual billing saves $60 a year on Core, $132 on Boost and $192 on Unlimited.

One structural note on choosing a tier: the free ACH allocations are monthly, so size your plan on a typical month rather than a peak one — an occasional heavy month is cheaper absorbed at $0.50 per extra payment than by upgrading to a tier you only need in December. And if more than two or three people touch payables, price Unlimited early: two extra seats on Boost ($20/month) already close most of the gap to Unlimited's $64 annual rate, which also removes ACH counting from your life entirely.

How the offer works

There is no promo code and none is needed. The pricing page offers 30 days of unlimited free ACH payments and advanced automations with no credit card required — effectively a full-fat trial of the paid experience. When it lapses you land on whichever plan you chose, or on the free Go plan, which remains free indefinitely with its 5 monthly fee-free ACH payments. That structure means a genuinely light-volume business can use Melio at $0 forever and only pay when a bill needs to move faster or fund from a card.

Honest limitations

The fee schedule rewards patience and punishes urgency. Standard ACH is free or $0.50; the moment you need speed, you are paying 1% for same-day ACH or instant transfers (up to the $75 cap) or $20-50 for fast and overnight cheques. The 2.9% card fee also needs honest maths: on a $10,000 supplier bill that is $290 for roughly a month of float — sensible occasionally for a genuine cash crunch or to hit a card sign-up bonus, expensive as a habit.

Two structural points as well: per-user pricing on Core and Boost ($10/month each extra seat) adds up for a finance team of any size, which is exactly what pushes you to Unlimited; and Melio is accounts payable first — if you want a full spend-management layer with corporate cards and expense controls, that is a different product category.

How it compares

Against Bill.com, the incumbent in SMB accounts payable, Melio wins on entry price: it has a real free tier while Bill.com charges per user from the start, and Melio's paid plans are simpler to reason about. Bill.com counters with deeper AP/AR workflows, more mature approval chains and broader accountant adoption — if your accountant already lives in it, that gravity is worth something. For a small business choosing fresh, Melio's free-to-start model is the lower-risk on-ramp.

Against Wise, they solve different halves of the problem. Wise is the better tool for international payments — real mid-market FX instead of Melio's flat $20 USD transfer fee and conversion rates — but it is not an AP workflow with bill capture and approvals. Plenty of businesses run both: Melio for domestic vendor bills, Wise for paying overseas contractors and suppliers. If your spend is card-centric, Ramp attacks the same cashflow problem from the corporate-card side instead.

Our verdict

Buy — starting free. The Go plan costs nothing, covers 5 fee-free ACH payments a month indefinitely, and the 30-day unlimited trial lets you stress-test approvals and automations without a card on file. Treat the 2.9% card option as a deliberate cashflow tool rather than a default, keep urgent-payment fees in check, and Melio is one of the cheapest ways for a US small business to get real AP software.