Expensify, Dext, and Smart Receipts are good tools — for different jobs. Here's where The Paper Keep fits, what only it does, and when you'd be better off with one of the others.
Pick by the job you need done, not the feature count.
A personal receipt archive that fills itself from your email.
For households, sole traders, and anyone who wants every receipt kept properly — for tax time, warranties, and whenever a receipt is suddenly needed. $3/mo flat.
Free personal capture plus corporate expense management.
Personal accounts include unlimited SmartScans, mileage and CSV export for free. Paid workspaces add categories, approvals, reimbursements, cards and accounting integrations from US$5 per member/mo.
Bookkeeping data capture.
Built for accountants and their business clients, feeding clean data into Xero, QuickBooks, and Sage. From US$25.21/mo billed annually.
A mobile expense tracker with paid automation.
The free mobile plan covers manual receipts, mileage and reports. Pro adds AI recognition, email forwarding, cloud backup and web access for US$99.99/year.
Everything below about The Paper Keep is shipped today — not a roadmap item.
| Feature | The Paper Keep | Expensify | Dext | Smart Receipts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Getting receipts in | ||||
| Scans your email inbox for receipts Gmail via read-only OAuth; Yahoo, iCloud, Fastmail and custom servers via IMAP | Built in — connect once, receipts arrive on their own | Accepts forwarded receipts, but does not scan a connected inbox | Fetch pulls from supplier portals, not your inbox | Pro accepts forwarded receipts, but does not scan a connected inbox |
| Imports years of past receipts on first connect Choose full history, the last 12 months, or new mail only — with an estimate before anything imports | From a chosen date, for connected suppliers only | |||
| Personal email forwarding address A unique address per account, so auto-forward filters just work | Includes a ready-made Gmail filter to download | Shared [email protected] — Gmail auto-forwarding is fiddly | Dedicated @dext.cc addresses | Email forwarding is included with Pro |
| Several inboxes feeding one receipt library Mix Gmail and IMAP connections — e.g. both partners in a household | Via multi-user plans | |||
| Photo & file upload PDF, PNG, JPG, HEIC | ||||
| Native mobile apps | Works in any mobile browser instead | |||
| Reading each receipt | ||||
| AI extraction of vendor, date, total, tax and currency | Claude-powered parsing of images, PDFs and emails | SmartScan | AI receipt recognition on Pro and Max | |
| Line items extracted, each with its own category | Included | Itemisation is largely manual | Line-item extraction is a paid add-on | AI recognition is included on Pro; per-line categories are not documented |
| Email receipts stay renderable for good Inline images are downloaded and stored before the retailer's CDN links expire | ||||
| Original kept exactly as submitted Untouched file plus the raw email — no re-encoding, no metadata stripped | Stores the scan, not raw emails | Pro adds cloud backup; raw-email preservation is not documented | ||
| Duplicate detection | Vendor + date + amount, with a review queue | Date + amount | ||
| Companion-receipt linking Two documents for one purchase — say a PayPal receipt and the merchant's tax invoice — kept and searchable, but counted once in totals | ||||
| Category suggestions that learn your corrections | Next receipt from the same vendor uses your choice | Categories, tags and workspace rules require a paid workspace | Smart suggestions | Basic predictions |
| Finding & trusting your records | ||||
| Full-text search inside receipts Reaches OCR text, line items, notes, tags — even the sender's email address | Ranked results with highlighted matches | |||
| Field-level audit history Before/after values for every edit, written by a database trigger so it can't be bypassed | Report-level activity log | |||
| Tags on individual line items Label the cab fare inside a receipt, not just the receipt — totals roll up by tag | Tags apply to the whole expense | Receipt-level metadata | ||
| Processing transparency A live queue page showing exactly what's being worked on, retried, or waiting | ||||
| Tax time | ||||
| Australian tax-year summaries July–June out of the box, with deductible, GST and per-category totals | Custom date ranges | Custom date ranges | Custom report periods | |
| Work-from-home deduction estimator Running-cost apportionment plus a depreciating work-asset register, built from your own receipts (Australia) | ||||
| GST / tax captured per receipt | Automatic tax capture requires a paid workspace | |||
| CSV export you can hand to an accountant | Take everything with you, any time | PDF, CSV and ZIP reports | ||
| Xero / QuickBooks integrations | Export CSV instead | Core strength | ||
| Expense reports & reimbursement workflows | The Paper Keep is a personal archive, not expense software | Core strength | Expense claims | Report PDFs |
| Mileage tracking | Via expense claims | |||
| Price | ||||
| What it costs All plans compared at their entry price for one person | $3/mo or $30/yr — everything included, 14-day free trial | Free personal account with unlimited scans; Collect US$5/member/mo; Control custom from US$9 | From US$25.21/mo billed annually (5 users, 250 documents/mo) | Free manual plan; Pro US$12.99/mo or US$99.99/yr; Max US$17.99/mo or US$139/yr |
| Large allowance without per-user pricing | 2,500 parsed receipts per rolling week; hourly pacing applies | Unlimited SmartScans on free personal accounts; paid workspaces are per member | Document allowances per plan | Free is manual; AI scanning and email forwarding require Pro |
Details for Expensify, Dext, and Smart Receipts are drawn from their public websites, documentation, and pricing pages as of August 2026, and may have changed since. Prices are in US dollars where marked. All trademarks belong to their respective owners. Spotted something out of date? Email [email protected] and we'll fix it.
Connect Gmail (read-only OAuth) or any IMAP inbox — Yahoo, iCloud, Fastmail, custom — and The Paper Keep finds receipts itself, including years of history. The others need you to forward every email or buy a separate tool to do this.
Retailers host receipt images on CDNs that go dark within 12–18 months. The Paper Keep downloads and stores every inline image the moment a receipt arrives, so it still renders perfectly years later.
A PayPal receipt and the merchant's tax invoice are the same purchase. Link them and both stay kept and searchable — but the total is only counted once. Duplicate detection alone can't do that.
For Australian users: apportion electricity, internet, and phone bills by your WFH schedule, and track depreciating work assets — immediate deduction under $300, prime-cost or diminishing-value above — straight from the receipts you already have.
Every field change is logged with before/after values by a database trigger — not application code — so the history can't be quietly bypassed. Line items are tracked the same way.
$3/month or $30/year for everything. No per-user pricing, per-document charges, line-item add-ons or ads; the 2,500-receipt rolling weekly allowance keeps ordinary use roomy while bounding automated processing. Your data is never sold, and there's a CSV export so you can leave whenever you like.
The Paper Keep doesn't try to be everything. If any of these describes you, pick accordingly.
Expensify's approval workflows, reimbursements, and corporate cards are the whole point of the product. The Paper Keep has no expense reports and no approvers — by design.
Dext exists to feed clean transactions into Xero, QuickBooks, and Sage. The Paper Keep exports CSV, but it doesn't push into accounting software.
Smart Receipts' free mobile plan includes manual receipt entry, mileage and PDF/CSV/ZIP reports. If manual capture on your phone is all you need, it costs nothing.
Weighing up a specific tool? Each page covers the full trade-offs — including when the other product is the right call.
The closest rival — both scan your inbox for receipts. WellyBox feeds small-business accounting from US$228/yr; we keep a household's receipts for $30/yr.
SparkReceipt bundles automatic inbox fetching, income, mileage and 190 currencies at a standard US$199.98/yr. If you just need receipts findable, that breadth may be overhead.
Corporate expense software vs a personal archive. If you tried Expensify for personal receipts and bounced off, this explains why.
Choosing from the whole field? Read our roundup of the best receipt apps for personal use.
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