This comparison is written by Telios Travel — we're one of the options being compared. We've done our best to represent Navan's strengths accurately, drawing from verified user reviews and publicly available information. Our goal is to help you make the right decision for your company, even if that means Navan is the better fit.
What each company actually is
Before comparing features, it's worth being clear about what kind of product each one is — because they're fundamentally different.
Navan (formerly TripActions) is a technology platform. Its core strengths are self-service booking, integrated expense management, a well-reviewed mobile app, and real-time reporting. It's built to give travelers and finance teams a single interface for booking and expenses. Support is primarily chat-based, with account management most robust at the enterprise tier.
Telios Travel is a boutique travel management company. Its core strengths are dedicated account management, a named bilingual agent team, proactive program oversight, and white-glove service. It uses SAP Concur as the booking platform and provides the human layer on top of it — handling disruptions, vendor negotiations, unused ticket recovery, and monthly reporting.
The simplest way to put it: Navan is a product you use. Telios is a service that manages your program.
Who each is best suited for
- Companies comfortable with chat-based support
- Teams that primarily self-book with minimal agent needs
- Organizations that want expense management and travel in one app
- Companies that don't need bilingual support
- Businesses where travelers are tech-savvy and self-sufficient
- EAs, admins, or finance teams doing travel on top of other jobs
- Companies that want a named person responsible for their account
- Organizations that want proactive program management, vendor negotiations, and cost savings identification — not just a booking tool
- Companies already on SAP Concur looking for better TMC support
Feature by feature comparison
| Factor | Navan | Telios Travel |
|---|---|---|
| Type of service | Technology platform (SaaS) | Managed service with dedicated team |
| Account management | Shared or rotating — no single point of contact for mid-size accounts | One dedicated account manager — your single point of contact, always available, presents your quarterly reviews in person |
| Agent support | Chat-based; phone for enterprise plans | Dedicated 5-agent team, calls answered in 3 rings |
| Response time | Chat support, response times vary | 23-minute average email response |
| After-hours support | 24/7 chat available | 24/7 in-house agents, phone and email |
| Bilingual support | Not a primary feature | In-house English & Spanish, same team |
| Booking platform | Proprietary Navan platform | SAP Concur (industry standard) |
| Expense management | Built-in, strong feature | Via SAP Concur Expense (separate setup) |
| Unused ticket management | Tracked in platform, client-managed | Proactively tracked and applied by account team |
| Vendor negotiations | Platform-level rates | Proactively negotiated for every client from day one — we go out and get the rates |
| Group travel & events | Available at higher tiers | Available for all clients |
| VIP/executive travel | Standard booking | Dedicated VIP program, priority agent access |
| Best fit spend range | Any size — strongest for frequent travelers | $100K–$2M annual travel spend |
| Pricing model | Per-user subscription + booking fees | Per-transaction, no monthly per-user fee |
What Navan users actually say
Navan has strong reviews overall — it's a well-built platform and genuinely useful for many companies. But a consistent pattern emerges in the reviews from mid-size company users that's worth understanding before you decide.
To be fair, Navan also has many positive reviews — particularly from users who appreciate the platform's ease of use, mobile app, and expense management capabilities. The pattern in the complaints is specifically around customer service responsiveness, flight inventory, and the gap between what the platform promises and what small-to-mid-size accounts actually receive in terms of support.
Navan's business model is fundamentally different from a boutique TMC. Navan's revenue comes from supplier commissions and software subscriptions. That means its incentives are aligned with booking volume and platform adoption. A boutique TMC's revenue comes from service fees — meaning its incentives are aligned with keeping your program running well, your costs down, and your travelers happy. Neither model is wrong, but they produce different behaviors when something goes wrong at 11pm before an important trip.
What if you're already on SAP Concur?
This is an important consideration. Navan is a standalone platform — it is not SAP Concur, and it competes with Concur. If you're currently on Concur and considering Navan, you'd be migrating away from Concur entirely, which is a significant undertaking.
If you're on Concur and unhappy with your current TMC's service — which is a very common situation — you don't need to change platforms. You need a better TMC. Telios transfers your existing Concur instance to us in a single day. Your travelers stay on the same platform they already know, your profiles and policies carry over, and what changes is the service layer on top.
Pricing — what you actually pay
Navan's Business Travel tier is free for companies under 300 employees, funded by supplier commissions. The Business Expense tier (expense management + travel) costs $15 per user per month. For a 100-person company, that's approximately $17,000 per year before any booking fees or add-ons. Enterprise pricing is negotiated separately.
Telios Travel charges per transaction — a standard fee for self-service Concur bookings and a higher fee for agent-assisted bookings. There's no monthly per-user subscription. For companies that primarily self-book through Concur, the total cost is often lower than a per-user SaaS model at scale. For companies that rely heavily on agent-assisted bookings, the comparison depends on volume.
The honest answer is that a direct cost comparison requires knowing your booking volume, team size, and service needs. We're happy to model this out for you specifically — contact us with your approximate annual travel spend and we'll show you exactly what the comparison looks like for your company.
