AutoFileEmail vs Dext: which one fits how you work?
Dext extracts receipt data into Xero or QuickBooks from $25.21 a month. If nobody is doing your books, you just need the PDFs filed in your own Drive.
AutoFileEmail
Email → your Drive
Dext
Receipts → bookkeeping data
If you need the numbers in your books, take Dext. If you need the files in your Drive, take us.
Dext reads your receipts and pushes structured data into Xero, QuickBooks or Sage. That is a bookkeeping pipeline, and it is genuinely good at it. AutoFileEmail does not read anything — it takes the attachment out of the email and files it in your own Drive under the sender's domain. Different jobs. The question is whether anyone is actually doing your books.
Side-by-side, line by line.
What each product actually does, what it costs, and where it draws the line.
AutoFileEmail | DDext | |
|---|---|---|
| PRICING | ||
| Starting price Published list price, single business | Free, forever 1 inbox, forward filing. Pro is $14.99 / mo or $149 / yr. | $25.21 / mo Business plan, excl. tax. $302.50 billed annually. Includes 5 users. |
| Is there a document cap? What happens when you send more | ✓No monthly cap We do not OCR, so a receipt costs us storage and nothing else. Lifetime cap is 50,000 emails. | ~250 documents / month The Business plan includes 250 / mo; higher volumes move you to custom pricing. |
| Backfilling old receipts The years already sitting in your inbox | $29 / $59 / $99 one-time Tax Year, 3-Year or Lifetime pack. One-time, never a subscription. | ~Counts against your monthly documents Historical documents consume the same 250 / mo allowance as new ones. |
| WHERE YOUR FILES LIVE | ||
| PDFs filed into your own cloud Google Drive / Dropbox / OneDrive | ✓That is the entire product Files land at /AutoFileEmail/{sender-domain}/{year}/{month}/ in an account you already own. | ~In Dext, with export available Documents live in Dext and flow to your accounting package. Drive is not the destination. |
| If you stop paying, what happens to old receipts? | ✓Nothing. They are already yours The files sit in your Drive. We just stop adding new ones. | ~Export before you cancel Bulk export exists, but it is a thing you have to remember to do first. |
| WHAT IT DOES TO RECEIPTS | ||
| OCR / line-item extraction Vendor, total, tax, per-line detail | ✕None, deliberately We never open the file. That is why the free tier can stay free and why we hold no data worth leaking. | ✓Full extraction Line items, totals and tax, built to feed a transaction list. This is what you are paying for. |
| Pushes into Xero / QuickBooks / Sage | ✕No We are the filing layer. Your CPA works from the folder. | ✓Native, and the point of the product Deep integrations with the major ledgers. |
| Who can read your receipts | ✓You and whoever you share the folder with We move bytes. We do not index contents. | ~Dext, by design Extraction requires reading the document. That is not a flaw, it is the mechanism. |
When each one is actually the right call.
We'll be honest, Dext is the better tool for a specific kind of customer. Just probably not the one reading this page.
Nobody is doing your books, and April is the only time it matters.
- You are a freelancer, solo founder, consultant or one-person LLC.
- Your accountant wants a folder of PDFs, not a dashboard login.
- You do not run Xero, QuickBooks or Sage at all.
- You want the receipts to still be yours if you stop paying.
Someone reconciles your transactions every month.
- You or a bookkeeper post transactions into a ledger regularly.
- You need totals and tax extracted, not just the original PDF.
- You are a practice handling multiple clients.
- 250 documents a month and 5 users fits how you work.
What each one really costs.
Both products bury pricing differently. Here's the apples-to-apples for a single freelancer or solo operator.
AutoFileEmail Pro
- No monthly document cap
- Up to 5 inboxes, Drive / Dropbox / OneDrive
- Forward filing free forever on 1 inbox
- Backfill packs one-time, $29 / $59 / $99
Dext Business
- 5 users, 250 documents per month
- $302.50 billed annually
- OCR with line-item extraction
- Xero / QuickBooks / Sage integrations
Already using Dext? Here's the migration.
The switch takes about ten minutes.
Export from Dext
Pull the original documents out of Dext before the subscription lapses.
Drop the export into Drive
Anywhere you like. Our folders sit under /AutoFileEmail/ and will not collide.
Connect your inbox
One Google or Microsoft sign-in. Forward filing starts on the next message.
Decide about the back years
A one-time Backfill Pack re-files what is still sitting in your inbox. Skip it if Dext already has them.
Keep the extracted data, take the files with you.
If Dext has already pushed your line items into Xero or QuickBooks, that work is done and it stays done. What you are moving is where the source PDFs live from here on.
Leaving a ledger behind too? The Backfill Pack covers whatever is still in the inbox, which for most people is everything.
Honest questions.
Is AutoFileEmail a drop-in replacement for Dext?
No, and it would be dishonest to say so. Dext's job is extraction: it reads a receipt and turns it into a transaction in your ledger. We do not do that and have no plans to. If a bookkeeper reconciles your accounts every month, Dext is earning its money. AutoFileEmail replaces Dext only in the common case where nobody was ever using the extracted data, and the receipts just needed to be findable.
What does Dext actually cost?
The Dext Business plan is listed at $25.21 per month excluding tax, or $302.50 billed annually, and includes 5 users and 250 documents per month. Plans for accounting practices are priced per client per month with a 10-client minimum. Figures read from dext.com/us/business/pricing on 2026-09-23 — check it before quoting them back to anyone, pricing pages move.
I am leaving Dext. Do I lose the data it already extracted?
No. Anything Dext already pushed into Xero, QuickBooks or Sage lives in that ledger and stays there. What you are changing is where new source documents get filed from here on. Export your originals out of Dext before the subscription lapses, drop them anywhere in Drive, and connect your inbox for forward filing.
Why would I want a tool that does not read my receipts?
Two reasons. It keeps the free tier genuinely free, because OCR is the cost that forces every competitor to meter you per document. And it means we hold nothing worth breaching — we move an attachment from your mailbox to your Drive and never open it.
Try the version where your files are yours.
2-min setup · No credit card · We don't read your documents.