A passenger asks a question most firm owners hear twice a week. “Is that with the meter?” The honest answer depends on whether you are running a hackney carriage or a private hire vehicle, and the difference is more than paperwork. It sets how you price, how you take bookings, and what your website has to do to close a booking without a phone call.
Most UK firms run private hire. A few run hackney. Some run both. All of them need to understand what their website is replacing. If you run PHV only, your site is not supplementing a meter, it is replacing the meter entirely. That changes how the fare calculator has to behave.
Here is the short version.
The Legal Split in One Paragraph
A hackney carriage (the black cab or “taxi” in the strict legal sense) can be hailed in the street, picked up from a taxi rank, or pre-booked. It must have a meter. Fares are set by the local licensing authority and charged by the meter, with fixed fares only offered as an optional pre-agreed alternative. In London, the licensing authority is Transport for London; elsewhere it is the local council.
A private hire vehicle (PHV) can only be pre-booked through a licensed operator. It cannot be hailed. It cannot sit on a rank waiting for fares. The fare must be agreed at booking and is not set by a meter. Local council licensing rules apply, as set out on the gov.uk taxi and private hire licensing pages.
That split is the reason the two services exist at all. It also dictates what your website has to do.
Hackney Meter: Live Pricing, No Guesswork
The hackney meter is a regulated device. It measures distance by wheel rotation and time by an internal clock, applies the current tariff, and returns a number. The passenger watches the number go up. The meter is the source of truth.
- Base fare (flag drop). In London, around £3.80. Outside London, councils set their own figure, typically £2.80 to £3.80.
- Distance and waiting time. Charged together. The meter switches between distance and time mode depending on whether the cab is moving above a threshold speed.
- Tariff bands. Daytime, evening, night, bank holiday. London uses three bands (Tariff 1/2/3). Most councils use two. The meter picks the right one from the time of day.
- Surcharges. Extra passengers, large luggage, pets, airport surcharges where applicable. Preset on the meter.
A hackney passenger who hails a cab in the street has chosen the meter. The fare is unpredictable only to the extent that traffic is unpredictable. The law makes the meter the authority.
For a hackney firm’s website, a calculator is therefore an estimate. It uses the same tariff bands and surcharge rules as the meter, but it cannot predict traffic perfectly. The honest thing to do is show a range, label it as an estimate, and offer a pre-booked fixed fare as an alternative for airport and long-distance runs.
Private Hire: Locked at Booking
Private hire works the opposite way round. No street hails. No meter running up on the dashboard. The price is agreed before the car moves, and that price is what the passenger pays at the door, regardless of traffic.
This sounds like a constraint. It is actually a sales advantage, and a bigger one than most PHV firms use. A passenger deciding between a fixed £38 quote from your site and a “surge at 1.6x” Uber estimate will take the fixed quote almost every time, especially if they are flying out of an airport and cannot afford a surprise.
The downside is that you have to be confident in the quote. A PHV firm that quotes £38 for a run that the driver spends an hour on in traffic is eating that hour. Your fare calculator has to model the typical time and distance well enough that the quote is right for the journey, not just right for the miles.
How a Website Calculator Replaces the Meter
For a PHV firm, your website calculator is not a marketing gadget. It is the meter. It is how the passenger finds out what the journey costs, and it is the contract the driver honours. Build it cheap and you are building a bad meter.
A calculator that actually replaces the meter does four things the meter does, and it does them before the car has moved.
- Measure the job. Postcode to postcode, through a routing engine that uses real road data. Not straight-line distance. Not last year’s map. Live routing from Google, Mapbox, or OSRM.
- Apply the tariff. Base fare, per-mile rate, time of day, vehicle type. Same logic a meter would apply, only modelled in software and run before the trip starts.
- Add surcharges and options. Child seat, extra passengers, meet-and-greet at the airport, return journey. Each one priced and itemised.
- Lock the quote. Store it with a quote id. Pass it to the booking form. Send it to dispatch. Put it on the driver’s job sheet. The £38 the passenger saw on the website is the £38 on the dispatch ticket, is the £38 on the driver’s screen.
If any one of those four steps is missing, the passenger has not been quoted. They have been guessed at. And the first time a driver argues with them at the door is the last time they book you.
What Breaks If You Treat PHV Like Hackney
Some PHV firms run a meter anyway, as a dispatch aid rather than a legal instrument. That is fine inside the cab. What is not fine is letting the meter number override the quoted fare. We have seen this on four different firms.
- The website quotes £22. The driver’s meter reads £27 at the destination. The driver asks for £27. That is not a meter running ahead. That is breach of contract. The fare was agreed at booking.
- The website quotes £22. The driver adds waiting time at pickup because the passenger was five minutes late. Unless the booking terms explicitly say so, that waiting time is not chargeable. Private hire fares are fixed at booking.
- The website quotes £22. The passenger changes the drop-off mid-trip to a different postcode. That is a legitimate reason to re-quote. Re-quote on the spot, get the passenger’s agreement, and update the job in dispatch before the car moves again.
Write the rule down for your drivers and put it on the passenger confirmation. The quote is the price unless the journey changes. Simple, fair, and no more arguments at the door.
Side by Side
Here is the cheat sheet you can show a dispatcher or a new driver on day one.
| Aspect | Hackney carriage | Private hire vehicle |
|---|---|---|
| Street hail | Yes | No |
| Taxi rank | Yes | No |
| Pre-booking | Yes | Required |
| Meter required | Yes | No |
| Fare source | Meter (live) | Quote (fixed at booking) |
| Fare regulator | Local licensing authority / TfL | Operator sets, within local rules |
| Website calculator role | Estimate only | Binding quote |
Most firms we build for run PHV. That means every site has a calculator, and every calculator is the meter.
Why This Matters for Booking Conversion
A passenger booking a PHV journey is buying predictability. They want to know the number. They want it to not change. They want a firm that says “£38 at the door” and means it.
Across the six firms we have built fare calculators for, the numbers sit in the same range.
- Passengers who see a fixed quote convert to booking at 15 to 22 percent. Passengers who have to request a callback convert at under 4 percent.
- Quoted passengers cancel 30 to 40 percent less often than unquoted passengers, because the uncertainty is gone.
- Driver disputes on web-booked jobs drop to near zero once the quote is stored and passed to dispatch correctly.
That last number is the dispatcher’s favourite. No more three-way radio calls about what the website said.
What It Costs to Do Properly
A PHV-ready fare calculator with dispatch handover into iCabbi, Autocab, or Cordic sits in our Essential tier at £799 one-off. The Fleet tier at £1,499 adds multi-vehicle pricing, airport fixed fares by terminal, corporate account portal, and full booking API handover. Full breakdown on the pricing page, and the wider scope on the services page.
Working examples live at portfolio, including Surrey Executive Cars, SkyLink Cars, and Mersey Cabs. Each one runs a PHV calculator that passes a locked quote straight to dispatch.
Your Move This Week
If you run a PHV firm, your website is the meter whether you built it that way or not. Three things to check this week, about 20 minutes total.
- Book a test fare on your own site. Use a real pickup and a real drop-off. Note the quote. Then check what lands in your dispatch queue. Does the quote appear on the dispatch ticket? If not, your calculator is disconnected from your meter.
- Ask two drivers how often a passenger queries the fare on a web booking. If it is more than once a week, the quote and the charge are out of step. That is a calculator problem, not a driver problem.
- Request a free audit. We will run a test booking, trace the quote through to dispatch, and send a one-page PDF with the fixes. No pitch attached. Request your audit here.
If the whole fare calculator topic is new, start with three taps to booked for the booking funnel logic, and taxi website design for how the calculator fits into the full site. Our working example is live at taxi fare calculator.
A private hire firm’s website is its meter. Build it well, lock the quote, and stop arguing about the fare at the door.