Ask a dispatch vendor what their platform costs and the answer is always “it depends”. That is true, and also convenient. What it depends on is buried in the contract, surfaces on the first invoice, and gets argued about during year two renewal. By which point you have moved your whole operation onto their software and cannot leave without six weeks of pain.
This post is the price breakdown nobody wants to write. We have sat on enough vendor calls with firm owners to know what the real numbers look like. Below are the actual pricing ranges for the four main UK platforms, the hidden fees you should be watching for, and a short list of contract traps that have bitten firms we work with.
The Three Ways Dispatch Platforms Charge You
Every UK dispatch system charges across three buckets. Understand the buckets and the comparisons get easier. Miss a bucket and you are underestimating the true cost.
- Setup fees. One-off, charged on contract start. Covers onboarding, training, account configuration, sometimes data migration.
- Recurring licence fees. Usually per-vehicle or per-driver per month. Sometimes tiered. This is the biggest line on your invoice.
- Transactional fees. Per-booking, per-app-job, per-SMS, per-card-payment. The sneakiest bucket. Often hidden in the tariff schedule, not the main contract.
When you compare platforms, compare the total of all three over three years, not the headline per-vehicle monthly. A cheap-looking platform can end up more expensive once the transactional fees add up.
Price Ranges by Platform
Here is what we see UK firms paying in 2026. These figures come from firms we work with on the website side, not from vendor marketing. Every figure is a range because pricing varies with fleet size, contract length, and negotiation skill.
| Platform | Setup fee | Per-vehicle monthly | Driver app fee | Booking fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| iCabbi | £1,500 to £4,000 | £15 to £25 | Included or £3 to £5 per driver | Mostly none, app bookings may attract fees |
| Autocab | £2,500 to £8,000 | £18 to £30 | £2 to £6 per driver | Varies, Ghost network attracts per-job fees |
| Cordic | £800 to £2,500 | £12 to £22 | Often included | Typically none on website bookings |
| TaxiCaller | £0 to £500 | £9 to £15 | Included | Small fees on card processing |
Rule of thumb. A 20-vehicle firm on iCabbi will pay around £400 a month all in. The same firm on Autocab will pay closer to £550. On Cordic, £300. On TaxiCaller, around £220 though some features will be thinner. Over three years that is a spread of £13,000, before setup and transaction fees.
Setup Fees: The Bit You Negotiate Hardest
Setup fees are the most negotiable line in the whole contract. Vendors will waive or reduce them to close a multi-year deal. If your sales rep says setup is non-negotiable, ask to speak to their manager. It takes one call.
What the setup fee actually buys varies. With iCabbi you get a dedicated onboarding manager for 4 to 6 weeks, real training sessions for dispatchers, and a test fleet. With Cordic you get less hand-holding but the platform is simpler so it needs less. With TaxiCaller you get a self-serve portal and a YouTube playlist. With Autocab you get a project manager, technical calls, and a slow but thorough ramp.
From a website integrator point of view, the setup period is when we do our best work. A proper dispatch handover from your website needs a sandbox account, a test fleet, and access to the API keys. Vendors that give this freely during setup save us days of back-and-forth. Vendors that gate the sandbox behind a support ticket turn a 2-day integration into a 2-week project.
How Vendors Hide Costs
Nobody hides costs deliberately. What happens is more like this: the headline price is quoted, and then the extras are introduced one at a time during onboarding because “you will probably want this module too”. Here are the extras we see most often, across all four platforms.
- SMS notifications. Usually 3p to 8p per SMS. A 30-vehicle firm can easily burn £150 a month on SMS alone.
- Card payment processing. On top of the dispatch fee and the card acquirer fee. Read the stack carefully.
- Passenger app branding. Some platforms charge an extra monthly fee to put your logo on the passenger app.
- Account portal module. Often an extra tier above the base licence.
- API access for integrations. iCabbi includes it. Autocab has historically gated it behind a technical setup fee. Cordic includes it. TaxiCaller includes it.
- Extra dispatch seats. Some platforms charge per concurrent dispatcher login. Factor in weekend cover.
- Data export or backup fees. Rare but present in some enterprise contracts.
When you get a quote, ask the vendor to itemise every fee. Ask for it in writing. If the quote is a single headline number with “includes everything” next to it, push back. Every platform has extras. A vendor who will not list them is one you will argue with later.
Common Contract Traps
Four traps we see repeatedly when firms ask us to review a proposed dispatch contract. None of these are industry-specific scams. They are standard SaaS contract clauses that hurt more in taxi because the switching cost is high.
Auto-Renewal With 90-Day Notice
Three-year contract that auto-renews unless you give written notice 90 days before the end. Easy to miss. By the time you remember, you are locked into another three years. Set a calendar reminder at month 30 of any 36-month contract. Do not trust the vendor to remind you.
CPI-Linked Price Rises
A clause that allows the vendor to raise the monthly fee by CPI plus two percent each year. In a low-inflation year it is invisible. In a high-inflation year it can be 10 percent. Negotiate a cap. Most vendors will agree to cap at 5 percent if you ask before signing.
Per-Driver Rather Than Per-Vehicle
The most expensive surprise in taxi dispatch. A 25-vehicle firm with 60 drivers on rotation can end up paying driver app fees for 60 people, not 25. Read the driver app licensing clause carefully. If it is per-driver, your cost will scale with staff turnover, not fleet size.
Data Ownership on Exit
What happens when you leave? Some contracts say you get a full customer and booking history export. Others say you get a PDF of summary reports. Others charge a fee for the export. At renewal time, this clause is the one that actually matters. Get your exit terms in writing before signing.
What a Fair 3-Year Cost Looks Like
Here is a realistic three-year total for a typical 20-vehicle firm, across the four platforms. Numbers include setup, monthly licence, driver app fees at 25 drivers, and a modest SMS budget of 500 SMS a month.
| Platform | Setup (one-off) | 3-year recurring | 3-year total, all-in |
|---|---|---|---|
| iCabbi | £2,500 | £18,000 | £20,500 |
| Autocab | £5,000 | £22,000 | £27,000 |
| Cordic | £1,500 | £13,500 | £15,000 |
| TaxiCaller | £300 | £9,500 | £9,800 |
Read that table carefully. Autocab and TaxiCaller differ by £17,000 over three years for a 20-vehicle firm. That does not mean TaxiCaller is better. It means they are different products serving different needs. Autocab earns that spread by handling complexity that TaxiCaller cannot. The question is whether you need the complexity.
What You Should Budget for the Website Side
Your dispatch spend is not the whole digital bill. The website that feeds bookings into the dispatch is its own budget line. For most firms, the numbers come out like this.
- Website build. £499 to £1,499 one-off, depending on tier. Our full breakdown is on the pricing page.
- Care Plan. £29 to £129 a month. Non-negotiable if you want the site to stay fast and secure.
- Local SEO. £49 to £179 a month if you want to rank for “taxi + your town”.
- Google Ads. £99 to £349 a month management fee plus ad spend, only if you need paid leads now.
A well-spent £799 on an Essential website, paired with a £69 Care Plus plan and a £99 Local SEO subscription, can swing more direct bookings than an extra £5,000 spent on the dispatch side. Website and dispatch are two halves of one system. Spending on only one is inefficient.
Reading the Small Print
Before you sign any dispatch contract, three things to do. None of them take long.
- Search the contract for “auto-renew”, “exit”, “fee”, “CPI”, and “per driver”. Read every instance.
- Ask the vendor for the current tariff schedule. This is the list of transactional fees. Cross-check against your expected booking volume.
- Check the vendor’s standing. Companies House will tell you if they are filing accounts on time. Use the gov.uk company information service to look up the vendor’s registered accounts.
For the full compare-and-decide view across vendors, see the companion piece on taxi booking system comparison. The dispatch integrations guide also covers how these contracts look from a website integrator angle.
Your Move This Week
You do not need to renegotiate your dispatch contract this week. You need to know what you are actually paying. Three concrete actions, about 45 minutes.
- Find your latest dispatch invoice. Break the total into licence, driver app fees, SMS, card fees, and anything else. If you cannot, ring your account manager and ask for a line-item breakdown.
- Find your original contract. Check the renewal date, the notice period, and the price escalation clause. Put the renewal date in your calendar 90 days before it falls.
- Book a free booking funnel audit. We will look at your current dispatch handover from the website side and tell you whether switching platforms would actually pay back. No pitch attached. Request your audit here.
For a deeper look at how our website tiers pair with each dispatch platform, see the services page. For examples of live UK firms running each of these dispatch platforms with a Taxi Elite site feeding into them, the portfolio has live screenshots.
Dispatch system prices are not mysterious. They are just opaque. Read the contract, know your volumes, budget for the extras, and you will not be surprised by your invoice in month 13. A firm that knows its own numbers pays less than a firm that does not.