Cab9 and Taxi Dispatch are aimed at the same people — UK private hire and minicab operators — which makes this the closest comparison on the site. The difference is where each sits on price, and how much corporate account work you do.
See the comparison Our pricingStraight answer. If corporate and account work is the bulk of your revenue and you want the most polished client-facing portal you can get, Cab9 is a serious contender and worth the money. If your work is mostly cash, card and app jobs from the public, you will be paying for a portal your customers never open.
Cab9 is a UK cloud dispatch platform built specifically around private hire and minicab workflows, with modern passenger and driver apps and a strong corporate account portal. The team knows the UK trade well, and the product shows it. It is positioned in the mid-market and priced by quotation, typically on annual terms.
| Taxi Dispatch (us) | Cab9 | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Cloud SaaS, published pricing | Cloud SaaS, quote-based |
| Indicative cost | £30/month for the first 5 drivers, £2 per additional driver | Quote-based, positioned mid-market |
| Setup fee | £0 — setup, tariff build and data import included | Onboarding fee usually applies |
| Contract term | Monthly rolling, no minimum term | Typically annual |
| Commission per job | None — you keep 100% of every fare | Varies; network work usually carries commission |
| Best suited to | Independent operators who want low fixed cost and no lock-in | UK private hire operators wanting a modern interface and account portals |
This single question does most of the deciding between us. Go and look at last month's job list and work out the percentage.
We do account customers properly — references and purchase orders at booking, jobs accumulating against the account, automatic month-end invoicing as PDF or CSV, and a login so clients can book and pull their own statements. It is included in the base price rather than being a tier. We would not claim it is more polished than Cab9's; we would claim it does the job for most independents.
Cab9 prices by quotation. That is normal in this market and not a criticism — it lets a supplier match the price to the fleet. It does mean you cannot compare without a sales conversation, and that the number you are quoted depends partly on how the conversation goes.
Our number is on the website: £30 per month for the first five drivers, £2 per active driver after that, £0 setup, monthly rolling. A 25-driver fleet pays £75 a month, and you did not need to ring us to find that out. When you do get a Cab9 quote, ask specifically about the onboarding fee and the contract term, since those are where the commitment actually sits.
Choose Cab9 if corporate and account work drives your business and the client-facing portal is part of how you win contracts.
Look at Taxi Dispatch if you are an independent under ~50 vehicles doing mostly public work, and you would rather have a published price and no contract than a premium portal.
Straight answers, no sales script. Still stuck? Ask us directly — we answer the same working day.
There is no single best system, only the best fit for your fleet size. Autocab and iCabbi are strong for large fleets that want network integration and have the budget for it. Cordic suits established operators comfortable with on-premise. Taxi Dispatch is built for independent operators under about fifty vehicles who want low fixed cost and no lock-in.
On total monthly cost for a small fleet, Taxi Dispatch is among the lowest in the UK market at £30 per month for five drivers with no setup fee and no per-job commission. Free tiers exist elsewhere but usually cap features, charge per SMS or take a percentage, so compare the total bill rather than the headline.
The three reasons we hear most are cost creeping up at renewal, being locked into a multi-year contract, and support that takes days to answer when the board goes down on a Friday night. Feature gaps are a distant fourth — most systems do the core job adequately.
The risk is real but manageable, and it is mostly about timing. Switch mid-week rather than before a bank holiday, run both systems in parallel for a week, and move your account customers first. Data import from any major UK system is straightforward; the harder part is retraining controllers, which takes about three days.
Yes. Your phone number belongs to your telephony provider, not your dispatch supplier, so it moves with you. Your customer and booking data is yours under GDPR and your current supplier must provide it on request. We handle the import free of charge.
Check the notice period, the auto-renewal clause, the price escalation clause and the data export terms. Multi-year auto-renewing contracts with 90-day notice periods are common in this market, and operators frequently discover the window has closed. Diarise your notice date the day you sign.
Question we haven't answered? Ask it on WhatsApp. A real person replies — usually within the hour on a working day — and good questions get added to this page.
Ask on WhatsAppWeighing up Cab9? Tell us how much of your work is account work — that's what decides it.
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