Alternatives
Cab Treasure alternatives — including when to stay put
Cab Treasure sells a dispatch-and-booking suite to taxi and private-hire operators, typically as an installed system quoted per fleet rather than off a public price list. If you are looking, it is usually one of three things: a renewal quote they cannot benchmark, a console that only runs on one machine at the office, or an upgrade that needed a Saturday night outage. This page maps the honest options, including staying put.
The trigger
Why operators start looking past Cab Treasure
The price is a negotiation, not a rate card
Cab Treasure quotes per fleet and publishes no public rate card, so you cannot benchmark your renewal against anything. Anyone quoting you a precise monthly figure for it is guessing — we hold no price sheet either. Establish four things on your renewal call: per vehicle or per active driver, whether a monthly minimum applies, the one-off setup, and the notice period.
Licence plus hardware is capital, not subscription
The model is a software licence alongside kit you buy and maintain — office machines, in-car terminals, whatever the install needs. That cost is committed up front and does not shrink when your fleet does, so a seasonal operator carries winter at summer prices. Cloud platforms bill monthly instead, which is worse if you like owning assets and better if your vehicle count moves.
The console is installed, so the dispatcher is tied to the desk
A desktop-installed dispatch console lives on specific machines at the office. Covering a Sunday from home, running an extra position at the airport stand, or standing up dispatch somewhere else after a burst pipe all become hardware problems rather than login problems. Operators usually notice this the first time they need a dispatcher to work anywhere except the room the software is installed in.
Upgrades are events you schedule an outage around
Installed software is upgraded on your premises, which means version jumps get planned as evening or weekend maintenance windows with dispatch paused and drivers told to fall back to the radio. There is also no quick way back if a release misbehaves. Whether that matters depends entirely on how often you actually upgrade — some operators sit on one version for years quite happily.
The other side
When staying on Cab Treasure is the right call
Stay if the installed model is a feature for you: your data sits on hardware you own, dispatch keeps running when the internet does not, and your dispatchers are genuinely fast on a workflow they have used for years. Trained dispatchers and a paid-for licence are real assets. Do not replace a system that is working.
The options
What operators actually move to
TaxiDex
That’s usFleets that want published per-driver pricing and a console that runs in a browser
Cloud dispatch billed per active driver — £11 Starter, £9 Professional, from £7 Enterprise, £79 monthly minimum, 14-day trial, setup scoped and quoted on the demo call. The console runs in any browser. The passenger app and web booker carry your brand; the driver app stays TaxiDex-branded. We are a young product, and small enough that you talk to the people building it.
Autocab
Operators whose growth depends on overflow work from a national supplier network
Autocab's real asset is its operator marketplace: national accounts and overflow jobs pushed between member fleets. If a meaningful share of your work would come from that network, no independent platform replaces it, including us. Pricing is a custom enterprise quote — we hold no price sheet, so treat any figure you read as indicative and get your own.
Onde
Small or new fleets launching a consumer ride-hailing brand with minimal fixed cost
Onde is a white-label ride-hailing platform commonly sold as a base fee plus a share of revenue. That shape suits a small or launching fleet with unpredictable volume better than any per-driver subscription does, because cost follows trips. It leans ride-hailing rather than phone-and-account dispatch, so test phone bookings, account customers, and complex tariffs against your own mix before committing.
Sherlock Taxi
Very large multi-depot fleets wanting bespoke algorithmic dispatch and ERP-grade back office
Built originally to run a major London operator, Sherlock is ERP-shaped: bespoke allocation algorithms and deep back-office. Commonly quoted around £2.50–£10 per vehicle a month with a five-figure one-time implementation — indicative only, get your own quote. If you have the capital and the complexity to justify that project, it is a serious answer that we are not.
Competitor pricing and terms quoted anywhere on this site are indicative market figures, not quotations we hold. Confirm the current number, and the line items around it, directly with the vendor.
Practicalities
What moving off Cab Treasure involves
Where Cab Treasure runs on your own server — check yours, deployments vary — you start ahead: the database is on hardware you control, so ask for a schema-level export, not PDF reports. Expect vehicle-centric data, since licences and records hang off vehicles rather than drivers, so driver mapping needs rebuilding. Zones, tariffs and dispatch rules usually live in config and export badly. Keep the old licence live as rollback.
If the trigger was the renewal quote rather than the software, the anatomy of that bill is broken down separately in what Cab Treasure actually costs — the billing unit, and the charges that sit outside the headline rate.
The mechanics are the same whichever platform you land on: export and establish what you actually own while you are still a paying customer, then run both systems in parallel and cut over shift by shift with the old one still licensed behind you. That method is published in full as the 14-day migration protocol.
Free guide
Score them all on the same scale
The buyer's guide is the requirements worksheet and weighted scorecard we use — vendor-neutral, so it works just as well for shortlisting someone other than us.
What does Cab Treasure cost?
There is no public rate card — it is quoted per fleet, so no honest single number exists and anyone publishing one is guessing. We hold no price sheet for it either. On your call, pin down: per vehicle or per active driver, any monthly minimum, the one-time setup fee, the contract term and the notice period. For contrast, TaxiDex publishes £11 per active driver on Starter, £9 on Professional, from £7 on Enterprise, with a £79 monthly minimum.
Is it worth switching just because Cab Treasure is older software?
No. Age is not a cost. Switch when you can name the specific thing it is costing you — a renewal you cannot benchmark, hardware you keep replacing, a dispatcher who cannot cover a shift from home, an upgrade window that took a Saturday night. If none of those apply, the migration risk is real and the upside is theoretical. Write down the trigger before you take a single demo.
What happens to my in-car hardware and terminals?
Cloud platforms run on the driver's own phone, so dedicated terminals and their data plans become decommissioning work rather than a migration task. Budget for it: recovering units from drivers takes longer than anyone plans, and any hardware still under a finance or support agreement keeps billing after you stop using it. Check what your agreement says about early termination before you set a cutover date.
What is the honest downside of moving to a cloud platform like TaxiDex?
Three things. You depend on your internet connection and on our uptime rather than on a box in your own office. You give up the control that comes with owning the install. And TaxiDex is a young product, so you are betting on a small team rather than on an established installed base. We do not promise a zero-downtime cutover; we publish a 14-day protocol that runs both systems live with the old one kept as rollback.
Will my drivers need to learn a new app?
Yes, and that is the part operators underestimate. The fix is sequencing, not software: tell drivers before cutover rather than on the day, run both apps in parallel so nothing is forced, and move the overnight shift first because it is the lowest-volume and most forgiving. On TaxiDex the passenger app and web booker carry your brand; the driver app is TaxiDex-branded, which is worth knowing before you promise otherwise.
Comparing Cab Treasure with TaxiDex?
Bring your driver count, your current rate and your contract end date. We will tell you on the call whether switching is worth it for your fleet — including when it is not.