Alternatives
Sherlock Taxi Alternatives, Compared Honestly
Sherlock Taxi sits at the enterprise end of UK dispatch — an ERP-style platform originally built in-house for a large London private-hire operation, sold to fleets that want dispatch logic engineered around their operation rather than configured from a menu. Operators start shopping when they price the implementation, or when they realise the attractive per-vehicle rate is written for a fleet several times their size.
The trigger
Why operators start looking past Sherlock Taxi
The implementation fee is the real gate
The licence is rarely what stops people. Implementation for a platform of this class is commonly quoted around £7,500 to £15,000 as a one-time project fee — indicative, not a price sheet we hold, so check your own quote. For a mid-size fleet that is a serious capital outlay before a single job has been dispatched.
The cheap rate is written for a fleet you probably aren't
Bands for this platform are commonly quoted from roughly £2.50 to £10 per vehicle per month, with the low end reserved for fleets above about 500 vehicles. Under a hundred cars you sit at the top of the band, paying enterprise rates for a fleet that never triggers the enterprise discount. Treat those figures as indicative and check your own quote.
Per-vehicle billing when cars outnumber drivers
Billing is quoted per vehicle. On most fleets the vehicle count is higher than the number of drivers working — spares, seasonal cars, a car off the road for plating. Every one still carries a seat charge. Ask your account manager whether you are billed per vehicle or per active driver; on a mixed fleet that definition moves the bill more than the rate does.
Bespoke is a two-way street
The thing that makes this platform good — dispatch logic configured around your operation — is also what makes it slow. Configuration is a project, change requests are projects, and the term is a custom enterprise agreement rather than a rolling month. Operators who want to try a rule on Tuesday and drop it on Thursday find the cadence doesn't fit how they run.
The other side
When staying on Sherlock Taxi is the right call
If you genuinely run at the scale this was designed for — hundreds of vehicles, complex account structures, dispatch rules nobody else's menu covers — Sherlock earns its fee. If the figures commonly quoted for the largest bands hold for your quote, the per-vehicle rate is competitive at that scale, the bespoke work is real engineering rather than a config screen, and switching buys you a simpler product than your operation needs.
The options
What operators actually move to
TaxiDex
That’s usMid-size taxi and private-hire fleets that want published per-driver pricing and a published 14-day migration protocol
Priced per active driver: £11 on Starter (1–20 drivers), £9 on Professional (21–100), from £7 on Enterprise, with a £79 monthly minimum and a 14-day free trial. Setup is a one-time fee scoped on the demo call. Park a car for the winter and it stops billing. It is a young product — a published 14-day migration protocol, not a track record.
Autocab
Fleets whose revenue depends on overflow work from a national UK partner-fleet network
Autocab runs the largest UK partner-fleet network, and if a meaningful share of your jobs arrives through that marketplace, no honest comparison tells you to leave it — we do not have an equivalent network. The trade-offs: pricing is quoted per fleet rather than published, billing is commonly per vehicle, and Uber has owned Autocab since 2021.
iCabbi
Large multi-site operators who want an established vendor without a bespoke implementation project
If the reason you are leaving is the project fee rather than the enterprise class of the product, iCabbi is the obvious like-for-like: an established UK and Ireland platform with the scale references a board will ask for. Billing is commonly per vehicle and pricing is quote-only, so the per-car maths may not improve much. Check your own quote.
TaxiCaller
Small fleets under about twenty cars that want the simplest possible cloud dispatch
Some operators end up on an enterprise platform they never needed. If that is you, a plain per-vehicle cloud SaaS is the honest answer — commonly quoted around $28 to $29 per active vehicle with no setup fee. The catch is white-labelling: a branded passenger app is a separate one-time cost, commonly quoted from $1,500. Indicative figures only.
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 Sherlock Taxi involves
Two things do not export. Your dispatch rules live in bespoke configuration written for your operation, so they get rebuilt, not imported — budget rule-parity work, not a data load. And a custom enterprise term usually carries a notice period: get your end date in writing before you shortlist. Ask for CSV or SQL, not PDF reports, and expect vehicle-keyed records that need remapping to driver seats.
If the trigger was the renewal quote rather than the software, the anatomy of that bill is broken down separately in what Sherlock Taxi 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.
How much does Sherlock Taxi cost?
It is quoted, not published. The figures that circulate for this class of platform are roughly £2.50 to £10 per vehicle per month, with the low end applying only to fleets above about 500 vehicles, plus a one-time implementation fee commonly put at £7,500 to £15,000. We hold no price sheet from them, so treat all of that as indicative and get your own quote in writing — including whether you are billed per vehicle or per active driver.
Do I lose algorithmic dispatch by moving off Sherlock Taxi?
Not the capability — possibly the bespoke edges. Automated allocation with nearest-driver and ETA-aware assignment plus manual dispatcher override is standard across the modern platforms, TaxiDex included, and it is on every plan here rather than a paid tier. What you lose is logic written specifically for your operation. If your dispatch depends on rules no configuration screen exposes, prove parity by replaying real historical jobs through both systems before you commit.
What is the cheapest alternative to Sherlock Taxi?
Cheapest depends entirely on how you are counted. Under about twenty cars, a plain per-vehicle cloud SaaS, commonly quoted without a setup fee, is usually the lowest sticker — confirm that on your own quote — but budget separately for a branded passenger app. Above that, per-active-driver billing normally wins on a fleet where cars outnumber working drivers: TaxiDex is £11 per active driver on Starter, £9 on Professional and from £7 on Enterprise, with a £79 monthly minimum. Run both models against your own driver and vehicle counts.
How long does it take to move off Sherlock Taxi?
Our published protocol runs fourteen days: days one to three for export and rule rebuild, days four to ten running both systems live with drivers carrying both apps, days eleven to fourteen cutting over shift by shift starting overnight. The old system stays licensed as rollback and is decommissioned only after the third consecutive clean day. That is a protocol, not a guarantee — bespoke rule parity is the variable that stretches it. The full version is public at /migration-protocol.
Is TaxiDex a like-for-like replacement for Sherlock Taxi?
No, and it would be a bad answer if it were. Sherlock is an ERP-class platform with bespoke engineering behind it; TaxiDex is a configurable cloud product with published per-driver pricing and a 14-day trial. If your requirement genuinely needs custom-built dispatch logic, that gap is real. What you get instead is transparent billing, a rolling monthly term, and a white-label passenger app and web booker — the driver app stays TaxiDex-branded.
Comparing Sherlock Taxi 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.