Motoring & Fleet
Compare vehicle tracking
Tracking is cheap per vehicle and sold on three-to-five year contracts. The contract term, not the monthly price, is what you are really agreeing to.
Fleet tracking has become inexpensive and genuinely useful: live location, route history, idling and speeding reports, driver behaviour scoring, mileage capture for HMRC, and integration with job scheduling. For fleets doing a lot of reactive work, the routing gains alone tend to justify it.
Two things trip businesses up. First, the contracts are long and hardware is often bundled into the monthly price, so leaving early means paying it out. Second, tracking employees is processing their personal data — you need a lawful basis, a documented assessment, and to tell your drivers. Doing it quietly is both an employment relations problem and a UK GDPR one.
What it should cost
| What you are buying | Indicative UK cost |
|---|---|
| Hardwired tracker, per vehicle per month | £10 – £20 |
| Plug-in OBD tracker, per vehicle per month | £8 – £15 |
| Hardware, if bought outright | £50 – £150 per unit |
| Installation, per vehicle | £20 – £60 |
| Dash cam with tracking | £20 – £40 per vehicle per month |
| Asset or trailer tracker | £5 – £15 a month |
A very low monthly price almost always means a five-year term with the hardware financed inside it. Multiply it out before comparing.
What changes the price
- Contract lengthThree to five years is the industry norm. A shorter term costs more per month and is often worth it.
- Hardwired or plug-inHardwired is tamper-resistant and reliable; plug-in installs in seconds and moves between vehicles, but can be unplugged.
- What you need beyond locationDriver behaviour scoring, PTO monitoring, temperature for refrigerated loads, tacho download for HGVs, or camera integration. Each adds cost.
- IntegrationWhether it exports into your job management, payroll or fuel card reporting, or is another window someone has to look at.
- Support and coverageNetwork coverage in rural areas, and what happens when a unit fails — replacement time and who pays.
How to compare properly
Take these to every supplier. The answers are usually more revealing than the prices.
- Work out the total cost over the full term, not the monthly figure. A £12 unit over five years is £720 per vehicle.
- Ask who owns the hardware at the end, and whether you can continue with a different provider or the units are locked.
- Ask for the early termination charge in writing.
- Get a live trial on two or three vehicles before committing the fleet. Every provider offers one; take it.
- Check what reports come as standard versus what is a paid module.
- Before you switch it on: write the driver privacy notice, complete a data protection impact assessment, set a data retention period, and decide whether the system tracks out of hours. Consent is a weak basis in an employment relationship — legitimate interests, properly assessed, is normally the right one.
Ready to compare vehicle tracking?
Compare Vehicle Tracking is our dedicated site for this category, with the detail, local coverage and a quote form.
Common questions
Is it legal to track employees' vehicles?
Yes, for a legitimate business purpose, provided you tell them, document your lawful basis, complete a data protection impact assessment, and limit the monitoring to what is necessary. Covert tracking is very hard to justify.
Can we track a van outside working hours?
Generally you should not, and a privacy switch for personal use is the accepted approach. Continuous out-of-hours monitoring is difficult to defend.
Will it reduce our insurance premium?
Sometimes, particularly with camera systems and driver behaviour data. Ask your broker before you buy rather than assuming.
Do plug-in trackers work on any vehicle?
On most post-2001 petrol and post-2004 diesel vehicles with a standard OBD port. Some newer vehicles and HGVs need a hardwired unit.
Still deciding between options?
Hardwired or plug-in trackers?
Tracking is cheap per vehicle per month and sold on three-to-five year contracts. The term, not the monthly figure, is what you are actually agreeing to.
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