Published prices start at £145 a month and several vendors publish nothing at all. Here is what each UK system actually states on its own pricing page, the costs that sit underneath the headline figure, and what a garage of your size should expect to pay.
Pricing in this market is unusually hard to pin down. Ask five UK garage management software vendors what they charge and two will tell you, one will tell you a starting figure that turns out to depend on tiers they have not described, and two will ask you to book a demo first. We went through the public pricing pages of the main UK systems and wrote down exactly what each one states.
Everything below came from the vendor's own website on 13 August 2026. We deliberately did not use the "top 5 garage software compared" articles that fill the search results for this question — nearly all of them are published by one of the vendors, and while checking this piece we found several stating per-user prices and mandatory platform licence costs that the vendors' own sites do not state anywhere.
Published UK prices, August 2026
| Product | Published price | Contract | Cost to get started |
|---|---|---|---|
| Garage Shift | £50/month, or £500/year | No minimum term | None — first month £1, setup and migration included |
| Garage Hive | From £145/month | One-month rolling | Not published |
| GDS Workshop Manager1 | Express from £149/month; Managed from £249/month; Premium from £299/month | Not published | £350, £450 and £1,500 setup fees respectively |
| TechMan2 | Not published — quoted after a demo | Minimum-term Partner Plan (20% lower monthly rate), or 30-day rolling Flexi Plan | Onboarding and implementation fee on Flexi; folded into the monthly rate on Partner |
| Dragon20003 | Not published | Not published | Not published |
- 1SMS, VRM lookups and Haynes Pro data are charged as additional credits on top.
- 2Not charged per user, except on the Starter Flexi plan.
- 3Offers a 30-day free trial with no card required.
Every figure above was read from the vendor's own pricing page on 13 August 2026: Garage Hive, GDS Workshop Manager, TechMan, Dragon2000. “Not published” means the vendor does not state it publicly, not that there is no charge. Prices change — check before you decide.
Two things stand out. The first is the spread: from £50 a month at the bottom to £299 a month plus a £1,500 setup fee at the top, for products that a garage owner would describe in more or less the same words. The second is how many vendors do not publish a number at all. That is a legitimate way to sell software — a quote can reflect your size and your setup — but it does mean you cannot compare the market without booking a series of calls.
The headline price is not the price
The monthly figure is the part that is easiest to compare and the part that most often turns out to be incomplete. These are the costs that sit underneath it, all of them things at least one vendor in the table above actually charges.
- Setup and implementation fees — GDS publishes £350, £450 and £1,500 depending on tier. TechMan charges an onboarding and implementation fee on its rolling plans and folds the same cost into the monthly rate on its minimum-term plan.
- Per-user charges — some systems price per named user, so the bill grows with your headcount. It varies: TechMan states plainly that it does not charge per user except on its entry plan. Ask directly, and model the price at the headcount you expect to have in two years.
- Metered extras — GDS charges SMS messages, vehicle registration lookups and Haynes Pro technical data as separate credits. Registration lookups are not a rounding error; you use one on essentially every job.
- Technical data subscriptions — Autodata and HaynesPro are separate products with their own licence costs. Integrating with them is not the same as including them.
- Minimum terms — a lower monthly rate on a multi-year agreement is only cheaper if the system suits you for the whole term.
- Data migration — getting your customers, vehicles and history out of the old system is work, and it is sometimes quoted separately. Ask whether service history comes across or only the customer list.
The number worth comparing is year one, not month one. A £149/month system with a £1,500 setup fee costs £3,288 in its first year. A £199/month system with no setup fee costs £2,388. The cheaper monthly rate is the more expensive product.
What should a garage your size expect to pay?
A one-van mobile mechanic and a four-bay workshop with a reception desk are buying genuinely different things, and the market prices them accordingly — the trouble is that a lot of the market only really prices the second one.
If you are a sole trader or a two-person garage, the systems built for multi-site groups will quote you a number that reflects their cost base rather than yours, and you will pay for depth you have no use for. Look for a published price, no setup fee, and no minimum term, because at your size the cost of being wrong matters more than the last 10% of features. Somewhere between £50 and £100 a month all-in is a reasonable expectation.
If you run three or more bays with technicians who need Autodata or HaynesPro at the ramp, and you order parts from suppliers inside your system, you are in the £145–£300 a month bracket and the setup fee is real. That is not vendors being greedy — those integrations cost them money. Budget for year one including setup, migration and training, and ask what the metered extras add on a typical month's volume.
What Garage Shift costs
£50 a month, or £500 a year. The first month is £1. There is no minimum term, no setup fee and no implementation fee, and personalised setup plus data migration of your customer and vehicle records are included rather than quoted. There is no per-user charge. That covers online booking, DVSA vehicle lookup, jobsheets, invoices, customer and vehicle records, MOT reminders, Xero sync and email and phone support.
What it does not cover, so you are not surprised later: we do not integrate Autodata or HaynesPro, and you cannot order parts from your supplier inside the system. If either of those is central to how you work, one of the larger systems is the better buy and we would rather say so here than after you have moved.
You can open the live demo in a browser right now without a form, a call or a card, which is the cheapest way to find out whether any of this suits you.