Search "GPS fleet tracking cost" and almost everything on page one has the same problem: the numbers come from the vendor writing the article, comparing itself favorably to everyone else. Ranges swing from $3 to $250 a vehicle depending on who's doing the estimating, and almost nobody says where their number came from.
This one does. Every figure below is either pulled directly from a provider's own pricing page or clearly marked as a third-party estimate, because several of the biggest names in this category simply don't publish a price.
The Providers That Actually Publish Pricing
These are the only providers in this comparison with real numbers on their own site, not a "request a quote" form.
Worth noting: several of these prices only get you the entry-level tier. Azuga's $25/mo BasicFleet doesn't include the driver-safety features in its SafeFleet or CompleteFleet plans, and GPS Insight's better perks are gated behind the 36-month term, not included at the advertised starting price. Sonar's $7/mo isn't a stripped-down starter tier. It's the only plan.
The Providers That Won't Tell You Until You Call
Samsara, Motive, Verizon Connect, and Geotab, the four names that dominate "best fleet tracking software" listicles, don't publish pricing at all. Every "plans" or "pricing" page on their sites routes to a demo request or a quote form.
What's actually knowable about each of them comes from review platforms and third-party pricing aggregators, not their own marketing:
- Samsara: no public pricing. Reviewer reports and third-party aggregators consistently describe a 3-year minimum commitment, typically prepaid.
- Motive: no public pricing. Third-party estimates cluster around $20–$50/vehicle/month depending on tier, bundled with hardware under multi-year contracts.
- Verizon Connect: no public pricing. Reviewer and BBB complaints describe 3-year minimum terms with documented cases of silent auto-renewal.
- Geotab: sold exclusively through resellers, so pricing varies by reseller and isn't standardized. Third-party estimates put software around $20–$40/vehicle/month plus $80–$120 in hardware.
If a company won't put a number on its own website, that's not an oversight. It's a sales process built around getting you on a call before you can compare.
What a 3-Year Contract Actually Costs
Here's the math most pricing pages don't want you to do. Take a small business running 3 vehicles.
Sonar Telematics, over 3 years: 3 devices at $49 = $147, plus $7/month per vehicle × 3 vehicles × 36 months = $756. Total: $903. No lock-in. If the business shrinks to 1 vehicle in month 4, the cost drops immediately, because there's nothing to cancel out of.
A typical quote-only competitor, over 3 years: using a conservative low-end estimate of $25/vehicle/month (the low end of the third-party ranges cited above, before hardware or installation fees some vendors add separately): 3 vehicles × $25/month × 36 months = $2,700 minimum, committed for the full term regardless of whether the business still has 3 vehicles in month 4.
That's roughly 3x the cost of Sonar for the same fleet size, and unlike Sonar's number, it's a floor, not a ceiling. It doesn't include the fees below.
The Hidden Costs Nobody Puts on the Pricing Page
None of this shows up until a customer is already locked in. These are documented complaints, not speculation:
Azuga. Third-party analysis of Azuga's standard 36-month contracts puts the minimum commitment at $900–$1,260 per vehicle before add-ons, with early termination penalties that can reach thousands even for a small fleet. Trustpilot's review summary for Azuga specifically flags "unexpected contract terms" and "hidden auto-renewals." [1]
GPS Insight. A BBB complaint describes being billed for 23 devices when the business only used one, with promised credits that were never posted. [2] A separate Trustpilot case describes billing continuing for 5 months after cancellation, requiring the customer to dispute the charges with their credit card company directly.
Motive. Trustpilot's aggregate rating for Motive sits at 1.7 out of 5 across roughly 2,394 reviews, a sharp contrast to its 4.5-star product rating on Capterra. One reviewer wrote: "We canceled our service in March 2025, they charged us again in July without our permission." [3] Another: "They will cheat and lie to get you money and locked you in for auto renew when you did not authorize." [3]
The pattern across all three: the product reviews and the billing reviews tell two different stories, and the billing story rarely makes it into a sales call.
So What Should You Actually Pay?
For a small fleet (1 to 20 vehicles), there's no operational reason to accept a multi-year contract in a market where at least one option (Sonar Telematics) is fully transparent, month-to-month, and a fraction of the estimated cost of the quote-only players. A 3-year commitment only makes sense if a provider's feature set genuinely requires it, and for most small fleets, it doesn't.
The honest way to compare providers isn't the monthly number on the homepage. It's the monthly number, multiplied by the contract length you'll actually be held to, plus whatever the reviews say happens when you try to leave.
Sources: [1] , [2] , BBB complaint data on GPS Insight LLC [3] ,
