Search for dispatch software and you get two entirely different product worlds in the same results. In German the effect is especially stark — Dispositionssoftware returns systems for LKW (lorries), Spedition (freight forwarding) and Bus alongside anything built for passenger work.
Two industries happen to share a word. One moves goods, the other moves people. The screenshots look similar — map, list, jobs, vehicles — and the systems obey completely different rules.
The classic bad purchase in passenger transport is licensing an excellent tool built for the other industry. This is how to avoid it. (The German-language version of this article, written for the PBefG framework, is also available.)
Goods or people — the split runs deep
Freight dispatch optimises load. A job is a quantity, a weight, a volume. Consignments can be combined: three deliveries in one region go on one lorry, and the software trades off capacity, routing and driving-time rules. Success is measured in utilisation per vehicle. A two-hour delay is annoying but rarely a breach.
Passenger dispatch optimises commitments. A job is one person, at a fixed time, in a fixed place. Passengers cannot be combined, because nobody accepts a detour via two strangers’ pickups. Success is measured in punctuality and in nothing being forgotten. A two-hour delay means the flight has gone.
The practical differences show up immediately in a demo:
- A freight system thinks in consignments and stops. A passenger system thinks in a booking that carries a name, a phone number, special instructions and a billing address.
- A freight system is allowed to re-plan to optimise a route. On a 04:30 airport run, every “optimisation” of the pickup time is a defect.
- A freight system has no concept of a customer who replies. In passenger work, the message “can we make it an hour earlier?” arrives two days out, and it has to land somewhere a human will see.
- Freight systems know nothing about passenger-transport law. Operator licensing simply does not exist in that product world.
If a supplier answers “which is it for — goods or people?” with “both”, ask how it handles your licensing records. That settles it quickly.
Then the second question: which kind of passenger operator
Once you are in the right industry, the next split in Germany is legal, not operational. The Personenbeförderungsgesetz (PBefG) treats taxi and private hire as separate licence classes.
Taxi may be hailed or picked up at ranks, charges an officially set tariff, and carries an obligation to serve within its area. The software’s main job is finding the nearest free vehicle fast.
Mietwagen (private hire with driver), § 49 PBefG may only carry out bookings received at the business premises, must return to base afterwards unless a new booking has already arrived, and prices are freely agreed. Work is typically booked days ahead.
Chauffeur, limousine and airport-transfer firms are almost always Mietwagen operators. Buying radio-circuit taxi software for that shape of business gives you a proximity engine you override on nearly every job — and an override is friction, not a feature.
The equivalent UK split is instant-hail versus pre-booked private hire, which I covered in why generic dispatch tools break executive work.
Six things a passenger system must do
1. Every channel lands in one place. Enquiries arrive by form, phone, email and WhatsApp. If they land in four places you lose more work to fragmentation than to competitors. Ask whether the customer’s email thread lives inside the booking or in somebody’s inbox.
2. Changes cascade. Move a pickup by 90 minutes: does the customer get a new confirmation, does the driver get re-notified, does the reminder re-schedule, does the invoice follow? In pre-booked work, change is the normal case rather than the exception — this is where systems separate.
3. Pricing by agreement, not by meter. Fixed transfer rates, hourly “as directed” with a minimum, day rates, waiting allowances, account terms. A tariff-only system forces you to write the quote by hand in an email, after which the system holds a different number from the one the customer was given.
4. Drivers with nothing to install. Every extra step — app store, account, password — costs you a driver, and you repeat it for every subcontractor. A private link that opens their jobs in a browser is the lowest-friction model. Ask what happens when you take someone on for a single weekend.
5. Corporate accounts as a real concept. A booker who is not the passenger, a cost centre on the job, agreed rates, a consolidated monthly invoice. Without it, a spreadsheet ends up running your most valuable account.
6. Records as a by-product. This is where freight systems are eliminated entirely.
The obligation freight software has never heard of
For German private hire operators the Auftragseingangsbuch is not a convenience feature. § 49 (4) PBefG requires the receipt of every transport order to be recorded at the business premises and retained for one year.
The wording matters for software buyers: the record may be kept “buchmäßig oder elektronisch (auch mittels appbasierten Systems)” — in a book or electronically, including by means of an app-based system. Paper and software are expressly equivalent, and app-based systems are named outright.
A system that captures each order with a timestamp, the customer, the route and the allocated driver produces your evidence as a by-product of normal work. Ask one question in every demo: give me every order received in a chosen month, with timestamp and allocated driver. If it takes more than a minute, you have your answer.
There is a second benefit. If you can show a follow-on booking arrived before the previous trip ended, you have documented the exception to the return-to-base obligation. Without timestamps it is your word against an inspector’s note. More detail in the digital Auftragseingangsbuch guide.
Do not confuse this with TSE. Since 1 January 2026 a certified technical security device has been mandatory for taximeters and distance recorders. That is hardware in the vehicle and has nothing to do with your dispatch software. Booking software is not a Fiskaltaxameter and does not replace a TSE — if a vendor markets “TSE compliance” for pure software, ask precisely what they mean.
What it costs
The German market prices mostly in capacity tiers — a package covering up to so many vehicles and users — rather than per vehicle.
Fahrdienstsoftware is one of the few publishing openly (as of August 2026): €79/month up to 3 vehicles and 5 users, €179 up to 10 vehicles and 20 users, €349 up to 20 vehicles with unlimited users, above that on request. Every tier carries the same features; only capacity differs. The first 30 trips are free to trial, with no time limit and no credit card.
MPC-Software (TARIS) and SuE-Software, two of the most established German names, publish no prices and route you to contact.
Capacity pricing creates cliffs worth knowing about. At three vehicles you pay roughly €26 each; at four, roughly €45 — the worst rate in the model; at ten, roughly €18. Sitting at four indefinitely is the most expensive way to run it. Full arithmetic, including the user limits that catch people out, is in what taxi and private hire software costs in Germany.
A test more honest than any demo
Bring a real, awkward job — not the supplier’s showcase:
- A booking for Tuesday week, 04:30, airport, corporate account at an agreed rate.
- Two days before: the customer messages on WhatsApp that it is now three passengers and a child seat. Where does that message go?
- The evening before: pickup moves an hour earlier. Who is told automatically?
- That morning: the assigned driver calls in sick. How long does the swap take, and does the customer hear about it?
- Month end: a consolidated invoice for the account.
- Finally: export every order received last month.
A system that manages one to six without a spreadsheet and without ringing support is built for passenger transport. If it stalls at two or three, you are looking at a freight system wearing a passenger label.
The order I would buy in
One to three vehicles. The cheapest tier that captures every enquiry and sends a confirmation. Your constraint is winning work, not dispatching it — spend the difference on visibility rather than headroom you will not use.
Four to ten vehicles. You are paying for the larger tier anyway, so use it. The automations earn their keep here: a reminder before pickup, a nudge on unpaid invoices, a review request afterwards. They run without you.
Eleven and up. The questions move from price to exit — can you export everything yourself, does the price hold at renewal, whose merchant account is it. A poor contract costs more than a thin feature set at this size.
We build RideDesk, so treat that as a disclosure rather than a neutral recommendation. It is built for pre-booked passenger work — not freight dispatch, and not a 200-car radio circuit. Every booking, email and WhatsApp message sits in one place, drivers get a private link with nothing to install, invoicing runs through your own Stripe account, and each order is recorded with a timestamp and its allocated driver. For a haulier it is the wrong tool, and we would rather say so first.
However you decide, settle the industry question first, the licence-class question second, and the feature list last. Reverse that order and you buy an impressive system for a business you do not run — and you find out in the first month something goes wrong.
General information as of August 2026; not legal or tax advice. Prices and obligations change — verify current supplier figures and confirm your position with your licensing authority and tax adviser.
