Short answer: anywhere from about £30 a month to well over £400, and the headline price is rarely the whole bill. This guide lays out what the main UK garage management systems publish or are reported to charge in 2026, and the extra costs that catch independents out. Prices are the vendors' own or as reported by comparison sites at the time of writing, so check before you sign. We make GarageDash, and it is in the table, so read this as an informed take rather than a neutral one.
The 2026 price table
Monthly figures exclude VAT unless the vendor says otherwise.
| System | Published or reported price | What else you pay |
|---|---|---|
| GarageDash | £29/month per garage | Nothing. Unlimited users, no setup fee, no contract. |
| Workauto | From £30/month | Tiered plans, price rises with features. |
| AutoChain | £69.99/month + VAT | No long-term contract. |
| Garage Hive | £89 to £145/month | Runs on Microsoft Dynamics Business Central, so a Microsoft licence of roughly £61 to £85 per user per month on top. Six-month minimum. |
| GDS Workshop Manager | £149 to £299/month | Setup fee reported from £350 to £1,500, plus credits for SMS, VRM lookups and Haynes Pro data. |
| TechMan | £189 to £415/month | Unlimited users, but commonly sold on three-year terms. |
| Dragon2000 | Not published | Sales call required. Leans towards used-car dealers as much as workshops. |
| Small Garage SG1 | £195/year | Desktop software, priced annually. |
The four costs that aren't in the headline price
Per-user licences. If a system charges per seat, a garage with an owner, two technicians and someone on the desk is paying four times the advertised number. Ask whether the price is per garage or per user before anything else.
Setup and onboarding fees. A one-off £350 to £1,500 is a full year of a cheaper system. Some vendors waive it if you push; some don't.
Usage credits. Text reminders, registration lookups and technical data are often metered on top of the subscription. A busy MOT month can add a surprising amount.
Contract length. A 36-month term at £189 a month is a £6,800 commitment. If the software turns out not to suit how you work, you're stuck with it.
What a one- to three-bay garage actually needs
Most independents need bookings, job sheets, quotes and invoices that handle VAT properly, customer and vehicle records with MOT reminders, and some way of showing a customer what's wrong with their car. Parts stock and reporting are useful. Full dealer management, multi-site consolidation and integrated accounting suites are what push the price into three figures, and most small workshops never use them.
Working out your real monthly cost
Take the advertised price, multiply by the number of people who need a login if it's per-user, add a twelfth of any setup fee, then add what you'd realistically spend on credits. Do that for each system on your shortlist and the gap between "cheap" and "expensive" often doubles. Then check the contract length and what it costs to leave.
If the answer you land on is "I want everything a small garage needs for under £30, with no contract", that's exactly what GarageDash is built to be. Our full sourced comparison against TechMan, Garage Hive, Dragon2000 and GDS is at garagedash.co.uk/compare.