Kairo vs Autocab
Autocab is Manchester-based booking and dispatch software for local private hire and taxi operators, owned by Uber since 2021. If you run pre-booked executive chauffeur work rather than high-volume taxi dispatch, here's how the two compare, fact for fact.
What Autocab is genuinely good at
Autocab calls itself market-leading booking and dispatch software for local private hire and taxi operators, established in 1989, headquartered in Manchester with 140+ staff, and says it operates in 33 countries. It's sold as a suite: booking and dispatch, a driver app, a white-label passenger app, automated phone answering with a voice-recognition virtual operator, corporate self-service accounts, analytics, and iGo, a demand network feeding incremental work in from aggregators including Uber, Gett, Addison Lee, First Rail and Arriva. Uber acquired Autocab in 2021; per Uber's own announcement it continues to operate independently with its own board.
Source: https://www.autocab.com/
Side by side
| Kairo | Autocab | |
|---|---|---|
| Published pricing | £99 / £199 / £299 a month by fleet size, on the website, before you speak to anyone | No pricing is published on autocab.com. Capterra lists Ghost Cloud from $2 per vehicle per week as a third-party figure, not something we could confirm on Autocab's own site. |
| Contract / minimum term | Monthly or annual billing, chosen at signup | Not published. No contract length or minimum term appears on any Autocab page we could fetch. |
| Self-serve free trial | 30 days, self-serve, start it yourself | None. Capterra records no free trial and no free version; the route in is a "Book a Demo" form asking how many cars you run. |
| Done-for-you migration | Switch-On Sprint: £495 +VAT, 14 days kickoff to live | Not published. Onboarding is routed through a project-management mailbox (PMOffice@autocab.com); no migration package, timeline or import documentation appears in their help centre. |
| AI quoting from an inbound enquiry | Reads the enquiry and drafts the booking, ready for you to price and send | Not from a written enquiry. Phantom's Virtual Operator uses voice recognition on inbound phone calls, with an optional "Use AI" setting; no written-enquiry-to-quote automation is described. |
| Per-mile + per-minute tariff engine | Yes, per-mile plus per-minute with vehicle-class multipliers, VAT shown either way | Not described as per-mile plus per-minute chauffeur pricing. Autocab is positioned for "local private hire and taxi operators", with dispatch logic built around ASAP work such as longest-waiting versus nearest car and demand zones. |
| Driver app | Driver app live on both the App Store and Google Play | Yes. Driver Companion runs on iOS and Android, including document upload and job bidding. |
| Partner / subcontractor job flow | Built in: dispatch jobs to your partner fleet, they accept or decline, you track the split | iGo is a demand network passing work in from aggregators including Uber, Gett, Addison Lee, First Rail and Arriva, not a bidirectional partner or subcontractor ledger. |
| Xero + Stripe | Native Xero sync and Stripe payment links | Not named. Autocab's partners page lists partner categories rather than named accounting integrations; no Xero or QuickBooks integration appears on it. |
| Getting your data out | Ask us. We'll export your tenant's data for you | Invoice and job export to XLS or CSV from the accounts module is documented; no inbound migration or import documentation was found. |
Every Autocab claim above is drawn from published, source-linked material (see Sources below) and stated as at 22 July 2026. Where Autocab publishes nothing on a point, we say so rather than guess.
Where Autocab may still be the better fit
iGo is a genuine demand asset, not a feature. It feeds incremental work straight into the operator's own system from Uber, Gett, Addison Lee, First Rail and Arriva, and the operator picks which partners to accept. Kairo has no demand marketplace and cannot send you work.
Phantom answers the phone. Its Virtual Operator uses speech recognition to take bookings from callers without an operator, and Autocab claims up to 70% of calls can be automated. Kairo does not automate an inbound phone line.
Scale and track record. Autocab has been going since 1989, says it operates in 33 countries, and runs very large fleets, its zTrip deal covers 3,600 vehicles across 20 US states. If you need proof a platform survives at volume, that's proof.
The dispatch engine is built for high-volume ASAP work: configurable allocation such as longest-waiting versus nearest car, demand-zone direction, driver bidding on pre-bookings, and destination mode for drivers heading home. That's deeper ASAP logic than a chauffeur-first board needs or has.
A white-label passenger app for public ride-hailing demand, plus a "Chatbot for Facebook" booking channel listed alongside their E-Booker product. Kairo does not ship a consumer-facing hailing app.
A mature business-intelligence product. Autocab calls itself the pioneer of the first business-intelligence tool in the taxi industry and positions Analytics as more detailed than anything else in the market, covering driver churn risk, ETA performance by period and lost work.
A corporate Accounts Portal with travel programmes, spend restrictions, custom validation questions and consolidated monthly invoicing for government and hospitality accounts.
Broad support and training options. Capterra records phone, chat, 24/7 live rep, knowledge base, plus in-person training, live online sessions and webinars, and Autocab publishes separate service desk, customer care and onboarding contacts.
Who should stay put
If you run a high-volume taxi or private hire fleet where most work is ASAP, you need your own public booking app, and you want the iGo network feeding you jobs from Uber and the other aggregators, stay with Autocab. Kairo is built for pre-booked executive chauffeur work and has no demand marketplace to send you jobs.
Moving off Autocab
The Switch-On Sprint moves your clients, drivers, vehicles, rate cards and active bookings out of Autocab and into Kairo, rate cards rebuilt and signed off, fourteen days from kickoff to live, with the first week run in parallel with Autocab so nothing gets dropped.
The guarantee
If the win-back campaign hasn't brought in £495 of new bookings within thirty days of go-live, we refund the difference.
Comparing something else
Sources
Every claim about Autocab on this page was checked against the live pages below on 22 July 2026. Vendors change pricing, terms and features, so confirm current details directly with Autocab before you decide.