Quick Answer
If you already run BigChange for jobs, the bundled vehicle tracking is the cheaper option because you stop paying for a separate telematics contract. If you only need tracking, Quartix and Vimcar undercut BigChange standalone on price and beat it on driver scoring detail. Across a 10-van trades fleet, the right pick saves between £1,800 and £6,500 a year versus the wrong one.
Table of Contents
- The three platforms in this comparison
- Pricing reality across BigChange, Quartix and Vimcar
- BigChange: vehicle tracking inside a job platform
- Quartix: the established UK dedicated tracker
- Vimcar: the self-install option for small fleets
- Feature-by-feature comparison
- Where the fuel and labour savings actually come from
- AI route optimisation and driver scoring compared
- What UK trades are saying
- Watch and learn
- Frequently asked questions
- The verdict
BigChange
Quartix
VimcarThe three platforms in this comparison
The vehicle tracking market is split between two camps. On one side are field service platforms like BigChange that throw tracking in as part of a wider package covering scheduling, invoicing, CRM and job dispatch. On the other side are dedicated telematics providers like Quartix and Vimcar that do one thing well and charge accordingly.
BigChange is the Leeds-based platform that started life as Masternaut, one of the original UK vehicle tracking pioneers. Its founder Martin Port has been clear about the strategy: own the entire daily workflow of a service business and bundle the tracking as a sweetener. The standalone tracking product is called JourneyWatch. The full platform is JobWatch.
Quartix is older, quieter, and ruthlessly focused. The company has been fitting trackers in UK vans for over 23 years and now claims more than 30,000 customers across the UK, US and Europe with over 600,000 devices installed. Its product is GPS tracking and driver scoring with very little fluff around the edges.
Vimcar is the newcomer of the three, a Berlin-founded business that launched in the UK in 2020. It pitches itself at fleets of two to 200 vehicles and sells almost entirely on simplicity. The OBD-II plug-in device installs in minutes without an engineer, and the contract terms are short by industry standards.
Plenty of articles compare standalone telematics providers to each other. Almost none have honestly compared a field service platform's built-in tracking against the dedicated kit, even though most UK trades businesses end up running one or the other. That gap is what this piece exists to close.
Pricing reality across BigChange, Quartix and Vimcar
Pricing is where the three products diverge sharpest. Headline numbers do not tell the full story, so the table below shows what each provider actually charges per vehicle per month, what the contract looks like, and what you get for the money.
| Plan | BigChange | Quartix | Vimcar |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price per vehicle per month | £14.95 (JourneyWatch standalone) | £9.99 (Info Point) | £7.90 |
| Mid tier per vehicle per month | £69.95 (JobWatch full platform) | £11.99 (Info Plus) | Around £10 (varies) |
| Top tier per vehicle per month | £99.95 (JobWatch Plus) | £15.99 (Pro) | Not published |
| Hardware fee | Bundled, professional fit | Free installation included | Self-install OBD or hardwired |
| Minimum contract | 5 years | 12 months | Monthly, 12 or 24 months |
| What you get | Tracking plus full FSM stack on top tiers | Tracking, driver scoring, fuel reports | Tracking, mileage logs, driver scores |
Run a 10-van fleet on Quartix Info Point and you spend £1,199 a year. Run the same fleet on BigChange JourneyWatch standalone and you spend £1,794 a year. Run it on full BigChange JobWatch and you spend £8,394 a year, but you also retire your separate job management software, your invoicing tool and probably your scheduling spreadsheets. The honest question is not which is cheapest, but which line item you are replacing.
BigChange: vehicle tracking inside a job platform
BigChange does not sell its tracking as a standalone product to people who do not already want the rest of the stack. Yes, JourneyWatch exists at £14.95 a vehicle, but the sales conversation almost always pulls you up to JobWatch at £69.95 because that is where the real value sits. The pitch is straightforward: stop paying for separate scheduling, CRM, tracking, invoicing and timesheets, and run all of it from one platform.
The tracking itself uses either hard-wired or plug-and-go (OBD-II) devices. Live Google mapping, geofencing, journey history, driver behaviour scoring out of 10, MPG monitoring, harsh braking, harsh acceleration, idling time and cornering all sit in JobWatch alongside the job board. Drivers get a daily scorecard in their app. Managers see a fleet view that overlays jobs and van positions in one place.
What makes BigChange different is the integration. When a customer rings to ask where the engineer is, the office sees the live van position and the active job at the same time. Quartix and Vimcar cannot do that because they have no idea what job the driver is on. They just know where the van is.
BigChange's standard contract is five years, and customers who try to leave early have faced County Court Judgements. The platform itself is solid. The lock-in is real. Multiple Trustpilot reviewers in 2024 flagged that the system is fundamentally "add only" and resists scaling back. If your fleet shrinks or you want out, expect resistance.
BigChange strengths and weaknesses
| Strengths | Weaknesses |
|---|---|
| Tracking sits inside the job board, so dispatch and live van positions are one view | Five-year contract commitment |
| Driver scoring includes MPG, speeding, idling, harsh braking, harsh cornering | JourneyWatch standalone is more expensive than Quartix or Vimcar like-for-like |
| JobWatch retires several other tools you currently pay for | Sales process is heavy and some customers report aggressive contract pressure |
| Hard-wired install is professional and tidy | Tracker accuracy occasionally pins vehicles to the nearest main road |
Quartix: the established UK dedicated tracker
Quartix is what most UK trades businesses end up on if they want tracking and nothing else. The product is built around three things: live tracking, driver scorecards and a fuel saving story. The driver league table is the standout. Every driver gets a score, scores are visible across the fleet, and the gentle peer pressure tends to do the behaviour change without managers having to lean on anyone.
Pricing starts at £9.99 per vehicle per month for Info Point, the bottom tier, which gets you basic location tracking and timesheets. Info Plus at £11.99 adds geofencing and driver behaviour. The Pro tier at £15.99 brings in everything including comprehensive driver scoring, fuel reports and the full reporting suite. Installation is free, included in the price, and the standard contract is 12 months.
Customers report that fuel savings of up to 15% are realistic once driver behaviour is being scored and shared. That figure is consistent with what telematics generally delivers across UK fleets, where 10-15% is the well-evidenced range and the upside on a fleet that has never had monitoring before can be closer to 20% in the first year.
Where Quartix falls short is everything outside tracking. No job management, no CRM, no invoicing. If you want a complete back office system, you are stacking Quartix on top of something else like Tradify or Commusoft or Xero, and paying separately for each.
Vimcar: the self-install option for small fleets
Vimcar is the budget play and the easy install play at the same time. Pricing starts at £7.90 per vehicle per month with no engineer visit because the device is an OBD-II dongle the driver plugs into the diagnostic port themselves. There is also a hardwired option for fleets that want a tidier install or vans without a working OBD port.
Founded in Berlin in 2013, Vimcar launched in the UK in 2020 and now targets fleets of two to 200 vehicles. Capterra reviewers consistently flag the install as the standout feature, with one saying it "took minutes to install and didn't need to look at instructions for usage." That matters when you are trying to roll trackers out across eight vans on a Saturday without losing the weekend to professional fitting appointments.
The product itself does the basics well: live tracking, mileage logs, driver behaviour scoring, geofencing and a clean mobile app for managers. The reporting is more pared back than Quartix and miles less integrated than BigChange. If you want trade-specific extras like job-linked tracking or fuel card integrations, Vimcar is not the right fit.
The monthly contract option and the self-install dongles make Vimcar the strongest pick if you are a fast-growing two-to-five-van operation that will probably be on eight vans by next year. You add a tracker by ordering a dongle and dropping it in a van. You remove a tracker by pulling it out. No engineer, no contract renegotiation.
Feature-by-feature comparison
Strip out the marketing and the picture clears up. Here is what each product actually does, side by side, on the features that matter day to day.
| Feature | BigChange | Quartix | Vimcar |
|---|---|---|---|
| Live vehicle tracking | Yes, tied to jobs | Yes | Yes |
| Driver scoring out of 10 | Yes | Yes, with league table | Yes |
| Geofencing | Yes | Yes (Info Plus and up) | Yes |
| Fuel card integration | Yes | Yes (Right Fuel Card partner) | Limited |
| Job dispatch integration | Native | No | No |
| Customer ETA messages | Native | Via integration | Limited |
| Mobile app for drivers | Yes, full JobWatch app | Yes | Yes |
| AI route optimisation | Yes (JobWatch Plus) | No | No |
| Self-install option | No, professional fit | No, engineer fit (free) | Yes, OBD dongle |
| Contract length | 5 years | 12 months | Monthly available |
Where the fuel and labour savings actually come from
The 10-15% fuel saving figure quoted by every telematics vendor is real, but it is not magic. The savings show up because drivers behave differently when they know they are being scored. Idling drops because every minute is logged. Harsh acceleration drops because it costs the driver a place in the league table. Speeding drops because the manager has the receipts.
UK research on fleet operators with no prior monitoring shows the first-year saving can push toward 15-20%. That is the embarrassment factor at work. After year one, the figure tends to settle at around 8-12% as a permanent reduction. On a fleet of 10 vans burning £25,000 a year in diesel between them, that is £2,000-£3,000 saved without changing anything else.
Labour savings are quieter but often bigger. Job-linked tracking like BigChange's removes the "where are you?" call. Time on site is captured automatically rather than reconstructed at the end of the day. Customer ETAs are accurate, which means fewer no-access charges and fewer angry phone calls. A trades business running 10 engineers that recovers 15 minutes a day per engineer is recovering £20,000 a year in chargeable time.
For the broader case on automating the back office around tools like this, see our quote-to-invoice playbook and the full field service platform showdown which goes deeper on the BigChange platform itself.
Telematics that sits in a dashboard nobody opens delivers zero saving. The 10-15% figure assumes you actually review driver scores weekly, share the league table with the team, and have an awkward conversation with the bottom-ranked driver about why their MPG is 8 below the fleet average. Without that, you are just paying for a map.
AI route optimisation and driver scoring compared
AI is where the marketing gets carried away. The honest picture: only one of the three has meaningful AI in the product today, and even that one uses it for specific tasks rather than as a general intelligence layer.
BigChange JobWatch Plus includes AI-assisted route optimisation that looks at the current job board, live van positions, traffic and predicted job durations to suggest reschedules in real time. It is genuinely useful on a multi-job day with engineers running tight schedules. The same tier also surfaces AI insights on driver behaviour patterns, flagging the engineer whose harsh braking has crept up week-over-week before it becomes a safety problem.
Quartix does not market itself as AI-driven. The driver scoring uses defined rules around speed, braking, acceleration, cornering and idling, then ranks drivers in a league table. That is statistics, not AI, and Quartix is fine with that framing. The results are what counts and the league table mechanic is effective.
Vimcar's product is similar in approach but lighter on the reporting depth. Its driver behaviour scoring covers the basics. AI route optimisation is not in the product.
If AI matters to you specifically, BigChange JobWatch Plus is the only honest pick in this three-way comparison. If you want straightforward, well-tuned behavioural scoring without the AI marketing, Quartix wins comfortably. For broader context on AI in trades businesses, our complete guide to AI tools for tradespeople is the right starting point.
I have written before about how trades businesses overestimate the value of AI features they will never actually configure. Telematics is the same. The biggest fuel saving on your fleet next year will come from a thirty-second weekly conversation about the driver league table, not from a machine learning model. Buy the product that makes that conversation easy.
What UK trades are saying
Watch and learn
BigChange: The Complete Job Management Platform
BigChange
Quartix Vehicle Tracking: A Quick Overview
Quartix UK
4 Reasons Why I Use GPS Tracking for Construction Vehicles
Construction operator perspective
How Vehicle Tracking Saved Our Business Money
Small business case study
BigChange Feature Focus: Scheduling
BigChange
Tracking Your Fleet on the Quartix Mobile App
Quartix UK
Frequently asked questions
Yes, in the sense that JobWatch at £69.95 per vehicle per month includes the tracking. No, in the sense that you are paying for the whole platform, not the tracking alone. The "free" framing only works as a saving if you would otherwise pay separately for tracking, scheduling, CRM and invoicing.
Vimcar at £7.90 per vehicle is the lowest sticker price, with self-install via OBD dongle. Quartix Info Point at £9.99 is slightly more but includes free engineer install and a stronger UK reputation for support. BigChange standalone at £14.95 is hard to justify unless you intend to upgrade to JobWatch later.
Yes, but the timing matters. Most Quartix and Vimcar contracts are 12 months, so the cleanest switch is at renewal. BigChange will fit their own hardware so the existing kit becomes redundant. Budget for some overlap during the migration and confirm what happens to your historical journey data before you cut over.
On a fleet that has never had behaviour monitoring before, yes, 15% in year one is realistic and some hit closer to 20%. The figure settles to 8-12% as a permanent reduction once the easy wins around idling and harsh acceleration are baked in. None of this is automatic. The score has to be reviewed and the team has to know it is being reviewed.
The catch is that exiting early is expensive and BigChange has pursued County Court Judgements against customers who tried to leave. Multiple Trustpilot reviews flag the platform as "add only" when it comes to changes mid-contract. Get the commercial terms checked by a solicitor before signing if your business situation might change.
BigChange JobWatch Plus, by a clear margin. AI route optimisation and pattern detection in driver behaviour are real features in the product today. Quartix and Vimcar use rules-based scoring rather than AI, which is honestly fine for fuel saving purposes, but if AI is on your shopping list, BigChange is the only authentic pick of the three.
Yes. The OBD-II dongle plugs into the diagnostic port that every modern van has under the dashboard. It takes around three minutes per van. The hardwired option needs an auto-electrician but is tidier on vans where the OBD port is in an awkward spot.
Usually less than managers fear. Once drivers understand the league table is for fuel saving rather than disciplinary monitoring, push-back drops. The honest conversation up-front matters. Avoid surprises. If you implement tracking without telling the team, you will lose two drivers in a week.
The verdict
If tracking is all you need, Quartix at £9.99-£15.99 per vehicle wins on price, UK support reputation, and the driver league table mechanic. The 12-month contract is fair. If you want one system to run jobs, dispatch, invoicing and tracking together, BigChange JobWatch at £69.95 is worth the money, but go in with eyes open about the five-year commitment. Vimcar is the right pick for fleets that change shape often or for sole traders adding their second van. Standalone BigChange JourneyWatch at £14.95 is the option that almost nobody should buy, because at that price point Quartix is better and at higher price points BigChange JobWatch is better.
The saving question in the title has a clear answer too. On a 10-van fleet, Quartix saves roughly £6,000 a year versus running BigChange JobWatch standalone, but JobWatch retires three or four other tools you are probably paying for so the net cost equation flips. Standalone telematics is cheaper. Bundled telematics inside a real job management platform is more expensive but replaces a bigger stack. Pick the comparison that matches what you actually need to buy.
Whatever you choose, the data only saves money if it gets used. Build the weekly review into a routine, share the league table, and have the awkward conversation. That is the £20,000 a year on a ten-van fleet, not the software.
