Bookar GMS Alternative: Pricing and Features Comparison
Bookar and Autopilot are close on the face of it: both built for UK garages, both priced around a hundred pounds a month. The difference is in what that hundred pounds covers and what it costs to find out. Bookar charge £150 to get started and price technical data, online booking and document scanning as separate monthly add-ons. Autopilot charges nothing upfront and gives you thirty days on the full plan to decide.
No setup fee, a 30-day trial on the full plan, and SMS and VRM lookups included in your monthly price rather than billed by the message.
Bookar pricing and terms last checked September 2026
No upfront cost
Nothing to pay to get started. Just the monthly price.
No cost per user
Reception, technicians and owners included, however many you add.
30 days on the full plan
Real jobs, real invoices, before you commit to anything.
Data moved in 48 hours
Customers, vehicles and invoice history brought across for you.
Four steps, and most of the work is ours
Account and kick off call
You sign up, we book you straight in with a UK onboarding specialist. Company details, VAT, labour rates and users get set on the call, along with your parts and accountancy integrations and your service packages built out for you.
Your data comes across
Send us an export from your old system. Customer records, vehicle history and invoice history are mapped, imported and checked back with you.
Team training, your way
We offer a range of training packages to suit different garages, whether that is remote over a call, us coming to you, or your team coming to us, with sessions as short or as thorough as you need.
Run it for real, free
Book real jobs, send real invoices, on the full plan. Support is UK based and on the end of a phone. If it does not earn its keep, cancel and pay nothing.
Side by side on the things garage owners ask about
What it costs
Upfront cost
None. You pay the monthly price and nothing else to get started.
£150 one-off setup fee covering onboarding, configuration and a data cleanse.
What the monthly price covers
Technical data and online booking are part of the plan, not separate line items.
The £99.99 platform is the base. Technical data is £69 a month, the online booking widget £30, document scanning £30, staff clocking £10.
Texts and lookups
SMS and VRM allowances are included in every plan.
Charged per use: 8p a text message and 8p a VRM lookup.
What you get
Trial on the full plan
Yes. Book real jobs and send real invoices before you commit.
No free trial advertised. A demo is offered on request.
Parts and oil lookups
Partslink24 for OE parts catalogues and a Castrol oil lookup, alongside GSF, NAPA and Oak Tyres.
Parts and tyre suppliers, but no Partslink24 or oil lookup listed.
Customer finance
Payment Assist, built for garages offering finance on a repair bill.
Klarna and Clearpay, consumer checkout finance.
Who shapes what gets built
A garage owner of 15+ years is a partner in the business and signs off what gets built.
Not stated.
Scroll the table sideways on a phone. Comparison based on publicly available information, last reviewed September 2026.
What actually decides it
The £150 to start
Bookar charges a one-off £150 setup fee covering onboarding, configuration and a full data cleanse. For that you get the work done for you, which has value.
Autopilot charges nothing upfront. We take the view that you should be able to try the system properly before paying anything, which is why there is a 30-day trial on the full plan rather than a demo.
What the monthly price covers
Their platform is £99.99 a month plus VAT, close to our £99 Basic. The difference is what sits outside that figure.
Technical data is £69 a month, the online booking widget £30, document scanning £30 and staff clocking £10. A garage wanting technical data and online booking is at roughly £199 rather than £99.99.
Be fair about the arithmetic, though: £199 is still below AutoPilot Pro at £279. The honest difference is not that we are cheaper on that configuration, it is that our price is one number and does not move as you switch features on.
Texts and lookups are billed per use
Bookar charges 8p a text message and 8p a VRM lookup, with email free. For a garage sending routine reminders and confirmations, that is a real monthly cost that varies with how busy you are.
Autopilot includes SMS and VRM allowances in every plan: 150, 250 or 600 free text messages a month depending on the tier. Reminders are the feature that fills a diary, and we would rather they were not something you ration.
Where Bookar is strong
No system is the right answer for every garage. These are the things Bookar does well.
- ✓The closest competitor to Autopilot of any system we have looked at, and a genuinely modern product.
- ✓A strong integration list: NAPA, GSF, SES Autoparts, Bond Tyres, Grouptyre and Oak Tyres for parts, Xero, Sage and QuickBooks for accounts, and TecRMI and TecDoc for technical data.
- ✓More consumer finance options than we offer, with Klarna and Clearpay alongside Stripe and Dojo.
- ✓AI features of their own, and a monthly rolling contract you can leave at any time.
Built to be picked up without training
The diary
Every technician and job on one screen, colour coded, drag and drop to reassign.
Technician app
Job details, checklists and vehicle health checks on a tablet in the workshop.
Reporting
Revenue, throughput and technician efficiency, without exporting to a spreadsheet.
Switching from Bookar? Your questions answered
How much does Bookar cost?+
Bookar advertise their garage management system at £99.99 a month plus VAT, with a £150 one-off setup fee covering onboarding, configuration and a data cleanse. Several features are priced separately on top: technical data at £69 a month, the online booking widget at £30, document scanning at £30 and staff clocking at £10. Autopilot is £99, £179 or £279 a month plus VAT with nothing to pay upfront.
Does Bookar charge a setup fee?+
Yes, £150 as a one-off at the start, covering onboarding, configuration and a full data cleanse. Autopilot has no setup fee. You pay the monthly price and nothing else to get started.
Does Bookar have a free trial?+
Bookar do not advertise a free trial, although a demo is offered. Autopilot gives you 30 days on the full plan, booking real jobs and sending real invoices, before you commit.
Are text messages and VRM lookups included with Bookar?+
They are charged per use: 8p a text message and 8p a VRM lookup, with email sending free. Autopilot includes SMS and VRM allowances in every plan, so routine reminders and lookups do not add to the bill.
Is Autopilot a good Bookar alternative for a busy workshop?+
For a workshop sending a lot of reminders and running several technicians, the add-ons and per-message charges are what change the real monthly figure. AutoPilot Pro is £279 a month with the technician app, online booking, deposits, the reporting suite, an AI assistant and your SMS and VRM allowances all included, and nothing to pay upfront.
Sources
Claims about Bookar on this page come from their own published pages. Check them yourself:
Last reviewed September 2026. Other providers change their pricing and features at any time, so check before deciding.
Ask Scott what he made us change
Scott Walsh co-owns MB Liverpool and is a partner in Autopilot. He has used most of the systems on the market, so he knows what you are living with and what you want instead. Nothing gets built here without going past him.
Every garage we have shown Autopilot to has told us the same thing: it is simpler and easier to use than what they had. Talk to Scott and judge it for yourself.
See it on your own jobs before you decide
Twenty minutes on a call is usually enough to tell whether Autopilot suits your workshop. If it does, we will bring your data across and get your team trained. If it does not, we will tell you.