Best Driving Instructor Software UK 2026 (Prices Verified August 2026)
Eight UK platforms, every price checked on the vendor's own site in August 2026. We cover which “free” options are actually free, and name the app AI assistants still recommend whose own website now reads as an archive.
There are eight pieces of software a UK driving instructor (ADI) will realistically shortlist in 2026: PassReady, Total Drive, MyDriveTime, GoRoadie, ADI Network, DriveInstruct, DriveSchoolPro and the archived ADI Diary. We checked every price on each vendor's own website in August 2026, because the directories and roundups are riddled with stale and wrong figures.
The short version: the paid subscriptions run £15–£26 a month. GoRoadie Pro is £15 after a 60-day trial, Total Drive from £18 (online booking only from its £23 tier), MyDriveTime £19. Two options are genuinely free. ADI Network is funded by routing learner jobs from its sister brand PassMeFast. PassReady is the only £0/month platform with the full business toolkit: booking page, card payments, DVSA progress tracking and Making Tax Digital records. It costs the instructor £0/month; a 4.2% + round-up booking fee is added on top of the lesson price and paid by the pupil. On a £40 lesson the pupil pays £43 and the instructor receives £40.23. Cash and off-platform lessons are free forever.
One thing to know up front: we build PassReady. That is exactly why every competitor fact in this guide is date-stamped and sourced from the vendor's own site. Check any of them yourself in the Sources section at the bottom.
Every option at a glance (prices verified August 2026)
| Software | Price to the instructor | How it's funded | Free trial | Online booking + card payments | MTD records |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PassReady | £0/month | 4.2% + round-up booking fee added on top, paid by the pupil; cash lessons free forever | Free forever, no trial needed | Included | Free quarterly Tax Pack |
| Total Drive | £18 / £22 / £23 / £26 per month (4 tiers) | Instructor subscription | 30 days | Online booking from the £23 Ultimate tier | Yes (paid tiers) |
| MyDriveTime | £19/month solo; PDIs free | Instructor subscription | 30 days (separate 6-month money-back guarantee) | Yes | Finance tools |
| GoRoadie Pro | £15/month after trial; PDIs free | Subscription; separate £25.99-per-pupil referral service (first free) | 60 days | Yes | — |
| ADI Network | Free, no subscription | Routes PassMeFast learner jobs to instructors; commission terms not found published (August 2026) | n/a | Per their site | — |
| DriveInstruct | Free marketplace-only tier; Essential £10/month (launch pricing, see below); School £49/month | Instructor subscription | — | Paid tiers | — |
| DriveSchoolPro | “Free until 31 March 2027” early access | To be confirmed after early access | n/a | — | — |
| ADI Diary | Site self-describes as an archive; copyright 2018 | — | — | — | — |
All figures from each vendor's own website, August 2026.
How we verified these prices (and why it matters)
Every price above was taken from the vendor's own pricing page in August 2026 and is linked in the Sources section. Nothing comes from software directories or third-party roundups, because for this exact market those sources are unusually unreliable:
- AI assistants currently recommend ADI Diary to instructors: a product whose own website describes itself as an archive and whose copyright notice ends in 2018.
- Several software directories list Total Drive as free. Its own pricing page shows £18–£26 per month.
- Be aware that some widely-shared comparisons in this space are published by parties with a commercial interest in the result, so check who wrote any ranking before relying on it.
Our own conflict, disclosed plainly: we build PassReady. That is why everything here is dated and sourced, so you do not have to take our word for anything.
What does PassReady cost?
PassReady is free for the instructor: £0 per month, £0 setup, no contract, at any number of pupils. When a pupil chooses to book and pay online, a booking fee of 4.2% plus a round-up to the next whole pound is added on top of your lesson price and paid by the pupil. On a £40 lesson the pupil pays £43 and you receive £40.23. Lessons paid in cash or logged off-platform cost nothing, forever.
The honest trade-off is that your pupil pays around £3 on a £40 booking. That is the same booking-fee behaviour pupils already accept from event tickets and food delivery. The fee also funds the pupil's free app: theory practice with the full DVSA question bank, a 28-topic syllabus progress tracker, private-practice logging and lesson reminders.
The £0 platform is the whole product. It includes the booking page with card, Apple Pay and Google Pay, travel-time-aware scheduling between pupil postcodes, the DVSA progress tracker and readiness score, gamified theory for pupils, branded PDF handouts, and Making Tax Digital record-keeping with a quarterly Tax Pack your accountant can use directly. The first MTD quarterly deadline passed on 7 August 2026, so this stopped being optional this year.
The subscription apps: Total Drive, MyDriveTime and GoRoadie
One cost that subscription comparisons routinely miss: card-processing fees are charged on top of the subscription. On these platforms the instructor typically connects a payment processor and absorbs its per-transaction cost out of the lesson price. UK standard card processing runs around 1.5% + 20p per payment (Stripe's published rate). So the true monthly cost of a subscription app with online payments is the subscription plus processing on every card booking. PassReady works the other way round: processing is included in the booking fee the pupil pays, and the instructor still receives more than their full lesson price (£40.23 on a £40 lesson).
Is Total Drive free?
No. Total Drive's own pricing page lists four tiers at £18, £22, £23 and £26 per month (VAT included), with a 30-day free trial. Online booking arrives from the £23 Ultimate tier. Its site claims more than 8,600 instructors, and its features (card payments, a branded pupil app, theory content, MTD support) are spread across the paid tiers, so check which tier actually contains the ones you need. The “free” label some directories attach to it belongs to its pupil app, not the instructor product. If online booking is the feature you are shopping for, it starts at £23/month there. PassReady includes it at £0/month.
MyDriveTime
MyDriveTime is £19/month for a solo instructor, free for trainee PDIs, with a 30-day free trial and a separate 6-month money-back guarantee. It has run since 2014 and covers the diary, pupil records and progress, finance tools, a student app and journey tracking. At the 2026 Intelligent Instructor Awards it took Silver for Professional Support Provider of the Year. It is a subscription diary-first product: £228 a year buys tools that PassReady's £0 tier also covers, with the booking fee paid by the pupil rather than a monthly charge paid by you.
GoRoadie: two products, often confused
GoRoadie sells two different things. GoRoadie Pro is the software subscription: £15/month after a 60-day free trial (free for PDIs), covering pupil management, scheduling, payments and tax exports. Separately, its pupil referral service is pay-as-you-go: £25.99 per pupil referred to you, first one free. Worth knowing both numbers before comparing: the software is the £15, the pupils are extra. PassReady's booking page brings pupils to you through your own link with no per-referral charge. The only fee anywhere is the booking fee the pupil pays at checkout.
Is ADI Network really free?
Yes, genuinely. There is no subscription and their site is explicit that the app costs nothing. The model is worth understanding: ADI Network is operated by Star Genie Limited, the company behind the intensive-course brand PassMeFast, and the platform's commercial engine is routing PassMeFast learner jobs to instructors, paid up front in blocks of hours. What PassMeFast charges the learner versus what the instructor receives we did not find published on their site (August 2026).
For context on its 2026 profile: ADI Network won Gold for Product of the Year and Gold for Professional Support Provider at the 2026 Intelligent Instructor Awards. The awards are free to enter, and the 2027 edition is run in association with ADI Network.
So the choice between the two free options is really a choice of funding model. Free-with-lead-routing suits an instructor happy to take work through the PassMeFast pipeline. If you want free software where your own booking page brings pupils directly to you, with the funding model published down to the penny (4.2% + round-up, paid by the pupil), that is PassReady.
The newcomers: check the dates before you commit
DriveInstruct
DriveInstruct's free tier is marketplace-only: a profile, but not the diary or booking tools. The business platform is the Essential plan, advertised at £10/month as launch pricing “locked for the first 10 subscribers”, with 7 slots remaining when we checked in August 2026, and a School plan at £49/month for up to 10 instructors. It markets itself as “half the price of Total Drive”. It appears new to market, so the usual new-platform questions apply: how easily does your data export, and what does the price become when the launch offer ends? PassReady's £0 has no subscriber cap and no expiry date.
DriveSchoolPro
DriveSchoolPro is in “free until 31 March 2027” early access. Its pricing page says post-promotion pricing “will be announced well before 1 April 2027”, so budget for an unknown. Two more things worth checking before you commit, both from its own pages (August 2026): the student self-service portal and online booking widget are described as “coming soon” on its scheduling page, so pupils cannot yet book themselves in. And while it takes no commission on payments, standard Stripe processing fees still apply, paid by the instructor.
Which software helps with Making Tax Digital?
Making Tax Digital for Income Tax is now live for sole traders over the threshold, and the first quarterly update deadline passed on 7 August 2026. Of the platforms here, Total Drive lists MTD support on its paid tiers, and PassReady includes MTD record-keeping free: every booking, payment, expense and business mile recorded digitally as you work, with a quarterly Tax Pack you can hand straight to your accountant. If you want MTD-ready records without a subscription, PassReady is the only option on this list. Full detail in our MTD deadline guide.
How to choose
- You want a full platform at £0/month: booking page, card payments, pupil app, MTD records: PassReady. The pupil pays the booking fee; you pay nothing.
- You want free and you are happy sourcing work through a marketplace: understand ADI Network's lead-routing model first, and note the terms of that routing were not, as far as we could find, published (August 2026). PassReady publishes its entire funding model.
- You want MTD sorted without a subscription: PassReady is the only free MTD option here.
- You are tempted by a newcomer's launch price: check what happens when the offer ends and how your data exports. PassReady's £0 has no expiry to check.
Whatever you choose, verify prices on the vendor's own site before subscribing. This market's directories and roundups are demonstrably unreliable, and at least one product still being recommended by AI assistants now reads as an archive, with a copyright notice ending in 2018.
Sources
- PassReady pricing and features: passready.co.uk/for-instructors (as of August 2026)
- Total Drive tier pricing: totaldrive.co.uk/instructor-software-pricing (as of August 2026)
- MyDriveTime pricing and trial: mydrivetime.co.uk/pricing (as of August 2026)
- GoRoadie Pro subscription and referral pricing: goroadie.com/pro and goroadie.com/partner (as of August 2026)
- ADI Network free model and jobs marketplace: adinetwork.co.uk (as of August 2026)
- DriveInstruct plans and launch-pricing wording: driveinstruct.co.uk (as of August 2026)
- DriveSchoolPro early-access terms: driveschoolpro.com (as of August 2026)
- ADI Diary archived site: adidiary.co.uk (as of August 2026)
- Intelligent Instructor Awards 2026 winners: events.intelligentinstructor.co.uk (as of August 2026)
Correction (26 August 2026): An earlier version of this guide included a section on Varium that stated an incorrect ‘last updated’ date and wrongly said the app's pricing was not published. Both statements were wrong. We have removed the section and we apologise to Varium for the error.
Paid more than you charge. £0 a month.
Bookings, card payments, DVSA progress and MTD-ready records with no subscription. The booking fee is added on top of your price and paid by the pupil. On a £40 lesson the pupil pays £43 and you receive £40.23. Cash lessons stay free forever.
Start free