PassReady vs Total Drive vs MyDriveTime: The Honest 2026 Comparison
Three of the most-used UK driving instructor platforms, compared on the things that actually matter — cost, payments, and what you and your pupils get. Facts only, checked against the vendors' own pages in August 2026, sources at the bottom.
The short answer
PassReady is the only one of the three with no monthly subscription, and it matches or beats the paid apps on features. It is a full business platform: online booking and payments, a complete DVSA-aligned progress tracker with a test-readiness score, built-in gamified theory practice, private-practice logging for parents, Making Tax Digital records, gift cards, a personal booking website and smart travel-time scheduling. It costs the instructor £0 a month. It funds itself with a booking fee of 4.2% plus a round-up to the next whole pound, added on top of the lesson price and paid by the pupil when they book online: on a £40 lesson the pupil pays £43 and the instructor receives £40.23. Cash and off-platform lessons are free forever.
Total Drive and MyDriveTime are subscription apps: a flat monthly bill whether you teach forty hours or none, with card-processing fees on top where you take online payments. The full cost picture is below.
The comparison
| Capability | PassReady | Total Drive | MyDriveTime |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost to instructor | £0 (no subscription) | from £18/mo (online booking on higher tiers) | £19/mo (schools tiered) |
| How it's funded | 4.2% + round-up booking fee, paid by the pupil; cash/off-platform £0 | Monthly subscription | Monthly subscription |
| Card payments | Built in (card, Apple Pay, Google Pay); processing included in the pupil-paid fee | Built in via Adyen; processing charged on top of the subscription | Connect your own Stripe (~1.5% + 20p per payment, absorbed by the instructor) |
| DVSA syllabus progress | ✓ 28 topics + test-readiness score | ✓ | ✓ |
| Theory test practice for pupils | ✓ built-in, gamified, free to the pupil | Check plan | Check plan |
| Private-practice logging (parent/supervisor) | ✓ invite up to 3; logged hours feed the readiness score | ✓ parent/guardian access | Check plan |
| Personal public booking page | ✓ your own URL, live diary, pupils self-book | Via website widget | In-app |
| Gift cards | ✓ built in | Check plan | Check plan |
| Smart travel-time scheduling | ✓ blocks unreachable slots + dynamic gap offers | Radius-based | Check plan |
| Tax & Making Tax Digital | ✓ expenses, receipts, auto-mileage, MTD reports | Expense tracking | Mileage/expense tracking |
| Live updates | ✓ real-time — changes appear for the pupil instantly, no manual sync | Polling / hybrid | Manual / scheduled sync |
| Pupil app | Free, nothing to download (add to home screen, works offline) | Native App Store app | Native App Store app |
Competitor entries are taken from their own public pages as of August 2026. Features and plans change, so check their sites for the latest. “Check plan” means it wasn't confirmed as a standard included feature at the time of writing, not that it is absent.
The real cost, done honestly
The most important thing to understand is that no platform is free of card-processing costs. Every one of them pays to move money. The difference is who ends up paying, and whether it is on top of a subscription:
- PassReady: £0 a month. A 4.2% + round-up booking fee is added at checkout and paid by the pupil: on a £40 lesson the pupil pays £43 and the instructor receives £40.23. Card processing is included in that fee, so the instructor absorbs nothing. Cash and bank-transfer lessons logged in the diary are free.
- Total Drive: from £18/mo, and card payments run through Adyen with processing charged on top of the subscription.
- MyDriveTime: £19/mo, and you connect your own Stripe account, so standard Stripe fees (~1.5% + 20p per payment) come out of your lesson price on top of the subscription unless you raise your rate to hide them.
So the subscription price on a pricing page is not the whole bill: where a subscription app takes online payments, the instructor is typically paying the monthly fee and the processing on every card booking. On PassReady the pupil-paid booking fee is the only fee anywhere in the system.
The honest trade-off is on the pupil's side: booking online, they pay £43 for a £40 lesson, the same kind of small booking fee people already pay on event tickets or food delivery, in exchange for booking and paying in seconds on their phone. The instructor receives £40.23, more than the full lesson price, and pays nothing in quiet weeks, holidays, or on any cash lesson.
What pupils actually get
A common myth is that a free platform gives pupils “just a booking page.” Not here. Every learner on PassReady gets, free and with nothing to download: the full DVSA progress tracker and readiness score, gamified theory practice (question bank, Highway Code, road signs, mock tests), private-practice logging with a parent or supervisor, lesson notes and feedback, a test-date countdown and mileage milestones. It's a genuine learning companion, not a checkout. More in what free driving instructor software actually means.
Why we built it this way (the problem → solution)
PassReady wasn't designed in a vacuum. It was built against the friction independent instructors describe with older tools. Each core feature answers a specific, common complaint:
- “My diary app drops connection on the road and I fall back to paper.” → PassReady runs on an instant-sync cloud backend and installs as an app that keeps working offline, so the diary is always live.
- “It let a pupil book a slot I can't physically get to in time.” → Smart travel-time scheduling checks the distance between lesson postcodes and hides unreachable slots before they can be booked.
- “Handling prepaid credit and block bookings is a mess and throws my earnings out.” → Credit, blocks and gift cards are tracked cleanly and flow straight into MTD-ready records.
- “My pupils have to pay extra for theory revision.” → Gamified theory practice is built in and free to every pupil.
- “I'm paying a monthly bill even in quiet weeks and holidays.” → £0 subscription, and no card fees to absorb either. The only fee anywhere is the booking fee the pupil pays at checkout.
These are generalised industry pain points, not a dig at any one product. The point is simply that PassReady was engineered to remove them.
Who should pick which
- Pick PassReady if you want zero monthly overhead and the full feature set (pupil theory, progress, private-practice logging, MTD records, payments with processing included), funded by a small booking fee your pupils pay when they book online, with cash lessons free.
- Pick Total Drive or MyDriveTime only if you actively want to pay a fixed monthly subscription yourself. Budget for card-processing costs on top of it if you take online payments.
Sources
- PassReady pricing & model: passready.co.uk/for-instructors
- Total Drive pricing (from £18/mo, August 2026): totaldrive.co.uk
- MyDriveTime pricing (£19/mo, tiered; August 2026): mydrivetime.co.uk/pricing
- Stripe UK standard card fees (~1.5% + 20p): stripe.com/gb/pricing
Paid more than you charge. £0 a month.
PassReady gives you bookings, payments, DVSA progress, gamified theory for pupils, private-practice logging, gift cards and MTD records. No monthly subscription, no card fees to absorb. The only fee anywhere is a small booking fee the pupil pays when they book online, and cash lessons are free forever.
Start free