Waybill vs Samsara
Samsara tells you where the vehicle is and how it is being driven. Waybill decides where it should go, who is in it, and what the trip bills. Most operators eventually want both answers.
Reviewed on5.0Capterra3 reviews
The Honest Version, Up Front
These are not competing products
Samsara is the category leader in fleet telematics and video safety, with thousands of reviews behind it. We do not make dash cams, we do not read engine data, and we have no plans to. If that is what you need, buy it from them.
Telematics does not run a transport business
Knowing a vehicle is on Logan Road does not tell you who is in it, whether the 2pm dialysis pickup is covered, or what to invoice. Vehicle-centric platforms are usually paired with a dedicated transport system — that pairing is the role we fill.
Side by Side
| Capability | Samsara — telematics & safety | Waybill — bookings & dispatch |
|---|---|---|
| What the system is about | The vehicle and the driver: location, safety, compliance and maintenance across a fleet. | The booking: who is being collected, from where, by whom, at what time, for what fare. |
| Hardware | Gateways, AI dash cams and sensors fitted in every vehicle. The hardware is central to the product. | None. Browser and phone only, using the driver app and the phone already in the cab. |
| Driver safety | Video-based safety, driver behaviour scoring and coaching workflows. This is their strongest ground and we do not compete with it. | Fatigue tracking against planned shifts, licence and screening expiry alerts, and pre-trip inspection records. |
| Who is in the vehicle | The driver. | The driver and every passenger, by stop, with mobility aids, accessibility needs and guardians to notify. |
| Dispatch | Routing, dispatch and driver messaging built around vehicle-centric operations. | A passenger dispatch board: ranked smart assignment, fleet-wide optimisation with time windows and wheelchair capacity, and live reassignment. |
| Fares and invoicing | Fleet operating cost — fuel, idling, utilisation, maintenance spend. | Revenue: rate cards, waiting time, surcharges, customer invoicing, online card payment and accounting sync. |
| Compliance focus | Strong on US hours-of-service and ELD compliance, DVIR and maintenance records. | Australian passenger-transport obligations: NDIS claiming, CHSP reporting, QLD Booked Hire export and inspection evidence. |
| Maintenance | Preventive maintenance and DVIR driven by engine data from the hardware in the vehicle. | Maintenance schedules and inspection templates tied to the jobs and odometer readings those vehicles actually recorded. |
| Commercial shape | Enterprise licensing, commonly on multi-year pre-paid terms, with hardware per vehicle. Ask them for current terms. | Month to month, per completed job, no hardware and no minimum. |
| Typical buyer | Mid-market and enterprise fleets — freight, distribution, private fleets, field service, government. | Passenger transport operators of every size — a few vehicles through to several hundred — where the schedule and the invoice are the hard part. |
Written from Samsara's publicly published material, last checked 6 November 2026. Samsara is a trademark of its owner and this is our own independent comparison, not theirs — for their current capability and pricing, read their site. If something here is wrong or has gone out of date, email [email protected] and we will correct it.
Running Both
The common arrangement among passenger operators with a telematics contract.
Samsara watches the asset, Waybill runs the day
One tells you the vehicle is being driven safely and is due for a service. The other decides which passengers it collects, in what order, and what that bills. Neither answer replaces the other.
You do not need our tracking to use our dispatch
Live positions come from the driver app at no extra cost, but if you prefer your telematics provider as the source of truth for vehicle location, nothing about the dispatch board depends on ours.
The costs sit in different places
Telematics is typically a per-vehicle licence on a multi-year term plus hardware. We bill per completed job with no minimum, so adding us does not duplicate a per-vehicle cost you are already carrying.
Start with whichever hurts more
If you cannot see your fleet, start with telematics. If you can see it but still plan the day on a whiteboard and chase fares at month end, start with us.
True of Waybill Whoever You Are Comparing Us To
Six things that hold whether you run four vehicles or four hundred.
There is no ceiling to grow out of
Unlimited drivers, vehicles, passengers and office staff on every account, with no seat charges and no feature tiers. A four-hundred-vehicle operation and a four-van operation run the identical platform — the larger one simply switches more of it on. The dispatch board updates in real time and stays that way as the day's volume climbs.
The controls a large organisation has to ask about
Enterprise single sign-on through Okta and Azure Entra, two-factor authentication you can enforce across the whole organisation, 70 discrete permissions you compose into your own roles, a timestamped audit log, and a complete data export you can take whenever you want it.
Your team is trained in about an hour
A setup guide walks a new operator through their first driver, vehicle, job and assignment, then rate cards and team. On top of that sit 18 page guides — dispatch, jobs, invoices, compliance, workflows, reports and the rest — that walk anyone through the screen they are on. No training budget, no implementation consultant.
Answered the same day, nearly always
Issues, questions and feature requests all reach the same Australian team, and 90% get a reply inside 24 hours. Feature requests are read and answered by the people who build the product, not filed into a portal. Waybill is rated 5★ on Capterra.
Seven currencies, never converted
Fares, rate cards, invoices and card payments run in AUD, USD, NZD, GBP, CAD, EUR or SGD. The currency is set per organisation and snapshotted onto each invoice when it is issued, so re-denominating a setting can never rewrite money you have already billed.
Every feature, on every account
Route optimisation, NDIS claiming, workflow automation, online booking, inspections, fatigue, the API — none of it sits behind a higher tier or an add-on. Pricing moves with how many jobs you complete, not with how much of the product you are allowed to use.
Where we may not suit you: We do not make dash cams or read engine data, and we have no plans to. If the problem is driver safety, video evidence and coaching, or fuel, idling and diagnostic reporting across a large fleet, that needs telematics hardware and Samsara is the category leader at it. Which is why most operators end up running both rather than choosing.
Keep the Tracking. Fix the Dispatch.
Fourteen days, first 50 jobs included, no credit card, and nothing to fit in the vehicles. Run a real week of bookings through it alongside whatever you already have in the vehicles.