Buyer's guide
The best driving instructor apps in the UK for 2026
Seven apps UK driving instructors actually use, compared on the numbers that decide it: monthly price, the cut taken from your lesson money, whether online booking is included or held back for a higher tier, and whether the app fills your diary or just organises it.
The short answer
Passly is the best all-round driving instructor app in 2026 if you want one price and no upsells: £14.99 a month includes your diary, online booking, card payments, the pupil portal, progress tracking, lesson gap filling, a free marketplace listing and full driving school features, with a flat 1.5% fee on lesson payments that we publish rather than reveal at sign-up.
It is not the right answer for everyone. Total Drive is the better app if you teach with 3D videos and a doodlepad or need to work offline. MyDriveTime is free until a PDI qualifies, which is hard to argue with on a trainee licence. GoRoadie Pro gives you 60 days to make your mind up. And ADI Network costs nothing at all, which will decide it for some instructors on its own.
The figure most instructors underweight is not the subscription. It is the percentage taken from every lesson payment. On £30,000 of lessons a year, the gap between a 1.5% fee and a 1.9% fee is about £120, roughly eleven months of the difference between the cheapest and dearest subscription on this page.
Every UK driving instructor app, side by side
Prices are per instructor, per month, taken from each vendor's own published pricing. Where a vendor does not publish its payment fee, we have said so rather than estimating it.
| App | Best for | Price a month | Free trial | Fee on lesson money |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Passly | Instructors who want everything on one plan | £14.99, then £8.99 | 14 days | 1.5% flat, published |
| Total Drive | Teaching aids and offline working | £18 to £26 | 30 days | Set at sign-up, not published |
| MyDriveTime | PDIs and in-lesson record keeping | £19 | 30 days | Not published |
| GoRoadie Pro | A long trial before you commit | £15 | 60 days | 1.9% on instructor-raised payments |
| ADI Network | Instructors who will not pay a subscription | Free | n/a | 2% + 30p, in the terms |
| EzLicence | Buying pupils rather than running a diary | No subscription | n/a | Around 25% of each lesson booked |
| Driving Instructor Services | Outsourcing phone calls to real people | Packages to £149 | n/a | n/a |
Passly publishes this table and sells one of the products in it. Figures checked 26 July 2026 against the sources listed at the foot of this page.
Passly: best if you want one plan with nothing held back
Passly is £14.99 per instructor per month with every feature included. There are no tiers, so online booking, the embeddable booking widget, card payments, prepaid credits, discounts, progress tracking, the pupil portal, automatic reminders, income and expense tracking, CSV export and multi-instructor school management are all on the same plan. Lesson payments carry a flat 1.5% fee on top of standard Stripe processing charges, published on the pricing page before you sign up.
The part competitors mostly do not do is supply. Your Passly listing and public profile are free on every plan, with no charge per pupil, so learners searching your area land in your leads inbox rather than a rival's. Pupils get a browser-based portal with nothing to install, and you can export everything you have as CSV at any time.
Where Passly is behind: there is no offline mode, no built-in theory test suite, no SMS text reminders (reminders go by email, in-app and push instead), and no direct QuickBooks or Xero sync, only CSV export. If those are daily essentials, read the Total Drive comparison before deciding.
Total Drive: best for teaching aids and working offline
Total Drive is the most feature-dense app in the UK market, running since 2018 and used by over 8,600 instructors a week on its own figures. Its Smart Gaps cancellation tool is genuinely good, the branded pupil and parent app is polished, and the teaching extras (3D animated driving videos, a drawable doodlepad, an optional theory suite) have no equivalent elsewhere. It syncs income directly into QuickBooks and Xero, and it works offline, which matters if you teach in areas with poor signal.
The trade-offs are tiering and transparency. Pricing runs from £18 to £26 a month, and online booking plus the enhanced gap tools sit on the upper tiers. The platform fee on card payments is set at sign-up rather than published, so you cannot compare the true cost before you commit. Its subscriber agreement also makes fees non-refundable and provides a data backup only on written request after you leave.
MyDriveTime: best for PDIs and detailed in-lesson records
MyDriveTime has been running since 2014 and has twice won Intelligent Instructor's Professional Support Provider of the Year. It is £19 a month for a qualified instructor, with per-head discounts for schools (£15 each for two to three instructors, £10 for four to ten, £5 beyond that) and a 30-day trial. Its in-lesson record keeping, journey tracking and syllabus tools are thorough, and it syncs with Outlook, Google and Apple calendars.
The headline reason to pick it is the PDI offer: free until you qualify, with full features. On a trainee licence, that is a strong argument. Once you qualify it becomes the most expensive general-purpose app here, and it does not include a marketplace, so finding pupils remains your job.
GoRoadie Pro: best if you want a long trial
GoRoadie Pro is £15 a month after a 60-day free trial, the longest in the market, with no card needed to start. It covers pupils, lessons and finances, includes free reminder texts (most rivals charge per SMS or do not offer it), and has a lesson check-in feature it credits with cutting no-shows.
Two costs sit outside the subscription. Payments the instructor raises carry a 1.9% fee, and the GoRoadie marketplace charges a connection fee per pupil it sends you rather than including leads. Worth modelling both against your actual lesson volume before comparing it with a flat £14.99.
ADI Network: best if you will not pay a subscription
ADI Network is a genuinely free app on iOS and Android: diary, payments, balance tracking, free job listings in your area, referral earnings and CPD content, with no monthly fee stated anywhere. For an instructor with a full diary who only needs somewhere to keep it, that is a hard offer to beat on price.
Be clear-eyed about what free means. The app does not publish a payment processing fee, and free platforms typically earn from leads, referrals or partner products instead. Check what happens to your pupil data if you leave, and whether pupils can book online themselves, before treating it as a like-for-like replacement.
EzLicence and Driving Instructor Services: not really software
These two get grouped together because neither is a diary app. EzLicence is a learner marketplace: it supplies pupils and takes a commission of roughly 25% of each lesson booked, so it is a customer acquisition channel with a price attached, not a business system. It is also weighted towards London and the larger cities.
Driving Instructor Services is a call-answering and booking bureau, sold in packages up to £149, where real people take enquiries you cannot answer while teaching. If your problem is missed phone calls rather than a disorganised diary, that is a reasonable buy, though online booking solves much of the same problem without the per-package cost.
How to choose, in four questions
- What does it take from my lesson money? Multiply the percentage by your annual takings. That number is usually larger than the whole subscription, and it is the figure vendors are least keen to publish.
- Is online booking included or a higher tier? Letting pupils book from your real availability is what stops the evening phone calls. If it sits behind an upgrade, price the upgrade, not the headline plan.
- Does it bring me pupils, or just organise the ones I have? A diary app and a marketplace are different products. Some apps do both, some charge per pupil for the second, and most do not do it at all.
- How do I get my data out? Ask before you sign up. Self-serve CSV export at any time is the standard to hold vendors to.
Driving instructor apps: common questions
What is the best driving instructor app in the UK?
It depends on what you need it to do. If you want your diary, online booking, card payments, progress tracking and new pupil enquiries in one place for one price, Passly is £14.99 a month with everything included and a flat 1.5% fee on lesson payments. If you teach with visual aids and want to work offline, Total Drive is stronger. If you are a PDI and cannot pay anything yet, MyDriveTime is free until you qualify. If you refuse to pay a subscription at all, ADI Network is genuinely free.
What is the cheapest driving instructor app?
ADI Network is free with no subscription. Among paid apps, Passly is £14.99 a month, GoRoadie Pro is £15, Total Drive starts at £18 and MyDriveTime is £19. Look past the headline price though: the fee taken on your lesson money usually matters more. A 1.9% payment fee on £30,000 of lessons a year costs about £570, which dwarfs the difference between any two subscriptions.
Is there a free driving instructor app?
Yes. ADI Network offers a free diary, payment and job-listing app with no monthly fee. MyDriveTime is free for PDIs until they qualify. Most paid apps also run a free trial: 14 days on Passly, 30 days on Total Drive and MyDriveTime, and 60 days on GoRoadie Pro. Free apps generally make their money elsewhere, through lead fees, referrals or partner products, so check what happens to your pupil data and your payments before you commit.
Which driving instructor app brings in new pupils?
Only some of them try. Passly includes a free marketplace listing and public profile on every plan, with no per-pupil charge. GoRoadie runs a marketplace that charges a connection fee per pupil. EzLicence supplies pupils but takes a commission of around 25% of each lesson booked. Total Drive and MyDriveTime are diary and management tools rather than lead sources, so you would still need your own marketing.
Do I have to pay a fee on payments my pupils make?
It varies, and this is the least transparent part of the market. Passly charges a flat 1.5% on lesson payments taken through the platform, on top of standard Stripe processing fees, and publishes that figure. GoRoadie charges 1.9% on payments the instructor raises. Total Drive sets a platform fee at sign-up rather than publishing it. Always ask for the number in writing before you move your payments across.
Can I move my pupil data between driving instructor apps?
Check the exit terms before you sign up, not after. Passly lets you export pupils, lessons and payments as CSV whenever you want, free. Some competitors provide a backup only on written request within a fixed window after you leave. If an app has no self-serve export, treat that as a real cost of switching later.
Sources and how we checked
We compared every app a UK ADI can buy today on six things: what it costs a month, what it takes from your lesson money, whether pupils can book online without you, whether it brings you new pupils, whether it handles your accounts, and how easily you can leave with your data. Prices come from each vendor's own published pricing, checked on the dates below. Where a vendor does not publish a figure, we say so rather than guessing.
- Total Drive pricing and features checked
- MyDriveTime pricing and PDI terms checked
- GoRoadie Pro pricing and payment fees checked
- ADI Network free app terms checked
- EzLicence instructor commission checked
- Passly pricing checked
Passly publishes this comparison and sells one of the products in it. Prices and features change: if you spot something out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
Try it yourself
Everything on one plan, £14.99 a month
Diary, online booking, card payments, progress tracking and a free marketplace listing. 14 days free, no card required.