What Route Planning Actually Costs a 2–20 Van Fleet

Ask a route planning vendor what they cost and you get a number per month. Ask what your bill will be and the number moves — because the thing being counted is different at every vendor. One charges per driver. One charges per stop. One charges per completed task with a platform fee underneath it. One charges a base price and then sells proof of delivery back to you for another $10.

This is a pricing-mechanics explainer, not a "best tool" list. The goal is that you can predict your own bill, at your own fleet size, before you talk to a salesperson.

All competitor prices on this page were read from each vendor's own published pricing page on 20 August 2026. Where a vendor does not publish a number, this article says "not published" rather than guessing. Route planning pricing changes; if you are reading this months later, re-check the source pages before you budget from it.

One naming note, because it trips people up: Circuit is now Spoke. The company announced the change on 23 October 2025, saying "It's just a name change," and getcircuit.com now 301-redirects to spoke.com. Circuit for Teams became Spoke Dispatch, and the solo app became Spoke Route Planner. If you have been searching "Circuit for Teams pricing," Spoke Dispatch is the page you want. For how the renamed product compares feature by feature, see our Routerra vs Circuit comparison.

The three pricing models, and why the model matters more than the price

Almost every tool in this category uses one of three billing units. Pick the wrong one for your operation and you overpay regardless of how good the sticker price looked.

1. Per driver seat. You pay a fixed amount per driver, per month. The bill is a straight line through your headcount. OptimoRoute charges $35.10 per driver per month on Lite and $44.10 on Pro, both billed annually. Routerra Teams charges $25 per driver seat per month, or $20 billed annually. Predictable, and it punishes you for hiring.

2. Per stop or per order. You pay for delivery volume, and drivers are free. Spoke Dispatch sells monthly stop bundles — Starter $125 for 1,000 stops, Premium $200 for 2,000, Expert $1,000 for 12,000 — with overage at $0.04 to $0.07 per extra stop depending on tier. Routific runs a single pay-as-you-grow plan: free under 100 orders a month, then a flat $150 a month up to 1,000 orders, with a per-order rate on top above that ($0.15 in the 1,001–2,000 band, falling to $0.03 in the highest published band). Routific's page lists "Unlimited drivers" and "Unlimited dispatchers" on every plan.

3. Per task, on top of a platform floor. Onfleet prices in completed tasks with a substantial monthly minimum: Launch "Starting at $619 / mo" including 2,500 tasks, Scale "Starting at $1,349 / mo" including 5,000, Enterprise "Starting at $3,099 / mo" for 10,000+. Users are unlimited on Launch. That floor is the whole story for a small fleet — you pay $619 a month whether you run 200 stops or 2,500.

RoadWarrior is a fourth shape: a base plan with the fleet features sold as line items. Flex is "$49 per month," described as "For the solo driver or dispatcher in a team," with "Add team members ($20/month)" and "Proof of delivery ($10/month)" listed as add-ons.

What counts as a "seat" is not the same at any two vendors

This is where quoted prices stop being comparable.

• OptimoRoute bills on drivers you actually plan for: "Subscribers pay either monthly or annually for the number of drivers for which they are planning within a month." A driver who does not get planned that month is not billed.
• Routerra Teams defines a seat as one driver who receives routes in the driver app, and seats can be added or removed as the fleet changes. The dispatcher's own login does not use a seat — seats count drivers, not managers.
• RoadWarrior sells "team members" as a $20/month add-on to a $49/month Flex plan. The page does not publish whether that $20 is per team member or a flat fee for the team, and it does not say whether the $10 proof-of-delivery add-on is per account or per driver. That matters a lot at six vans, and it is the single most important question to put to them in writing.
• Spoke Dispatch, Routific and Onfleet do not charge per driver at all. Spoke's own help center describes Starter as including "unlimited drivers"; Routific lists unlimited drivers and dispatchers on every plan; Onfleet's Launch plan says "Unlimited users."

If you are comparing a per-seat quote against a per-stop quote, converting both to cost per stop delivered is the only comparison that means anything.

What is bundled and what is an add-on

Four capabilities move the bill more than anything else: proof of delivery, customer notifications, API access, and analytics. Here is what each vendor publishes, as of 20 August 2026.

Proof of delivery. Included in the base price at Spoke Dispatch, Routific, Onfleet (photo and signature on Launch) and Routerra Teams (photo and PDF). It is a paid extra at RoadWarrior — $10/month — and at OptimoRoute it is not on the $35.10 Lite tier at all; you need Pro at $44.10, so it effectively costs $9 per driver per month.

Customer notifications. Almost everyone splits email from SMS, and SMS is where the metered cost hides. Spoke Dispatch includes email notifications and states SMS is "charged per segment at rates set by our messaging partner Twilio." Onfleet bills SMS per segment on the 1st of the following month. Routific includes customer email notifications and a delivery tracker, and sells SMS as an add-on with no published price — "SMS fees vary widely depending on the country you operate in – please reach out to get a quote." None of the three publishes a per-message number, so a fleet notifying every recipient should budget a line item it cannot yet size.

API access. Cheaper than most buyers expect, and worth checking at the tier you would actually buy. OptimoRoute lists the Web Service API on Lite, its entry tier. Spoke Dispatch includes a Read/Write API, Webhook API, Zapier and Shopify integrations on all plans — but reserves developer API support and a dedicated success manager for "accounts with an annual spend above $50,000." Onfleet includes API and webhook access on Launch but puts "advanced route optimization with API access" on Scale. Routerra Teams includes signed webhooks, the Optimize API and API keys at its one price.

Analytics. The most common tier-gate. At OptimoRoute, analytics sits on Pro, not Lite. Onfleet gives Launch 90-day reporting, Scale 1-year, Enterprise lifetime — so historical depth, not the reports themselves, is what you buy. Spoke Dispatch puts custom delivery data and branded delivery experience on Premium rather than Starter.

The worked example: six vans for a year

Assumptions, stated so you can re-run them with your own numbers:

• 6 vans, 6 drivers, 1 dispatcher.
• 15 stops per van per day, 22 delivery days a month — 1,980 stops a month, 23,760 a year.
• List prices only. No negotiated discounts, no tax, no SMS pass-through.
• Where a vendor offers an annual discount, the annual figure is used and labelled.

Here is the arithmetic, tool by tool.

Spoke Dispatch (formerly Circuit for Teams) pricing

Spoke Dispatch. Starter at $125/month covers 1,000 stops; the other 980 bill at $0.04 = $39.20. That is $164.20/month, $1,970.40/year. Note that Premium's flat $200/month would be more for this volume ($2,400/year). Run the published rates out and Starter-plus-overage stays cheaper than Premium at every volume, because Premium's overage is $0.06 against Starter's $0.04 — the higher tiers buy features (custom delivery data, branded tracking, advanced proof of delivery), not a volume discount. Spoke does not publish a stop ceiling for Starter, so the question to ask is whether you are allowed to stay on it.

OptimoRoute pricing

OptimoRoute. Proof of delivery means Pro: $44.10 × 6 drivers = $264.60/month, $3,175.20/year (billed annually). If you genuinely do not need proof of delivery or analytics, Lite is $35.10 × 6 = $210.60/month, $2,527.20/year. Stop volume does not enter into it — Pro's 1,000-order ceiling is a concurrent-order capacity, not a monthly cap.

Routific pricing

Routific. 1,980 orders puts you in the 1,001–2,000 band: $150 base plus $0.15 for each order above the first 1,000 — 980 × $0.15 = $147. That is $297/month, $3,564/year. (We read the published table as charging the per-order rate only on orders above 1,000; confirm that reading with Routific before you budget on it.) Adding drivers costs nothing.

Onfleet pricing

Onfleet. 1,980 tasks fits inside Launch's 2,500, so the bill is the floor: $619/month, $7,428/year — and "Starting at" means that is a minimum, not a quote.

RoadWarrior pricing

RoadWarrior. $49 base + team members + $10 proof of delivery. Reading the add-on as $20 per team member per month, six drivers gives $49 + $120 + $10 = $179/month, about $2,148/year. Treat that as conditional: the granularity is not published, and if the $20 is a flat team fee the real figure is closer to $948/year.

Routerra Teams pricing

Routerra Teams. 6 driver seats at $20 per seat per month billed annually = $120/month, $1,440/year; at the $25 monthly rate it is $150/month, $1,800/year. Proof of delivery, the dispatcher web app, the offline-first driver app, webhooks, the Optimize API and API keys are in that price rather than sold on top.

Year one, six vans, side by side

† RoadWarrior does not publish whether the $20 team-member fee is per member or per team, or whether the $10 proof-of-delivery add-on is per account or per driver. This row assumes $20 per member. Confirm before budgeting.

A five-fold spread between the cheapest and dearest row, on the same six vans doing the same work. Most of that gap is not feature depth — it is which unit you happen to be billed in.

What happens when you grow from 3 vans to 12

This is the part that decides which model you should be on, and almost nobody runs it before signing. Same assumptions — 15 stops per van per day, 22 days a month — so 3 vans is 990 stops a month and 12 vans is 3,960. Annual cost, rounded to the nearest dollar.

† Same RoadWarrior caveat as above. ‡ At 3,960 tasks a month you exceed Launch's 2,500; Onfleet does not publish a per-task overage rate, so this uses Scale at "Starting at $1,349 / mo".

Three things fall out of that table.

Per-seat plans quadruple, because they are supposed to. Four times the drivers, four times the price — OptimoRoute and Routerra Teams both price on headcount exactly. That is honest and predictable, and it is the wrong shape if your drivers are part-timers each doing a handful of stops.

Volume plans flatten out. Spoke Dispatch not quite doubles across a four-fold increase in fleet size, because the overage rate is far below the effective per-stop cost of the base bundle. If you are splitting a fixed pile of stops across more drivers — adding weekend casuals, moving from two long routes to four short ones — volume pricing is structurally cheaper and the gap widens as you add people.

Platform floors punish the small and barely notice the large. Onfleet is the most expensive option at three vans by a factor of four, and the least aggressive grower in the table. It is priced for an operation several sizes up; at 12 vans it is still the dearest, but the ratio has stopped being absurd.

The crossover point is the thing to find for your own operation. Divide each vendor's annual cost by your annual stop count and compare cost per stop at the fleet size you expect to be in 18 months — not the one you are today.

The annual-versus-monthly trap

Annual prepay discounts are real money and they are not free.

What is actually published, as of 20 August 2026: OptimoRoute gives 10% off for paying yearly upfront ($421.20 per driver per year on Lite, $529.20 on Pro). Routerra Teams is $20 per seat per month billed annually against $25 monthly. Spoke Route Planner — the solo app, not Dispatch — advertises 50% off annual subscriptions in its help center. Spoke Dispatch, Routific and Onfleet publish no annual discount on their pricing pages; Onfleet mentions monthly or yearly subscription options on Enterprise and directs you to sales.

The trap is not the discount. It is what the discount fixes in place:

• On a per-seat plan, an annual prepay usually locks your seat count at whatever your fleet was on signing day. A florist who runs six vans in December and three in February pays for six all year. The 20% saving disappears at the first seasonal downsize, and then some.
• On a volume plan, the tier is usually the thing committed, not the seats. If you commit to a bundle sized for December, eleven quieter months underuse it. If you commit to a bundle sized for a normal month, December's overage rate is the price you actually pay for peak.
• Trials are not a substitute for a pilot. OptimoRoute publishes 30 days with no credit card, Onfleet 14 days, and Spoke Route Planner, RoadWarrior Flex and Routerra Teams each 7 days (Routerra's asks for a card up front; cancel anytime). A 7-day trial covers about five delivery days — enough to test the software, not enough to see a monthly bill or a peak week.

Before you take an annual rate, get the answer to one question in writing: can I reduce seats or downgrade tiers mid-term, and what happens to the money if I do?

What to ask a vendor before you sign

Take this list to the call. Every item exists because a vendor on this page leaves it unpublished or tier-dependent.

1. What exactly is the billing unit — a driver, a seat, a stop, an order, or a completed task? Get the definition, not the noun.
2. If it is per seat: does a dispatcher or office user consume one? And is a driver who does not work this month still billed?
3. If it is per stop: is the count based on stops planned, stops dispatched, or stops completed? Failed deliveries and re-attempts are the difference between three different bills.
4. What is the overage rate, and does exceeding my bundle bill overage or force an upgrade? Spoke publishes both bundle and overage; Onfleet publishes neither an overage rate for Launch nor a ceiling.
5. Is proof of delivery in this price, an add-on, or one tier up? Price the tier you would actually buy, not the entry tier on the marketing page.
6. What does SMS cost per message in my country? Three vendors here pass SMS through at metered rates without publishing them.
7. Is API and webhook access on my tier, and is developer support included? Access and support are frequently sold separately.
8. On annual billing: can I remove seats or drop a tier mid-term? If the answer is no, price the discount against your slowest month, not your busiest.
9. What is the real trial length, and does it cover a peak day? Ask for an extension if it does not.
10. What is the published price today? Ask them to send it in writing, and note the date — including for this article. Everything above was read from the vendors' own pages on 20 August 2026 and will drift.

There is no universally cheapest tool here. There is a cheapest tool for a given shape of operation, and the shape that matters is the ratio between your driver count and your stop count. Work out that ratio first, project it forward eighteen months, and the pricing model picks itself. And if your operation is dense multi-drop courier work — 40-plus stops per driver a day — the courier route planner page walks through how Routerra Teams handles that shape of day.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Spoke (formerly Circuit) Dispatch cost per month?

Spoke Dispatch publishes three monthly plans on spoke.com/dispatch/pricing: Starter at $125 per month including 1,000 stops (extra stops $0.04 each), Premium at $200 per month including 2,000 stops (extra stops $0.06 each), and Expert at $1,000 per month including 12,000 stops (extra stops $0.07 each). The price is driven by monthly stop volume, not by how many drivers you have. Prices checked 20 August 2026.

Is route planning software priced per driver or per delivery?

Both models exist, and they behave very differently. OptimoRoute and Routerra Teams charge per driver, so the bill moves when you hire. Spoke Dispatch, Routific and Onfleet charge on delivery volume — stops, orders or tasks — and let you add drivers without changing the price. If you are adding drivers faster than you are adding stops, volume pricing is usually cheaper. If your stop count is growing faster than your headcount, per-seat pricing usually wins.

What does route planning software cost for a 6-van fleet?

Using each vendor's own published prices on 20 August 2026 and a fleet doing about 1,980 stops a month, a year costs roughly: Routerra Teams $1,440 billed annually, Spoke Dispatch Starter $1,970, RoadWarrior Flex about $2,148 (its add-on billing granularity is not published), OptimoRoute Pro $3,175, Routific $3,564, and Onfleet Launch $7,428. Your own numbers will differ because stop volume, not just van count, drives three of those six bills.

Which route planning tools charge extra for proof of delivery?

RoadWarrior publishes proof of delivery as a $10 per month add-on to its Flex plan. OptimoRoute does not sell proof of delivery separately but places it on the Pro tier at $44.10 per driver per month rather than the $35.10 Lite tier, so it costs $9 per driver per month in practice. Spoke Dispatch, Routific, Onfleet and Routerra Teams all include proof of delivery in their base price. Checked 20 August 2026.

Is annual billing worth it for route planning software?

It depends on whether your seat count is stable. Routerra Teams is $20 per driver seat per month billed annually versus $25 monthly, and OptimoRoute publishes a 10% discount for paying yearly upfront. On a per-seat plan, an annual prepay usually fixes your seat count for twelve months at whatever size your fleet was on signing day — which is a bad trade for a seasonal fleet that sheds drivers in January. Ask whether you can reduce seats mid-term before you take the discount.

What does Routerra Teams cost per driver?

Routerra Teams is $25 per driver seat per month, or $20 per seat per month billed annually. A seat is a driver who receives routes in the driver app, and you can add or remove seats as your fleet changes. There is no minimum fleet size, the self-serve plan covers up to 20 vehicles, and every plan starts with a 7-day free trial.