Samsara Review: Is the Fleet Management System a Good Choice?

We found that Samsara is one of, if not the best fleet management system available for most businesses, providing a massive feature catalog for driver management and route optimization, 24/7 support via email and phone for all users, and many integrations with third-party services like fuel cards and installation.

As far as cost is concerned, Samsara does not provide publicly available pricing, but our research revealed that you’ll typically spend a minimum of between $27 and $33 per month, per vehicle and you’ll be required to sign up for at least a three-year contract. There’s also a 30-day free trial to test it out before you make a financial commitment.

In this review, we’ll outline some of the pros and cons of Samsara as a fleet management system, including its features and cost, and compare it to other platforms available for your business.

In this guide:

• Driver and Vehicle Management: What Samsara Offers
• Technical Specifications
• Vehicle Tracking: Samsara’s Tools
• ELD Compliance: How Samsara Handles It
• Samsara Pricing and Value
• Installation
• Who Is Samsara Right For?
• Samsara Help and Support
• Methodology: How We Rated and Reviewed Samsara
• Verdict: Why Samsara Is Worth It

Driver and Vehicle Management: What Samsara Offers

According to a recent Gartner report, switching to fleet management software is driven by inefficiency and limited functionality in current methods.

Samsara stands out for its features across the board. Driver and vehicle management tools are no exception, and the system earned near-perfect scores in our tests due to a comprehensive set of abilities for addressing maintenance, fuel, and safety needs.

The system’s big rival, Verizon Connect, is a hair better overall, with more data stuffed into its reporting tools, but Samsara squarely beats Teletrac, Azuga, and many other fine fleet systems when it comes to features.

Live tracking the geographical positions of a fleet using Samsara. Source: Samsara

Vehicle maintenance and security

Samsara’s real-time vehicle diagnostics function can proactively spot issues like failing batteries and engine fault codes, alerting managers immediately to avoid a road breakdown and extend vehicle lifetime. Plus, hardware diagnostic reports can be auto-generated for your records.

We found Samsara’s preventive maintenance software (available in the US only) makes a robust maintenance program easy to create and keep up with. Maintenance records will log all previous work completed on each vehicle, making it easy for managers of any fleet to see what’s needed next.

A powered equipment utilization report helps managers evaluate the daily use of vehicles, trailers, or powered assets on a deep level. With it, users can analyze vehicle ROI and make wise investments for the future. Itemized lists track all active engine hours and distances traveled.

Drivers can submit Driver Vehicle Inspection Reports (DVIRs) directly from a mobile app with just a few taps. Samsara’s telematics will even track vehicle engine temperatures and cargo temperatures — two metrics that we found many fleet systems don’t bother to help with. Our researchers added up all these tools to reach an impressive 5/5 driver management score for Samsara’s system, beating most of the competition and tying with Verizon.

Samsara’s temperature tracking functions log all temperature changes for its assigned vehicles or assets. Image source: Samsara

Fuel management

Saving fuel costs is a top reason to use fleet management, and Samsara delivers. Samsara’s Fuel Usage report logs plenty of data points, including vehicle name, current driver, current fuel level, amount of fuel used, estimated cost, runtime, and idle time.

It can run on any custom time period, and can calculate fuel costs or a vehicle’s miles per gallon. With it, large fleets can save fuel costs by spotting and avoiding common fuel-wasting practices like idling or tanking up at a costlier gas station.

You’ll be able to pull up a graphical view that points out when and how long a given vehicle was speeding. Plus, speeding alerts can be set to let managers know as soon as possible, and idling alerts are available to further save fuel economy. A handful of fuel card integrations are available in the US only, including Wex, Fuelman, Comdata, EFS, and Fleet One. Samsara also offers fuel card fraud tools to monitor for misuse with these third-party cards, while other providers often only provide these benefits for their own cards.

Azuga is our pick as the best fleet system for fuel tracking tools, with driver ID tokens at no extra charge. However, Samsara is head and shoulders above most systems, while remaining better than Azuga overall.

Safety features

Samsara offers a few different types of Driver ID, the term for tracking each driver’s performance, even when they switch vehicles. Managers can manually track drivers or use a camera ID, the driver app, or ID tokens. The tokens are the most effective, but will cost an extra $9.99 per driver.

However they track performance, managers can use the data to log safety scores, allowing them to see how each driver is doing in relation to the others, and potentially reward those with safer habits. Samsara even allows managers to award drivers with automated messages and gifts cards for driving defensively. Also, alerts can be triggered by events like speeding or harsh braking. Significantly, Samsara reviewer, Jeremy, a Director of Transportation, said the Samsara system has contributed to eliminating dangerous driving behaviors in drivers.

Samsara has a panic button for no extra charge, and, in the US only, a crash reporting function built into its vehicle hardware telematics. The system has a few built-in theft prevention tools: GPS trackers like Samsara Gateways can monitor all of an operation’s equipment from a dashboard, while a site visibility tool uses AI to detect activity across multiple sites.

In another recent Samsara review, Courtney, working as a Compliance Officer in the Transportation/Trucking/Railroad Industry, praised the high-quality safety features, claiming that “Real-time alerts and footage have saved the day a number of times” for their company. They also praised the Safety Inbox, which provides a centralized view of automatically detected events based on data, including safety and speeding occasions.

With cargo theft on the rise, these security features will be music to fleet operators’ ears. A recent investigation from CNBC found that incidents of cargo seizure had shot up by 26% from 2023 to 2024, bringing home the vital importance of deploying anti-theft measures to protect your vehicles and fleet.

Learn more about how to use AI to optimize your fleet.

Samsara fleet map lets managers view trips with both a left-hand sidebar list and a map. Image source: Samsara

This collection of features can be deployed to give Samsara’s users a robust, multi-layered safety protocol. This contributes to Samsara’s perfect 5/5 score for driver management, which matches or surpasses every fleet system we tested – and, since driver safety is a core reason why managers begin using fleet software, Samsara’s perfect score stands out all the more.

For safety-conscious fleets that need a driver monitoring system, this is a core benefit that can justify a switch to Samsara and away from their current provider. One Samsara client, Liberty Energy, reported a 50% reduction in collisions thanks to AI-powered in-cab alerts.

Vehicle Tracking: Samsara’s Tools

We’ve found that optimizing fleet journeys is the top benefit of using a fleet management system, so Samsara’s stellar tracking tools are a big reason it stands out.

First, Samsara’s fleet reports cover a host of topics, while the Driver Record gives managers insight into route arrivals and departures, vehicle assignment, DVIR completion, and much more. Refresh rates are typically only one second, so managers can stay up to date in near-real-time.

Custom locations are tracked – a function that helps managers quickly build routes, set scheduled arrival times, and track historical performance in order to figure out ways to optimize the route in the future. A dispatch feature helps managers identify the best vehicle to complete a dispatch, and the system can calculate departure times and automatically optimize routes (for up to 20 stops at a time) as well.

Samsara’s telematics include AI-powered real-time custom alerts for SMS and email. Managers can be notified when a vehicle arrives at a set location or if a container temperature exceeds a given amount.

Managers can view mileage data easily and set geofencing measures, while drivers will benefit from traffic and weather alerts. Verizon has slightly more advanced feature options, but Samsara has a great set of tools to meet any fleet’s tracking needs.

Similarly, Samsara’s International Fuel Tax Agreement (IFTA) Mileage report serves up useful tax details, including jurisdiction, taxable miles, total miles, and tax-paid gallons. The service even integrates with third-party GPS navigation services, including TomTom, Garmin, Navman, Magellan, and Bad Elf – few fleet systems offer that much flexibility.

Read more about the Best Route Planning Software on the market.

ELD Compliance: How Samsara Handles It

With some exceptions, nearly all commercial motor vehicles in the US are now required to use an electronic logging device to track their hours of service. This is courtesy of a slate of new trucking regulations that came into force in 2025.

The Samsara Driver App allows drivers to view the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA)-compliant data of their hours of service that has been recorded by devices with access to their vehicle engines. The drivers won’t need any special hardware to view the reports, just an Android or iOS tablet or phone.

Since drivers will have Samsara’s automatically compiled report in front of them, they’ll be able to avoid receiving ELD regulatory fines when pulled over for a roadside inspection. Operators will have access to all their drivers’ hours of service (HOS) and records of duty status on the same platform as their drivers’ GPS data, sensor data, DVIRs, and documents, making any audits painless. Or as painless as an audit can be, at least.

Our researchers suggest Samsara has the best ELD solution on the market, after considering its price, reporting functions, mobile app, installation, and support.

Samsara Pricing and Value

Like many fleet systems, Samsara doesn’t make absolutely all of its pricing public, and says the total cost will vary by fleet size, contract length, and features chosen. That said, we have estimated that the typical costs for a Samsara plan at…

• Between $27 and $33 per vehicle, per month for a software subscription.
• Between $99 and $148 per vehicle for hardware, with lower prices for longer contracts.

These prices are around the industry average when it comes to paying for a fleet system — the similarly feature-packed Verizon Connect system starts at a slightly lower $23.50 per vehicle, per month price point — and includes five-year warranties for most key hardware. However, Samsara’s contracts are fairly long: They come with a three-year minimum, and deliver the best hardware deals at 60 months in length.

Samsara won’t offer free installation aid, but it does have many great installation partners that can get you set up without too much of a hassle.

However, Samsara does offer a free trial. They’ll mail their hardware units for free, allowing fleet managers to install the devices and try out the software for 30 days. After that, you’ll pay “per device, per year.”

Samsara’s long contracts and opaque prices don’t do it any favors: If you need to avoid a three-year commitment, consider going for Teletrac, since we rate it highly overall and it has short one-year contracts. Request a no-obligation price quote today to find out exactly how much a Samsara setup would cost for your fleet, and identify the best deal for your business.

We understand the importance of price when selecting a fleet management system, so check out the best deals below:

Installation

Samsara’s cloud-based software works with the two types of telematics hardware units that the company offers: OBD-II plug-in devices and hardwired devices, which professional installers can permanently connect to the vehicle’s electrical system. If you’d prefer to do this yourself, you can check out the YouTube videos via Samsara’s Help Center.

Once your hardware has been installed, we would encourage you to use Samsara’s Fleet app to onboard new Samsara gateways and hardware, so long as you are assigned either an Admin or an Installer role within your organization. Samsara’s fleet app is rated 4.8 stars on iOS and 5 stars on Android, as of June 2025, an impressive customer approval rating when compared to its rivals.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on connecting your hardware via the app:

• If you have an Installer role, tap ‘Install Devices’ once in the app. If you are registered as an Admin, you can find this option under the ‘More’ menu
• Click on ‘Install new device’. If your device has only partially completed its set-up process, you can skip to the current step in its onboarding. For a new device, select from the screen and follow the instructions
• You should see options to install Vehicle Gateways (VGs), Front or Dual-Facing Cameras, Asset Tags (ATs), Asset Gateways (AGs), and Environmental Monitor Sensors.

Samsara’s compliance tools allow drivers to track their hours of service with tablets or smartphones. Image source: Samsara

Who Is Samsara Right For?

Samsara is great for large operations due to its wide feature range and economic long-term contracts. We found the interface is easy to navigate, with 24/7 support to quickly push you past any speed bumps, so it’s also simple for small businesses with few resources to pick up.

In fact, Dan, an Operations Coordinator in the Transportation/Trucking/Railroad industry, praised Samsara’s “Excellent customer service and technical support”.

Plus, the company’s services include asset tracking, field service, and dash cams for truckers. Samsara offers two types of high-definition dash cams – a front-facing CM31 and a dual-facing CM32. One Samsara client, Univar Solutions, was able to decrease harsh driving events by 40% using Samsara’s AI dash cams.

Samsara has a breadth of functionality that makes it attractive for companies that are switching away from their current fleet management system — whether because it’s too clunky, too pricey, or too limited.

Samsara offers plenty of hyper-specific services and integrations, too:

• Electric Vehicle fleets are supported.
• Fleets with refrigerated food to worry about can look into reefer monitoring systems, which include Samsara temperature sensors in the cargo area.
• School bus drivers are covered under Samsara’s K-12 solutions.
• Other dedicated solutions include: government, transit, and construction vehicles.
• Snowplows can track which streets they’ve already cleaned, with a coverage map updated in real-time.

In the near future, self-driving trucks look set to revolutionize the logistics industry, with a ton of recent activity in this space. In April, Aurora debuted autonomous trucks on public roads for the first time. A few weeks later, it walked back slightly by installing a human operator behind the wheel of these trucks.

Whether the future involves human attendants on standby or not, one thing is for certain – self-driving trucks will be an asset to fleet managers. By working in combination with software such as Samsara, autonomous trucks can operate with unprecedented efficiency to keep fuel costs low and schedules on track.

The Motive system might be for you if Samsara’s 3-year contract minimum gives you pause: Check out our Samsara vs Motive guide for a full comparison of the two.

Samsara Help and Support

Samsara offers all the live support options that a fleet needs: Email, chatbot, and around-the-clock phone service are all offered to customers. Not every fleet system offers 24/7 support, but it isn’t uncommon, either, with services from Verizon to Linxup matching Samsara’s hours.

The fleet system also offers an online knowledge base that users can use to figure out the answers to common questions with articles and videos. Dan, an Operations Coordinator in the Transportation/Trucking/Railroad industry, praised Samsara’s “Excellent customer service and technical support”.

Users will have to rely on those resources when self-installing their hardware, as Samsara doesn’t provide installation aid. This isn’t uncommon, as Verizon doesn’t offer help with set-up either. Unlike Samsara, Verizon lacks chatbot support, so we scored Samsara higher for support.

We gave Samsara a 4/5 support score, compared to Verizon’s 3.5/5 score. Teletrac beats both systems with a 4.5/5 score, due to the installation aid that’s offered to all fleets of ten vehicles or more.

Methodology: How We Rated and Reviewed Samsara