Samsara is a better fleet management system than Motive, offering a larger feature catalog, an easier to use interface, and more support options for businesses that need assistance. While the starting cost is a bit higher at $27 to $33 per vehicle, per month, the value is clearly there for most businesses.
Still, both options are considered two of the best fleet management software providers in our in-depth research, depending on your particular business needs. Motive is a bit more flexible for small businesses, with a lower price of only $25 per vehicle, per month and the shorter minimum contract of only 12 months, compared to three years for Samsara.
In this comparison guide, we’ll outline the major differences between these two providers, including how much they cost, what they can do, and why certain businesses should choose one or the other.
Key Takeaways
- Samsara is the better overall fleet management option, due to its richer feature set, ease of use, and better support options.
- Samsara’s software costs between $27 to $33 per vehicle, per month, while Motive is slightly cheaper with prices starting from an estimated $25 per vehicle, per month.
- Potential customers should be aware that while Samsara locks users into a minimum three-year term, Motive offers more flexible one-year plans.
- Samsara’s journey optimization features offer more data options than Motive’s.
- Both businesses offer a free trial, with Samsara giving users 30 days, while Motive offers a 14-day trial.
How Do Samsara and Motive Compare Overall?
Both Samsara and Motive (formerly KeepTruckin) offer a large range of the features a fleet needs: routing and dispatch, driver messaging, compliance and safety, fuel tracking, reports, alerts, and 24/7 support.
The systems both include some features that are less common to fleet management systems, including geofencing and Driver IDs that help a fleet manager identify drivers even when they switch vehicles. This makes both systems a good fit for fleets that require careful oversight of their drivers whenever possible.
| Price from The typical lowest starting price. The lowest price available for your business will depend on your needs | Best for Who is this provider most suitable for? | Rating Based on price, tracking features, driver management, vehicle management, product features, and help and support | Pros | Cons | Contract length | Free trial or demo | Fuel card integration | Try now | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Samsara | Motive (formerly KeepTruckin) | |||||||||
| Custom (typically from $27/vehicle/month) | Custom | |||||||||
| Established, large businesses | Fast refresh rates | |||||||||
| 4.7 | 4.2 | |||||||||
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| 3-year minimum | 1 year or monthly | |||||||||
| 30-day free trial — hardware and software | Free trial — hardware and software | |||||||||
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| Try Samsara | Visit Motive |
A wealth of features and around-the-clock support hours make both options highly functional fleet management systems.
Pros
- Great for optimizing routes
- Great for vehicle tracking
- Customizable driver management tools
Cons
- 3 year minimum for contracts
- Driver ID token costs extra ($9.99 each)
- No free installation and no public pricing
- Compliance: DVIR, IFTA, ELD
- Best for large fleets
- Great routing and dispatch features
- 24/7 support
- Free 30-day trial
Want to learn more? Check out our full Samsara fleet management review and Motive review
Pros
- Open API with 250+ pre-built integrations
- Fuel tracking functionality is a big money-saver
- Inspection and diagnostics tools for vehicle maintenance
Cons
- Not all features are available in Canada
- No free installation and no public pricing
- Price: Not public
- Compliance: DVIR, IFTA, ELD
- Great driver safety tools
- Self-installation
- 24/7 Support
- Free Trial
Cargo volumes have started dropping in late 2025, falling 7.8% year-over-year. The right fleet management system can deliver real-time tweaks to cut costs, and Samsara and Motive are among the best.
What Are the Pricing Differences Between Samsara and Motive?
The fleet management service industry serves a large range of fleet sizes and often offers custom quotes rather than going public with their plans and prices.
We’ve found that a good range to expect from Samsara is $27 to $33 per vehicle per month for their most popular features, with a hardware range between $99 and $148 per vehicle for one-off costs. Motive’s prices are not public, but are estimated to start from $25 per vehicle per month.
Samsara also comes with a minimum contract of three years, compared with Motive’s one-year contracts (billed monthly or annually). That’s a big commitment for Samsara users, making Motive the flexible option of the two services.
As far as fuel cards are concerned, Samsara has an edge on Motive, in that it offers fraud and misuse flagging for fuel cards from other providers, including WEX, PayCore, and Voyager, while Motive only offers these and other notable benefits, like cost control and spend management, with its Motive fuel card.
That said, Motive’s fuel card comes with a $250,000 fuel fraud guarantee, compared to a $25,000 guarantee available from fuel card company Coast via a Samsara integration.
The two systems offer good hardware warranties: Samsara has five-year warranties for their biggest units – cameras, monitors, and dashcams – while smaller items like cables and card readers are only covered with a one-year warranty. Motive’s lifetime warranty for hardware applies to users with an active subscription.
Both services offer online knowledge bases and 24/7 phone and email support for all customers, as well as chatbot support. Neither Samsara nor Motive charges an installation fee, as both systems are designed for easy self-installation.
Overall, customers are largely happy with the value that both platforms offer for their cost – even if Samsara is a little pricier than most. Read our full guide to fleet management costs for more info.
Fleets address soaring diesel prices
The top source of operational pressure for US fleet businesses across March 2026 likely isn’t a surprise to anyone following the news. Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz has dropped oil shipments sharply, and diesel costs are up as a result.
Tech.co survey data collected in March reveals that 20% of fleet professionals cited diesel cost increases as their biggest source of pressure, a spike from the 13% who said this in February 2026.
Fleet management tech can’t lower prices themselves, but it can shave down costs in a few other ways: Dropping idle times, speeding up routes, and even locating the best deals at nearby gas stations.
Samsara vs Motive: Which has the best free plan?
Both systems offer free trials, although neither has a free ongoing plan. Samsara’s trial period is 30 days, while Motive offers a custom range that depends on the size of your fleet.
30 days is typical for the industry, although some top fleet management brands only offer a demo, such as Azuga, or don’t specify a length at all, like Verizon.
Samsara’s Live GPS tracking functionality means it’s easy to track your fleet. Source: Samsara
Best for Optimizing Journeys: Samsara
Our testers found that Samsara has just-slightly better tracking features than Motive.
Both services allow a fleet to automatically optimize drive time across a route with multiple destinations, and both offer reporting tools that track data by driver, vehicle or asset. Since interest in asset tracking adoption spiked from 27% to 48% month-over-month as of December 2025, those functions are more crucial than ever. Both platforms track real-time data including app logins and document submissions.
With 47% of logistics pros identifying a focus on reducing idling times in one 2026 Tech.co survey, both platforms can help: Samsara and Motive offer SMS and email alerts for idling events, geofencing, and more.
Samsara has a very slight edge with its GPS refresh rate: its devices typically collect GPS fleet tracking location and fleet telematics data for each vehicle every second. This is very slightly faster than Motive’s promised 1-2 second refresh time.
Standout Samsara tools:
- Scheduling, dispatch, and route optimization
- Driver record analytics
- Geofencing
- Mileage tracking
- 30-second to one-minute refresh times
- SMS and email alerts
- Weather and traffic notifications
- Smart Map Overlays with custom locations
Standout Motive tools:
- Scheduling and dispatch
- Activity Detail Report
- Geofencing
- Mileage tracking
- Weather and traffic notifications
- SMS and email alerts
Samsara’s features make it one of the best route planning software options on the market.
Samsara has every core vehicle management feature that our researchers looked for, beating Motive’s still-great performance. Samsara delivers every core tool our researchers deemed useful for monitoring fleet vehicles, specifically, from fuel tracking and diagnostics to maintenance scheduling and DVIR reporting to meet federal regulatory standards.
Motive delivers most of these tools as well, including engine temperature tracking, a feature it lacked just a few years ago. The two platforms are aligned on fuel consumption tracking as well: They both track by driver, vehicle, and at a fleet level, while estimating costs, runtimes, and idle times, and delivering custom reports.
Both services also offer auto-alerts for diagnostic needs and allow speed-based alerts to be set, using data delivered by the accelerometers that both services include in their hardware units. Since speeding is behind nearly a third of all traffic collision fatalities, this is a big safety benefit that both systems can boast.
Vehicle upkeep is always important for fleets. Granted, it can drop down the priority list in comparison to fuel cost worries or workforce shortages: Tech.co’s recent March 2026 survey data found that 16% of fleet professionals citing vehicle upkeep as their top priority, down six points from the 22% who said the same in February.
Standout Samsara and Motive tools:
- Fuel Management
- Vehicle Diagnostics
- Maintenance Scheduling and Records
- Theft Prevention (one analysis finds cargo thefts are up 84% since 2020!)
- Cargo and Engine Temperature
- DVIR Reporting
Samsara’s toolkit puts it among the best dispatch software providers for trucking, once again beating the still-above-average Motive.
What's New With Motive and Samsara?
Both fleet management systems roll out new updates frequently. Most recently, Motive added an entire suite of AI products, including safety models that use the technology to predict and reduce collisions, an AI assistant for flagging time-sensitive problems, and AI fraud detection. The safety AI tools alone are worth considering, given that stopped vehicle collisions kill 600 people each year.
Samsara’s changes are more small-scale, with a host of bug fixes and performance improvements alongside some minor new features, such as an app update that allows Connected Workflows Premier users to dynamically display new sections to their workers based on their responses to previous questions.
Motive’s Safety hub helps managers view incident reports or quickly flag harsh driving events when they happen. Source: Motive
Best for Driver Management: Tie
Samsara and Motive both aced their driver management assessment, impressing our researchers and testing team. The two systems deliver on the core features that managers need when monitoring fleet drivers. These are: driving histories, two-way messaging, driver performance tracking, as well as idling and crash reporting.
The hours of service (HOS) tracking required for federally mandated ELD compliance is another basic function that both excell at: According to a 2026 Tech.co fleet survey, 40% of industry pros say tracking HOS is their top regulatory focus.
Samsara and Motive also deliver useful driver-focused tools that not every fleet management system has: scores and performance leaderboards for tracking the best or worst performers, safety trend reports, and a Driver ID tool, which allows fleet managers to track drivers even if they switch vehicles. This makes both options a top pick for last-mile delivery fleets, as their drivers may not always use the same delivery truck.
Our research team found that both Samsara and Motive offer a safety function dedicated to coaching, using managers and AI-powered tools to evaluate bad drivers to correct bad behavior.
On top of that, both Motive and Samsara provide recognition tools to reinforce defensive driving in their top drivers, and both have great dash cam hardware and integrations.
Dash cams are crucial for submitting video evidence to the Crash Preventability Determination Program (CPDP). Tech.co survey data from March 2026 shows a third (33%) of fleets are planning to adopt the technology. Either Samsara or Motive can help them out.
Samsara can deliver Driver ID with two methods, letting drivers either log into their own portal with their unique credentials or wear a physical Driver ID token on their keychain. While the tokens are a more fool-proof tracking method, they’ll cost an additional $9.99 per token.
Standout Samsara and Motive tools:
- Driving history
- Messaging
- Driver ID
- Driver behavior management
- Driving style data
- Driver performance
- Idling and crash reporting
- ELD compliance
We take our impartial research and analysis seriously, so you can have complete confidence that we're giving you the clearest, most useful recommendations.
After conducting an initial exploration to identify the most relevant, popular, and established tools in the market, we put them through their paces with a research framework designed in-house to see their real strengths and weaknesses. In this case, we analyzed 20 fleet management products across 51 different areas of investigation.
Based on years of market and user needs research, we've established a fleet management testing methodology that scores each product in six core assessment areas and six additional subcategories, covering everything, from the driver management features to value for money, customer support, and much more.
Our main testing categories for fleet management systems are:
- Price: The cost associated with using the fleet management software, including upfront costs, subscription fees, hardware costs (if applicable), and any additional charges for advanced features or add-ons.
- Tracking: The core functionality of the fleet management software, which involves monitoring and tracking the location and movements of vehicles in real-time, including features such as GPS tracking, route optimization, and geofencing.
- Driver management: The features and tools provided by the fleet management software to manage and monitor driver activities. This can include driver behavior monitoring, driver performance reports, and driver identification.
- Vehicle management: The functionalities that allow for the efficient management and maintenance of vehicles, such as vehicle health monitoring and maintenance scheduling.
- Product features: The additional functionalities and capabilities offered by the fleet management software, beyond basic tracking and management, such as real-time alerts and notifications, or driver routing and dispatching.
- Support: The resources, assistance, and guidance provided by the fleet management software company to users, including phone support, email or chat support, and online forums.
When it comes to calculating a product's final score, not all testing and research categories are weighted evenly, as we know some aspects matter more to our readers than others, which are merely “nice to have”. After hundreds of hours, our process is complete, and the results should ensure you can find the best solution for your needs.
At Tech.co, we have a number of full-time in-house researchers, who re-run testing and research processes regularly to ensure our results remain reflective of the present day.
Verdict: Samsara Fleet Management Is Better Than Motive
Samsara offers a better fleet management system than Motive. Why? Because Samsara offers a greater range of helpful fleet features than Motive for both vehicle tracking and route optimization, all while matching Motive’s impressive 24/7 support and great driver tools.
However, Motive still has nearly all the features most fleets could use, and stands out for its annual contracts, which beat Samsara’s three-year contract minimum. In the end, either fleet management system could be right for your own fleet needs.
Ultimately, we found that Samsara is among the best fleet management systems on the market today, tying with Verizon for our highest research score ever.
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