Services · Mobile app development · Taxi booking apps
Codeeo offers taxi booking app development London operators can run under their own name: a passenger app, a driver app and a dispatch console for black cab circuits and TfL licensed private hire firms. Bookings, live tracking, payments and account billing sit in one system, and every trip is recorded the way a London operator licence expects.
London has two distinct trades with different rules. A taxi can be hailed in the street; a minicab must be booked through a licensed operator first. We design the product around whichever trade you are in, so your app never offers something your licence does not allow.
200+ companies servedFrom a first store to an ADX listed developer
What the app can include
A London passenger wants three things from a booking app: a confirmed car, an honest pickup time and a clear price. Your controllers want something different: a screen that shows every driver, every booking and every exception at once. Your drivers want jobs that make sense for where they already are. We build all three views on one data model, so a booking made at Paddington at midnight looks the same to the passenger, the driver and the person on the desk.
Many taxi app developers London firms speak to start from a generic ride hailing template and then fight it for months. We start from your licence, your fleet and your customers instead. For private hire, the operator is responsible for each booking, so the system records it before a car is assigned and shows the passenger who is coming and in what vehicle. For black cab circuits, the app sits alongside street hailing rather than replacing it. The list below is a menu; we pick the parts that fit your licence and fleet.
Every private hire booking is logged with time, pickup, destination, passenger contact and the assigned driver and vehicle before the trip starts. Records are searchable by date or reference, so a TfL compliance check or a passenger query can be answered from the console in a few clicks rather than from paper logs.
Your booking history is ready whenever an inspector or a customer asks.
Before pickup the passenger sees the driver's photo, first name, car model, colour and registration. Licence numbers and expiry dates for each driver and vehicle are stored in the console, and anyone whose paperwork has lapsed is blocked from receiving work until it is renewed.
Passengers know exactly which car to get into.
Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Stansted and Luton runs need flight numbers, terminal choice, waiting time rules and meet and greet notes. Station pickups at King's Cross, Euston or Victoria need clear meeting points. The app captures these details at booking and passes them to the driver automatically.
Fewer missed pickups on long and expensive transfers.
City, Canary Wharf and West End firms want cost codes, approved bookers, passenger names that differ from the booker, and monthly statements. We build account hierarchies with spending rules, so a PA can book for an executive and finance receives one tidy invoice.
Account clients stay because billing is simple.
A live map of drivers, a queue of upcoming bookings, manual override, and zone logic that reflects how your fleet covers London. Controllers can reassign, hold or split jobs, and every action is logged against their name for later review.
Controllers stay in charge on the busiest Friday nights.
Passengers can request a car now or book days ahead for an early flight, a school run or a weekly hospital appointment. Recurring bookings repeat automatically, and the console reminds controllers about tomorrow's early pickups before the night shift ends. This is where ride hailing app development London firms ask for differs from a pure on-demand product: much of the valuable work is booked in advance, so the scheduling side gets as much design attention as the instant request button.
Advance work is protected while instant requests still feel fast.
Passengers can request a wheelchair accessible vehicle, travel with an assistance dog or ask for help at the door. Requests route only to suitable cars, and the app itself follows WCAG 2.2 so screen reader and large text users can complete a booking unaided.
Disabled passengers get a vehicle that actually fits their needs.
Card, Apple Pay and Google Pay through a PCI compliant payment provider, with Strong Customer Authentication handled in the flow. Receipts show route, time and any waiting or extras, formatted so business passengers can claim expenses without asking for a copy.
Fewer payment disputes and fewer receipt requests.
Share my trip, an in-app incident report, masked phone numbers between driver and passenger, and lost property logging. Late-night riders leaving Soho or Shoreditch can send their live location to a friend without handing out the driver's number.
Safety features that late-night passengers notice and trust.
Job offers with pickup distance, a clear accept window, turn by turn navigation hand-off, document upload for licence renewals, and an earnings view by shift. Drivers working through the night need fewer taps, larger buttons and screens readable in a dark cab.
Drivers adopt the app instead of working around it.
Who this is for
London taxi and private hire firms range from a single office in Croydon to radio circuits covering the whole capital. Some take most of their work from Heathrow and Gatwick transfers, others from local residents booking the same trip every week. The common thread is that they lose bookings to the large platforms because their own app is dated, unreliable or missing. These are the situations we see most often, and how a custom build fits each one.
You have loyal local customers in one or two boroughs and a booking app that crashes, looks old or cannot take Apple Pay. We rebuild the passenger and driver apps on a modern stack, migrate your existing customer accounts and booking history, and keep your phone line and console running throughout. Your regulars notice better tracking and faster confirmation, not disruption.
Migration of existing accounts is planned before any screen is designed.
Licensed taxi drivers can be hailed, but many passengers now reach for a phone first. A circuit app lets members take app bookings between street fares, with metered pricing shown honestly and account work for corporate clients. We design around the fact that drivers choose when to switch on, rather than assuming a dedicated fleet.
Taxi meters stay the legal fare source; the app displays, it does not override.
Your passengers are bankers, lawyers and visiting executives, and your clients are the firms paying. You need named passengers, cost codes, chauffeur notes and invoices that match purchase orders. We build the account portal first, then the passenger and driver apps around it, so the business side is never an afterthought. Account bookers can also see every trip their colleagues take, export statements and set rules such as no bookings after a certain hour without approval.
You have a TfL operator licence, or you are applying for one, and want a branded platform rather than a white label subscription you cannot control. We scope a first release that covers booking, dispatch, payments and records, and leave pricing experiments and loyalty features for later releases once real demand is visible.
We build the software; securing the operator licence remains your responsibility.
How we work together
Our team of 80+ works from Dubai, Riyadh and Karachi and works remotely with London clients, with discovery sessions, design reviews and sprint demos held over video call. Most operators begin with a fixed scope first release, then keep a smaller team on a monthly retainer for improvements, new account clients and app store updates. If you already have an in house developer, we can work alongside them and hand over documentation as each part is finished. Larger groups sometimes take a dedicated team that works only on their platform. We have delivered 200+ projects across the UAE and the US, and we are rated 4.7 from 23 Google reviews.
A defined build with a deadline
We agree what the product has to do, write it down with a price and a date, and build exactly that. Changes are priced before they are made, not discovered on the invoice.
A product that keeps evolving
Named engineers who work your hours, join your standups and stay on the codebase. You direct the backlog; we own the quality of what ships.
Something live that needs looking after
A monthly block of hours for improvements, fixes and the small requests that otherwise wait months. Unused hours carry for a quarter.
Technology
We usually build the passenger and driver apps cross platform, with a cloud backend hosted in a UK region so passenger data stays close to home. Mapping, payments and messaging use established providers chosen with you, and every account is opened in your name. Where traffic data matters for accurate pickup times across inner London, we compare routing providers during discovery rather than assuming one.
01Mobile
02Data and cloud
03Marketing and tracking
It depends on scope, integrations and how much existing data moves across.
A focused first release with booking, dispatch, payments and records takes less time than a platform with corporate accounts, multiple fleets and custom pricing. Data migration from an old system, payment provider approval and app store review also affect the date. We agree a written schedule at the end of discovery, broken into milestones you can check against sprint demos, and we revisit it openly if you add features along the way, rather than quoting a number before we understand your operation.
Schedule a free consultation and get a written recommendation, with costs, before you commit to anything.
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