Services · Mobile app development · Taxi booking apps
We provide taxi booking app development Manchester operators can put their own name on: a passenger app, a driver app and a dispatch console for hackney carriage firms and licensed private hire operators across the city and the wider Greater Manchester area. The system is built for a region where ten councils each license their own drivers and cars, and where a single trip can start in one borough and end in another.
That patchwork is the real design problem. Your app needs to know which authority licensed every driver, car and operator involved, and route each booking so it stays inside the rules that apply to it.
200+ companies servedFrom a first store to an ADX listed developer
What we build
Manchester operators tell us the same story. Passengers expect the tracking and payment options of the national platforms, controllers juggle drivers licensed by different councils, and demand jumps sharply whenever there is a match at Old Trafford or the Etihad, or a big show in town. A generic white label product treats every driver as interchangeable. Ours does not.
The Greater Manchester Minimum Licensing Standards set common expectations for drivers, vehicles and operators across the ten councils, covering checks, training and vehicle standards. Each council still adopts them into its own policy, so we keep licensing rules as editable settings in the console rather than code. These are the parts we usually build, ordered by how often Manchester firms ask for them.
Each driver, vehicle and operator profile stores the issuing council, licence number, expiry date and supporting documents. Dispatch checks those fields before offering a job, so a car licensed by one authority is not sent work booked through an operator licensed by another unless a lawful arrangement exists between them.
Bookings stay within the licensing rules that apply to them.
The Deregulation Act 2015 lets an English private hire operator pass a booking to another licensed operator, including one in a different district. The app records the hand-over, the receiving operator and the passenger's original booking, so responsibility is traceable when a Bolton job is fulfilled by a Salford fleet.
Overflow work is passed on without losing the audit trail.
Football, concerts and arena nights create sudden queues. We add pre-booked return trips, defined pickup points away from the crowd, and a console view that shows demand building ahead of the final whistle or the encore, so controllers can position drivers in time. Venue regulars can save their usual return address in advance.
More completed trips on the nights that matter most.
Hackney carriage drivers can receive app requests alongside rank and street work. The app shows the metered fare basis set by the licensing council, lets drivers switch availability on and off, and never pretends a hackney quote is fixed when the meter governs the price.
Hackney members win app customers without breaking fare rules.
Manchester Airport transfers need terminal choice, flight tracking and waiting allowances. Piccadilly and Victoria pickups need clear meeting points. Booking forms collect what the driver needs and pass it on, and passengers get a message with the exact place to stand.
Drivers and passengers find each other first time.
Students along the Oxford Road corridor and late-night crowds in the Northern Quarter want to know who is collecting them. The app shows driver photo and car details, offers trip sharing with friends, and gives a direct way to report a problem, with incidents routed to a named manager.
Parents, students and venues recommend a firm they trust.
A live map, booking queue and zones drawn to match your coverage, from the city centre to outer towns. Controllers can override auto dispatch, hold jobs for a preferred driver, and see which drivers are near borough boundaries where licensing questions arise.
Controllers keep the fleet balanced across the region.
Wheelchair accessible vehicle requests, assistance dog notes and help-at-the-door flags travel with the booking to a suitable driver. Screens follow WCAG 2.2 and are tested with screen readers, because a disabled passenger who cannot complete a booking will simply phone a competitor.
An app that disabled passengers can use on their own.
Card, Apple Pay and Google Pay for walk-up customers, and monthly invoicing for business accounts, schools and care providers with approved bookers. Payments run through a PCI compliant provider, and refunds or adjustments are logged against the controller who made them.
Cash handling drops and account billing gets simpler.
New drivers upload licence, insurance and vehicle documents in the app, managers approve them in the console, and reminders go out before anything expires. Training records required under your council's standards can be stored on the same profile. Managers can see at a glance which applicants are waiting on which document.
Paperwork stops slowing down recruitment.
Who this is for
Greater Manchester has large private hire firms with hundreds of drivers, hackney associations, and small local operators serving one town such as Stockport or Wigan. They face the same competition from national platforms but start from very different places. Some depend on the airport, some on the universities, and some on council contracts that run every weekday. These are the four starting points we meet most, and what a custom app changes for each.
Your operator licence sits with one council, some drivers hold licences from neighbouring councils, and you pass overflow work to partner firms. You need a system that tracks all of that without controllers checking spreadsheets. We build the licensing data into dispatch, so the console only offers lawful options and records why each job went where it did. Reports then show your work split by borough, which helps when you plan where to recruit next.
Licensing rules are configured with your compliance lead, not assumed by us.
Members work ranks and streets, but younger passengers book on their phones. A shared app gives members access to that demand while each driver keeps control of when they work. We design fare display around the council's tariff, add account work for local businesses, and keep the member experience simple enough for drivers who have never used a dispatch app. Association officers get a simple admin view to approve new members and suspend anyone whose licence lapses.
Much of your work comes from council contracts, schools and care providers rather than the public. You need recurring bookings, named passengers, escort details and reliable records for each run. We put the scheduling and reporting side first, then add a public booking app later if you want to grow retail work.
Safeguarding details are visible only to staff who need them.
You rent a platform, pay per booking or per driver, and cannot change features or move your data easily. We plan a migration to a system you own, moving passenger accounts and booking history across, running both in parallel for a short pilot, and switching drivers over in groups so the phones keep ringing throughout. Your passengers keep their saved addresses and payment methods where the provider allows it.
How we work together
We have no Manchester office. Our team of 80+ is based in Dubai, Riyadh and Karachi and works remotely with clients in the North West, with discovery, design reviews and sprint demos run over video call. Most operators start with a fixed scope first release and then keep a smaller team on retainer for updates and new features. Each phase ends with working software you can test, not a document. Fleets planning several products at once sometimes take a dedicated team. We have delivered 200+ projects across the UAE and the US and hold a 4.7 rating 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
Passenger and driver apps are usually built cross platform for iOS and Android from one codebase, with a cloud backend in a UK region. We choose mapping, payment and messaging providers with you, based on coverage, cost model and how they fit your existing systems. Load testing is planned around event nights, when booking volume can rise sharply within minutes.
01Mobile
02Data and cloud
03Marketing and tracking
Scope, integrations, licensing logic and data migration.
A single-borough firm with one fleet needs less than a multi-borough operator with subcontracting partners, hackney members and contract work. Integrations with accounting, council contract portals or an existing dispatch system add effort, as does moving years of booking history from an old platform. We price after discovery, once these factors are known, and show which features could move to a later release to fit your budget. Design depth matters too: a console used by six controllers through a busy weekend deserves more testing than a screen used once a month.
Schedule a free consultation and get a written recommendation, with costs, before you commit to anything.
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