A $199-a-month platform is $2,388 a year before you add anything, and the monthly price is the smallest part of the bill. Setup fees, data migration, per-seat charges and required add-ons routinely add more in year one than twelve months of subscription, and most of it never makes it onto the pricing page at all.
Prices below were checked on each vendor’s own pricing page in July 2026: Tekmetric, AutoLeap, Shopmonkey, Shop Boss, Shop-Ware, ALLDATA, Orderry, ARI. Nothing here comes from a review directory: in this category the directories contradict each other and each other’s own review text.
⚠️ Pricing note. Every price in this article was read on the vendor’s own pricing page in July 2026, and each one is linked so you can check it. Software pricing moves without notice: plans get renamed, tiers get split, and fees get added. Open the vendor’s page and confirm the current number before you decide anything. If you find one of these out of date, the vendor’s page wins, not this article.
Every vendor answers “how much is it” with a number that is technically true and practically incomplete. This article assembles the whole year, line by line, so you can build the number yourself. If you just want the sticker prices by tier, that’s a separate page: how much shop software costs per month.
The short version
- Subscription is line one of five. Setup, migration, seats, add-ons, and hardware are the rest.
- Shop Boss publishes migration at $399 or $899. AutoLeap acknowledges a setup fee and does not publish the amount.
- Add-ons are where the top tier moves: Tekmetric lists multi-shop at $70/mo, tire at $39/mo, and marketing at $345/mo. Shop-Ware lists CRM and scheduler at $249/mo. AutoLeap lists an AI receptionist at $99/mo.
- Seats compound. Shopmonkey adds $20/mo per user, so three extra logins is $720 over a year.
- ALLDATA Shop Manager at $99/mo requires ALLDATA Repair at $209/mo, so the real entry is $308/mo.
- Garage is $39/mo for one user or $69/mo for up to seven, no setup fee, month to month. It also has no integrations, no parts ordering, no labor guides, and no automated texting.
Who should pay the higher first-year number without blinking
I’m being generous on purpose. Plenty of owners read a cost article, get spooked by the big numbers, and end up buying something that can’t run their shop.
Shops with four or more bays and a service advisor. The workflow separation in a $199-and-up platform is what you are actually buying. It is not padding.
Shops that order parts inside the repair order. The time your counter person saves not tabbing between supplier sites is worth more than the difference between tiers, every week.
Shops that quote from labor time guides. ALLDATA at $308/mo entry looks brutal in isolation and is rational if you pull procedures, diagrams, and labor times daily. That’s a repair information purchase, not a management software purchase. Mixing the two up is the most expensive mistake on this page.
Shops running multiple locations. Consolidated reporting is a real product category and it is priced like one.
Shops that already have accounting integrated. The bookkeeping hours you would burn unwinding an invoice sync are usually bigger than the subscription you would save.
If two or more describe you, do the arithmetic below, but the answer is going to be one of the big platforms, and that is fine.
What Garage doesn’t have
Stated here, high, because a cost article that hides the feature gap is a sales page wearing a lab coat.
- No parts ordering, no labor time guides, no accounting integration
- No third-party integrations, no app marketplace, no public API
- No multi-location support
Which matters here for one reason: none of it shows up as an add-on line on your bill, because there is no add-on to sell you. The complete list is in the full list of what Garage doesn’t do.
What auto repair shop software costs in year one, add-ons included
Line 1: subscription
The published number, times twelve. Entry tiers at the top of the market: Tekmetric $199, AutoLeap $199, Shop Boss $199, Shopmonkey $239, Shop-Ware $279. In the under-$100 field: ARI $39.99, Orderry $39 and $69, Garage $39 and $69. Multiply before you go further, because $199 a month is $2,388 a year and nobody does that conversion in their head at a trade show booth.
Line 2: setup and onboarding
This is the line vendors are least consistent about. Shop Boss publishes migration at $399 or $899 depending on scope. AutoLeap’s pricing page acknowledges a setup fee and does not state the amount, which means you cannot budget it until you are already in a sales conversation. Ask three questions in writing: is there a setup fee, what is the number, and is it refundable if we cancel in month two.
Line 3: data migration
Separate from setup, and often quoted separately. What is being moved matters more than the price: customers only, customers plus vehicles, or customers plus vehicles plus full repair history. The third one costs the most and it’s the only one worth having. If you are leaving a system, export everything while your account is still active. No vendor can retrieve it for you afterward.
Line 4: seats
The line that quietly resets your budget when you hire. Shopmonkey adds $20/mo per additional user, so two techs and a part-timer is $60/mo, $720 a year, on top of the plan. Structures differ sharply below $100 as well: ARI does not cap users at $39.99, Orderry covers up to 15 employees at $69, and Garage Essential is one user with Premium covering up to seven and charging additionally from the eighth. Price the crew you’ll have in a year, not the one clocking in tomorrow.
Line 5: add-ons
Where the published entry price stops describing the product. Tekmetric lists multi-shop at $70/mo, a tire module at $39/mo, and marketing at $345/mo. Shop-Ware lists CRM and scheduler together at $249/mo, which is more than most entry plans cost outright. AutoLeap lists an AI receptionist at $99/mo. None of these are traps, they are modules, but a $199 plan plus a $345 module is a $544 plan.
Then there is the ALLDATA structure, which is its own lesson: Shop Manager at $99/mo requires ALLDATA Repair at $209/mo, so the entry that reads $99 is $308. Repair information and shop management are two purchases, and any budget that treats them as one will be wrong.
Hardware sits underneath all of it. Tablets, a printer, a card reader, and a cash drawer are real first-year money regardless of which software you choose.
Five questions before you sign anything
Yes or no.
- Is there a setup or onboarding fee, and did I get the number in writing?
- Does migration include full repair history, or only customers and vehicles?
- What does my bill look like the month I hire my next technician?
- Which of the modules I was demoed are add-ons rather than included?
- Am I on a contract, and what happens in month three if this does not work?
If you answered yes to two or more, don’t buy Garage. Questions two through four in particular tend to mean you need a platform with the depth to justify its price.
The part we can compete on: what the terms look like
Not feature parity, and not being the cheapest, because in the under-$100 field we are not. What we can be specific about is the shape of the first-year bill.
Garage has no setup fee and no migration fee. There’s no migration fee because there’s no migration service: you export from your old system and bring over whatever you decide is worth keeping. The subscription is the bill. It is month to month, so a bad fit costs you one month, not a year. There are 7 days free with no card, which several products in our price range also offer: Orderry publishes the same 7-day no-card terms, MaxxTraxx offers 30 days, and ARI runs a permanent free tier. In the $199-and-up tier the picture is different by the vendors’ own statements: Tekmetric says it offers free demos but not free trials, and AutoLeap says it does not offer a free trial because the system is custom-built with your shop’s information.
Both are defensible decisions. They also mean your first-year number is committed before you have written a single repair order in the software.
Frequently asked questions
How much does auto repair shop software cost per month?
The large platforms start at $199 to $279 per month on their published pages, checked July 2026. Smaller products run roughly $35 to $70. Add-ons, seats, and setup move both groups upward.
Do shop software companies charge a setup fee?
Some do. Shop Boss publishes migration at $399 or $899. AutoLeap states that a setup fee exists without publishing the amount. Others, Garage included, charge nothing. Ask in writing before the demo ends.
Why is ALLDATA Shop Manager listed at $99 if it costs more?
Because Shop Manager requires an ALLDATA Repair subscription at $209/mo alongside it. The real monthly entry is $308. You are buying repair information plus a management layer, which is a different purchase from management software on its own.
What is the single most underestimated cost?
Seats, followed by add-on modules. Both are invisible on the day you sign and both scale with the growth you are hoping for.
Bottom line
Build the year before you build the shortlist. Twelve months of subscription, plus setup, plus migration, plus the seats you will actually need, plus the modules that were in your demo. If that total is worth it because parts ordering, labor guides, and accounting sync are how your shop runs, pay it without regret. If the total is mostly buying capability you will not use, look at the under-$100 field, compare it honestly on headcount, and take whichever one fits.
Ours has no setup fee and no contract, and you have 7 days to find out, no card.
Related reading: spreadsheet vs software for an auto repair shop · auto repair shop expense spreadsheet
