Honest comparison

DetailBook or AutoBook?

Both are built for UK detailers and both start at £25 a month. The difference is what £25 gets you, and whether you can start without paying at all.

Side by side

What you get, and at what price

	AutoBook	DetailBook
Free plan	Free: 3 quotes, 5 bookings, 10 clients a month	14-day trial, then paid
Entry price	Solo £25 / month	Essentials £25 / month
Deposits and card payments at entry price		Pro, £50
Invoices with VAT at entry price		Pro, £50
Photo quotes at entry price		Pro, £50
Customer SMS reminders	Business, £60	Pro, £50
Maintenance plans	Billed monthly through Stripe	Diary rebooking
Team logins	Business, 3 seats included	Not yet
iPhone app in the App Store		Web app
Android	Google Play	Beta via sign-up form
WhatsApp quotes and follow-ups		—
Languages	English, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Italian	English
Currencies	GBP, EUR, NZD	GBP
Accounting: expenses, profit, VAT position		Expenses + Excel export
Vehicle-size pricing	Size prices on the booking page
Pre-job condition reports	—
Commission on bookings	0%	0%
Built in	UK and the Netherlands	Rotherham, UK

Rival details checked 3 September 2026 from their public pages: DetailBook pricing · DetailBook features. Spotted something out of date? Email info@autobook.pro and we will fix it.

Straight answer

Where each one is the better pick

Where DetailBook wins

Condition reports before a job, with photos, on every plan.
Service-area rules by postcode radius, so a customer outside your patch cannot book.
Good / better / best photo quotes on the Pro plan.
Forty-plus guides for UK detailers on its blog. If you want reading, it is there.

Where AutoBook wins

You can run real work on it for nothing: 3 quotes, 5 bookings and 10 clients a month, forever, no card.
At £25 you get deposits, card payments, VAT invoices and photo quotes. On DetailBook those start at £50.
A proper iPhone app in the App Store, and Android on Google Play. Not a website saved to your home screen.
Quotes, reminders and follow-ups go out over WhatsApp, where your customers already are.
Six languages and euro pricing. If you ever work across the water, or hire someone who speaks Dutch or Polish-accented German, it just works.
Team logins on Business, three seats included.
Your accounting lives in the same app: expenses from a photo of the receipt, profit, and your VAT position by quarter.

The price, in your maths

On DetailBook, £25 buys the booking page and the diary but not the money side. To take a deposit or send an invoice you are on Pro at £50.

On AutoBook, £25 is the whole money side: deposits by card or bank, invoices with VAT, photo quotes, maintenance plans, accounting. Text-message reminders are the one thing that costs more, and that is £60 on Business.

So the honest maths is £50 against £25 for the plan a one-person detailer actually needs, and £0 against £0 only on AutoBook, because DetailBook has no free plan.

Pick DetailBook if pre-job condition reports and postcode-radius booking rules matter more to you than a free plan, apps in both stores and WhatsApp.

Try it without deciding

Free means free

The free plan does 3 quotes, 5 booked jobs and 10 clients a month, with deposits included and no commission ever. No card, no time limit. When you outgrow it, Solo is £25 a month and Business is £60. That is the whole price list.

Start free — no card See the maths behind £25

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