Almost every asset tracking product charges by how many things you track. We do not, and the reason is not generosity. It is that pricing per asset breaks the thing you bought it for.
The short answer
Do you charge per asset or per tag?
No. Assets on the register and codes pointing at them are unlimited on both plans. We charge per seat on the trade plan and per property on the compliance plan. Pricing per asset would charge you more for keeping a more complete record, which is the opposite of what a register is for.
What the meter does to behaviour
A register is only worth anything when it is complete. The tool that turns out not to be on it is, with grim reliability, the tool that goes missing. The instrument whose calibration date nobody recorded is the one that expires mid-job.
Now put a price on each row. Every time somebody adds a £40 multi-tool, a hole cutter set, a step ladder, a dehumidifier, they are making a small purchasing decision. Not consciously, most of the time — it just becomes easier to think that one is not worth adding.
Multiply that by a year and you have a register with the expensive items on it and nothing else. Which is fine, until a van is emptied and the claim is for “plus a lot of other bits”.
The meter did that. Not carelessness.
What the market actually charges
To be fair about it, here is what was published when we checked in August 2026.
Expert Market’s UK guide to asset tracking costs lists number of assets tracked first among the factors that set the price, and puts the range at anywhere from around $10 a month to $500 or more.
| Product | Unit | Published price |
|---|---|---|
| AssetTiger | Per asset, banded | Free to 250 assets; about $120/yr at 500; $230 at 2,500; $400 at 10,000; $800 at 50,000 |
| AssetPanda | Per asset, on quote | Quote only; the guide estimates around $1,500/yr for 500 assets |
| itemit (tags) | Per physical tag | Vinyl QR £149.99 per 500, £199.99 per 1,000; aluminium £249.99 per 500 |
| ServicePay | Per seat, or per property | Assets and tags unlimited on both plans; no per-asset or per-tag charge |
None of that is a scandal. Banded pricing is a perfectly normal way to sell software, and those products do considerably more than we do in some areas. The point is narrower: the unit is the asset, so the customer’s cost rises with the completeness of their own records.
Physical tags are a separate cost again and always will be, from whoever prints them. That is manufacturing, not software, and we are not pretending otherwise below.
What we charge instead
Two meters, neither of which is your kit.
- Seats, on the trade plan. Three included, then per extra person. You are buying access for the people who use it.
- Doors, on the compliance plan for agencies and landlords. Priced per property, with unlimited staff, because an agent with four people and four hundred properties should not be charged for the four.
Tools, tags, instruments, plant, van stock and property assets are unlimited on both. There is no per-asset band to cross and no per-tag fee, because the number we care about is not how much you own.
You can see the whole thing on the pricing page. It is deliberately boring.
Worth pinning down
What we do meter, and why
- Storage above your allowance25GB on the trade plan, 50GB on compliance, then £4 per 25GB. Storage costs us money per gigabyte.
- SMS above 250 a monthEach message has a per-unit cost we pay.
- Assets on the registerNothing. A row in a table costs us nothing, so charging for it would only buy us a worse register.
- Codes pointing at themNothing. Print your own or buy them anywhere; we do not sell tags.
“Unlimited” usually has a footnote. Here is ours.
Unlimited claims deserve suspicion, so here is exactly where the edges are.
- Storage. Photographs and certificates take space. The trade plan includes 25GB and the compliance plan 50GB, then £4 per additional 25GB. Register rows are tiny; photographs are not.
- SMS. Text messages cost real money to send, so each plan carries a monthly allowance — 250 messages — and messages beyond it are chargeable. You can also switch overage off entirely, in which case sending stops at the allowance rather than billing you.
- Tags themselves. A printed QR label costs whatever your printer or supplier charges. An NFC sticker costs pennies to a few pounds. You can print a QR tag on a laser printer for nothing, and plenty of people do.
What is genuinely uncapped is the number of things on your register and the number of codes pointing at them. If you find a limit there, it is a bug and we would like to hear about it.
The awkward question: does this cost us money?
A little, and less than it sounds. A row in a register is a few hundred bytes and a scan is a single read. The cost of an asset is close to nothing until it carries photographs, which is why storage is metered and the row is not.
The bet is straightforward: a complete register makes the product obviously useful on the worst day, and people keep paying for things that were obviously useful on the worst day. A register that has been quietly pruned to save £6 a month does not do that for anyone.
What we would rather you did
Tag the boring things. The extension leads, the step ladder, the site transformer, the dehumidifier that lives in whichever van needs it. Put the cheap stuff on.
Not because it will be recovered — it usually will not — but because a claim listing sixty items with serials, receipts and dates is a different conversation from one listing nine and an estimate.
How it works
Everything on the tool and equipment register can carry a scannable QR or NFC tag. Anyone can scan it with a phone — no app, no login, no account — and see what you have chosen to publish, which might be as little as a contact route. That public checkability is what makes a tagged tool awkward to move on.
The same mechanism works for fixed plant on somebody else’s site through the site and plant register, where the useful thing on the wall is service dates and an emergency contact rather than ownership.
If the worst happens, the register is what makes a claim survivable.
What is on Van 2 right now
Stock, registered tools and calibration on one van — and what happens to that record the morning the van is gone.
18
stock lines
12
registered tools
2
calibration items
1
low stock
- 22mm copper pipe — 3m lengths14
- Speedfit elbows 15mm40
- Fernox TF1 filter1 left
- Testo 557s flue analyser · registered toolcal. 14 Nov
If that van is taken
The stock list is already the loss report
- 1Van marked off the road. Its contents freeze at the moment it went.
- 2The 12 registered tools on board are flagged, each with its serial and scan code.
- 3One crime reference covers the lot. No marking eleven tools stolen one at a time.
- 4Out comes the itemised list for the officer and the priced schedule for the insurer — consumables included, which is the part people forget to claim for.
Figures shown are sample data.
Common questions
Do you charge per asset or per tag?
No. Assets on the register and codes pointing at them are unlimited on both plans. We charge per seat on the trade plan and per property on the compliance plan.
What does a physical tag cost?
Whatever you pay whoever makes it. A QR code can be printed on an ordinary laser printer for the cost of the paper; durable vinyl or aluminium tags are sold by specialist suppliers by the hundred; NFC stickers cost from pennies each. None of that is billed by us.
Is anything actually metered?
Yes — storage above the included allowance (25GB on the trade plan, 50GB on compliance, then £4 per 25GB), and SMS above the monthly allowance of 250 messages. Those cost us money per unit. A register row does not, which is why it is free.
Why do you charge agencies per property rather than per user?
Because a managing agent’s work and risk both scale with the number of doors, not the number of staff. Charging per seat would penalise them for giving their team access to the thing they are paying for.
Do I need to buy tags from you?
No, and we do not sell them. Print your own or buy them from any supplier. The register does not care where the sticker came from.