Register the company (LLC in the US, Ltd in the UK, PTY in AU). Apply for the local operator licence — PHV in London, TLC in New York, TCP in California, state-level TNC permit elsewhere. Timelines vary (2 weeks to 4 months); start this first because everything else is blocked without it. Budget $500-$3,000 for licence fees plus $2,000-$5,000 in legal setup depending on jurisdiction.
Commercial hire-and-reward insurance is non-negotiable — personal auto policies are void the moment a paying passenger is on board. Expect $3,000-$8,000 per vehicle per year depending on city and driver history. Vehicles can be owned, financed or lease-to-own from your first drivers. Recruit drivers with clean licences and local knowledge; background checks (DBS in UK, Checkr in US) run through the dispatch platform.
You need a booking website, a dispatch console, a driver app and a passenger app. Buying these separately costs $30,000-$80,000 or $200-$500 per month in SaaS fees. Taxi Web Design bundles all four into a $399 web booker (plus $10/month hosting) or a one-time $8,500 enterprise deployment with source-code ownership. Both include Stripe and Wise payments, corporate accounts and 24/7 support.
Publish a Google Business Profile with weekly photo uploads and a review request in every completion SMS. Build one landing page per suburb and per airport served. Run a small Google Ads budget ($20-$50/day) targeting '[city] taxi' and 'airport transfer' while SEO compounds over the first 3-6 months. Corporate accounts (hotels, wedding venues, small businesses) fill the mid-week gap between airport peaks.
Once you're doing 30+ bookings a day, add driver-partner recruitment (self-employed drivers on a commission or weekly rent model), corporate account sales, and airport meet-and-greet. The same $399 platform scales to 40-50 vehicles before you outgrow it — most operators move to the $8,500 enterprise package once they cross that line for the white-label apps and source-code ownership.
Every operator, from a single chauffeur to a 500-vehicle fleet, gets the same promise: zero per-trip commission, no per-driver fees.
Launch fast
From $399 setup · from $10/month
Ideal for 1–10 vehicle operators who need professional bookings live within 24 hours.
Full platform
From $8,500 one-time
For operators running 10 to 500+ vehicles who want branded apps and source-code ownership.
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Quick Answer
Taxi Web Design is a white-label how to start an online taxi business used by 250+ operators across the US, EU, Canada and the UAE. One flat Enterprise plan from $8,500 delivers a fully branded passenger app, driver app, dispatcher console and online booking website — with hourly charter, garage-to-garage billing, FBO airport meet-and-greet, corporate house accounts, GNet-style farm-in/farm-out and configurable PHV booking records baked in. There is no per-trip commission, no per-driver seat fee, and Enterprise includes source code ownership. Website launch and mobile-app deployment have separate timelines. Read the feature detail below or book a demo to see it live on your own fleet.