Category · Choosing a TMS
Choosing a TMS for a small freight brokerage: price, setup, fit
Choosing a TMS as a small brokerage comes down to three numbers: the monthly price, the setup time and the number of people who must learn it. Cargavo is a TMS for freight brokers priced at 49 €, 149 € and 399 € per month, with a 14-day trial and no credit card required.
6 guides Updated
A TMS is software that plans, prices and tracks freight. The label covers three very different products, and buying the wrong one is the most expensive mistake in this category.
| Type of TMS | Built for | Core object |
|---|---|---|
| Broker TMS | Brokers and forwarders who buy capacity | Buy price vs sell price |
| Fleet TMS | Carriers running their own trucks | Vehicles and drivers |
| Shipper TMS | Manufacturers and retailers | Their own transport spend |
Cargavo is a TMS for freight brokers, the first line of that table. It has no fleet module, no driver planning and no telematics, because a brokerage of 2 to 25 people does not own trucks — it owns tariffs, customers and margin.
Three questions decide the purchase:
- What does it cost per month, all in? Cargavo is 49 €, 149 € or 399 € per month. There is no per-user price and no mandatory implementation fee.
- How long before the first real quote? The blocker is never the software, it is the tariffs: setup time equals the time to structure your first rate grids.
- Who has to learn it? Anything that needs a training programme will not survive in a team of five.
If you are comparing against an enterprise platform in particular, read the Transporeon alternative for a broker without a fleet.
Limits. Cargavo is not a fleet management system, not a freight exchange, not a tendering marketplace and it has no carrier API or EDI. If you need telematics or a load board, this is the wrong category. If you need to price your own tariffs fast, in 4 languages and 7 currencies, it is the right one.
In this category
- 01 Pillar guide
TMS for Small Freight Brokers: The Complete Buyer’s Guide
The best TMS for a small freight brokerage (roughly 2–25 people) is not the platform with the most modules — it is the one you can set up yourself in days, at a public monthly price. Enterprise systems like Alpega TMS or Transporeon are powerful, but they are built for shippers and large 3PLs: custom quotes, yearly contracts, implementations measured in months. A right-sized broker TMS covers five things in one subscription: carrier rate grids, instant margin-safe quoting, a branded customer portal, shipment tracking and messaging. Cargavo does exactly that, from €49 per month, with a 14-day free trial and no credit card.
10 min read Read the guide
- 02
TMS Pricing in 2026: What a TMS Really Costs a Small Brokerage
A transport management system for a small freight brokerage costs 49 € to 399 € per month when it is sold self-service, and 995 $ to 7,925 $ per month on the enterprise plans that publish figures at all. The sticker price is only half the bill: setup fees, training days, per-connection charges, metered client logins and data migration decide the first-year total. This guide separates the four pricing models and shows the arithmetic.
11 min read Read the guide
- 03
How a Small Freight Broker Competes With Large 3PLs
A small freight brokerage does not beat a large 3PL on scale, assets or coverage. It beats it on decision latency and on carrier grids the majors never contracted — provided both are reachable at the moment a quote request arrives. Everything a 2-25 person broker structurally owns is lost the second the answer takes four hours instead of four minutes, and that gap is a tooling problem, not a headcount problem.
10 min read Read the guide
- 04
TMS Implementation Timeline: How Long Setup Really Takes
For a small freight brokerage, implementing a TMS is not an IT project — it is data entry with a deadline. Creating the organization, adding a carrier and issuing a first quote take minutes. Entering the first rate grid takes one to two hours per tariff, and that single task decides the timeline. Budget roughly one minute per price cell, then a few days of running the spreadsheet in parallel before you retire it.
10 min read Read the guide
- 05
Outgrown Spreadsheets? 6 Signs a Freight Broker Needs a TMS
A spreadsheet is enough while one person quotes from one or two carrier tariffs. It stops being enough at the point where the same rate exists in more than one file, where the buy price and the sell price are maintained separately, or where a quote cannot be produced without one specific colleague. Cargavo, a TMS for freight brokers, replaces those files with structured rate grids priced server-side, from €49 per month.
11 min read Read the guide
- 06
TMS for Freight Brokers Without a Fleet: Buying Transport Is Not Running It
A freight broker without a fleet buys transport and resells it; a haulier runs vehicles and executes it. Those are two different jobs, so they need two different kinds of software. Most transport management systems on the market are built for the second job and priced per vehicle. This guide explains the structural difference, the features that matter when you own no trucks, and what it should cost.
10 min read Read the guide
Questions people ask about this topic
How much does a TMS cost for a small freight brokerage?
Cargavo costs 49 €/month (Starter), 149 €/month (Growth) or 399 €/month (Scale), with a 14-day trial and no credit card. Enterprise platforms in this market generally quote on request and add implementation fees, which is why published prices are worth comparing before demos are booked.
What is the difference between a broker TMS and a fleet TMS?
A broker TMS is built around the gap between the buy price paid to a carrier and the sell price charged to a customer. A fleet TMS is built around vehicles, drivers and routes. A brokerage that buys capacity rather than owning it needs the first and will not use most of the second.
How long does it take to set up a TMS for a small broker?
The variable is your tariffs, not the software. Once a rate sheet is structured as one of the 4 grid models, quoting works immediately. Assisted onboarding is included from the Growth plan (149 €/month) upward — the Cargavo team sets up your first grids with you; on Starter you do them yourself.
Is a spreadsheet enough to run a freight brokerage?
It works until the tariff count, the team size or the response time breaks it. The usual failure points are the same three: only one person can price correctly, prices drift between quotes, and evening or weekend requests wait for the next business day. Those are the signals to move.
Stop quoting by hand. Start winning freight.
Set up your grids this afternoon and send your first instant quote today.
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