TMS Pricing: What Should a TMS Cost a Small Brokerage?
October 16th, 2026
Every NFL team builds its roster under a salary cap. The number is set before the season, and the front office plans around it. When a team signs a player, it knows what that player costs against the cap.
A lot of TMS pricing works the other way. The bill is tied to how many people log in, so every rep you hire comes with two price tags: their salary, and another seat. For a brokerage trying to grow, that's an odd way to pay for the system that's supposed to help you grow.
How per-user TMS pricing adds up
Per-user pricing (also called per-seat pricing) is common in TMS software for freight brokers. You pay a base price that covers a few users, then a monthly fee for each person you add. Some vendors charge per user from the first login.
It looks reasonable on a small team. The math changes when you hire.
Take a made-up price of $100 per user a month. With 4 users, you pay $400. Hire 3 reps over the next year, and you're at $700. Give your billing person and a new sales lead their own logins, and it's $900 for the same software doing the same job. Nobody got more productive because the bill went up.
There's a quieter cost too. When every login costs money, brokerages start rationing them. Two reps share one account and a sticky note with the password. The billing team works off exports. Shippers never get a portal. The invoice stays smaller, and you pay for it somewhere else, starting with not knowing who touched which load.
What a small brokerage should expect to pay for a TMS
There isn't one right number, because vendors price in different ways. The fairest comparison is to price out where your team will be in a year, with the reps you plan to hire, and see what each option costs then.
Before you sign with anyone, get answers to these:
What does it cost per user, and what happens to the bill when we hire?
What moves the price: users, shipment volume, locations, or add-on modules?
Is there a setup or implementation fee?
Which integrations and features cost extra, like tracking, EDI, customer portals, or custom reports?
How long is the contract, and what does it take to cancel?
Has the price gone up at renewal for current customers?
Ask that last one out loud. Brokers reviewing TMS platforms on G2 and Capterra bring up prices that climbed after they signed, and it's a lot easier to find out before the contract than after.
How Logistically prices its TMS
Logistically starts at $400 a month. That includes unlimited users, unlimited customers, and unlimited locations, along with business intelligence and API access.
Pricing is based on the freight you move, not the number of people moving it. A brokerage on the entry tier pays $400 a month whether it has 2 users or 20. Hiring your next rep, giving your billing team their own logins, or opening a second office doesn't change the bill.
There's no long-term contract. You're month to month.
Every account runs on one system to quote, dispatch, track, and invoice. LTL rates from the Logistically Marketplace come back inside the same TMS, so reps aren't bouncing between carrier websites. AI invoice audit checks carrier bills against what you quoted before you pay them.
Why it matters more as you grow
The reason to buy a TMS is to move more freight with the team you have. Tom T., a freight broker who runs on Logistically, said it this way: "We increased our customer base and managed more customers effortlessly, with less manpower."
You'll still hire. Good brokerages do. When you're ready to add a rep, the software bill shouldn't be the thing that makes you wait another quarter.
If you want to see what Logistically would cost for your brokerage and how it runs on your own freight, request a demo. It takes about 20 minutes.
