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Fleet Management · head to head

Chevin FleetWave vs Lonboard

Chevin FleetWave logo

Chevin FleetWave

Fleet Management

Fleet management system covering vehicles and equipment assets, sold in three tiers from FleetWave Lite at £3 per vehicle per month upward

From
On request
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite
Lonboard logo

Lonboard

Maps

Python map rendering in Jupyter that skips GeoJSON and moves millions of features without choking

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Lonboard has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Chevin FleetWave only the Lite tier has a published price; any fleet with real operational complexity ends up in the unpublished Core or Advanced tier regardless of the appealing £3 headline figure.; Lonboard it is a notebook visualisation library, not a mapping application, so there is no editing, no layout, no map export for print and no sharing beyond distributing the notebook or an HTML file
  • They diverge on capability: Chevin FleetWave covers Maintenance scheduling, Lonboard covers GeoArrow binary transfer.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Chevin FleetWave and Lonboard actually diverge.

Attributes where Chevin FleetWave and Lonboard differ
AttributeChevin FleetWaveLonboard
Starting priceOn requestFree
Pricing modelPer vehicle per month (Lite); quote for Core and AdvancedOpen source, no licence fee
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsWeb, iOS, AndroidLinux, macOS, Windows
CategoryFleet ManagementMaps

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Chevin FleetWave

  • Maintenance scheduling
  • Compliance tracking
  • Fuel management
  • Total cost of ownership reporting
  • Multi-asset tracking
  • Accident and incident recording

Only in Lonboard

  • GeoArrow binary transfer
  • GeoPandas input
  • deck.gl layers
  • Jupyter widget
  • Large dataset handling
  • Styling by attribute
  • Open source licence

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Chevin FleetWave

  • A smaller fleet wanting a published, budgetable entry price rather than a full sales negotiation for basic maintenance and compliance trackingnot Lonboard
  • A mixed fleet needing vehicles and non-vehicle equipment tracked in one system rather than separate toolsnot Lonboard
  • An operation needing total cost of ownership reporting broken down by vehicle and asset typenot Lonboard
  • A fleet outgrowing FleetWave Lite and needing Core or Advanced tier compliance and reporting depthnot Lonboard

Lonboard

  • An analyst exploring a national road or parcel dataset in a notebook where pydeck or ipyleaflet becomes unusable at that sizenot Chevin FleetWave
  • A researcher publishing a reproducible analysis where the visualisation must run from the same script as the processingnot Chevin FleetWave
  • A data scientist joining spatial data to model outputs in pandas and needing to see the result immediately without exporting to a GISnot Chevin FleetWave
  • A team building an internal analysis pipeline on GeoParquet that wants rendering without a serialisation step in the middlenot Chevin FleetWave

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Chevin FleetWave

  • Only the Lite tier has a published price; any fleet with real operational complexity ends up in the unpublished Core or Advanced tier regardless of the appealing £3 headline figure.
  • Pricing is in GBP by default, reflecting Chevin UK base, which adds currency conversion uncertainty for buyers budgeting in other currencies before a formal quote.
  • The Lite tier is explicitly a simpler feature set, so a fleet that starts there and later needs compliance depth or multi-asset TCO reporting faces a tier upgrade and a new, unpublished price negotiation.
  • As a UK-headquartered vendor, integration depth with US-centric telematics and fuel card providers may be less mature than with UK and European partners.
  • Equipment and asset pricing at $0.50 per asset is a separate line item from the vehicle rate, so a mixed vehicle-and-equipment fleet needs to calculate two different per-unit costs to budget accurately.

Lonboard

  • It is a notebook visualisation library, not a mapping application, so there is no editing, no layout, no map export for print and no sharing beyond distributing the notebook or an HTML file
  • Maintenance sits with Development Seed as an open source side output of a consultancy, so roadmap priorities follow client projects and there is no support contract to buy
  • Layer coverage is a subset of deck.gl, so an analyst needing a less common layer type has to drop to pydeck or write JavaScript rather than staying in Python
  • It expects data already in GeoPandas or Arrow form, which means the performance benefit depends on the rest of your pipeline being Arrow-friendly; reading a large Shapefile is still the slow step
  • Rendering happens in the browser, so very large datasets are ultimately limited by the client machine's memory and GPU rather than by the server, and a laptop will still fail on data a workstation handles

Pricing, plan by plan

Chevin FleetWave

On request
  • FleetWave Lite$undefined/month
    • £3 per vehicle per month
    • Equipment and associated assets $0.50 per asset
    • Simpler feature set aimed at smaller or less complex fleets
  • FleetWave Core / Advanced$undefined/year
    • No published pricing, consultation required
    • Expanded compliance, TCO and multi-asset reporting features

Lonboard

Free
  • LonboardFree
    • Open source, no licence fee
    • No usage limits
    • Installed from PyPI or conda

Which should you pick?

Choose Chevin FleetWave if

  • You need maintenance scheduling.
  • You work on Web, iOS, Android.
  • You also want compliance tracking.
Chevin FleetWave review

Choose Lonboard if

  • You need geoarrow binary transfer.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, macOS, Windows.
  • You also want geopandas input.
Lonboard review

Questions people ask

Is Chevin FleetWave or Lonboard better?
Neither clearly leads. Chevin FleetWave starts at On request and Lonboard at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Chevin FleetWave or Lonboard?
Lonboard has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at On request for Chevin FleetWave and Free for Lonboard.
Does Chevin FleetWave or Lonboard run on more platforms?
Chevin FleetWave runs on Web, iOS, Android. Lonboard runs on Linux, macOS, Windows.
Can I use Lonboard for free?
Yes. Lonboard has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Chevin FleetWave starts at On request.
What is Chevin FleetWave best used for?
Chevin FleetWave is most often used for a smaller fleet wanting a published, budgetable entry price rather than a full sales negotiation for basic maintenance and compliance tracking, a mixed fleet needing vehicles and non-vehicle equipment tracked in one system rather than separate tools, an operation needing total cost of ownership reporting broken down by vehicle and asset type, a fleet outgrowing fleetwave lite and needing core or advanced tier compliance and reporting depth. Of those, a smaller fleet wanting a published, budgetable entry price rather than a full sales negotiation for basic maintenance and compliance tracking and a mixed fleet needing vehicles and non-vehicle equipment tracked in one system rather than separate tools are not what Lonboard is typically brought in for.
What can Chevin FleetWave do that Lonboard cannot?
Chevin FleetWave covers Maintenance scheduling, Compliance tracking, Fuel management, Total cost of ownership reporting. Lonboard covers GeoArrow binary transfer, GeoPandas input, deck.gl layers, Jupyter widget.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Chevin FleetWave: Is FleetWave pricing public?

Only for the Lite tier, at £3 per vehicle per month plus $0.50 per equipment asset. Core and Advanced tiers require a consultation.

Lonboard: Why not just use pydeck?

pydeck serialises geometry to GeoJSON to reach the browser. Lonboard uses a binary GeoArrow pipeline, which is the reason it handles far larger datasets in the same notebook.

Chevin FleetWave: What is the difference between Lite, Core and Advanced?

Lite is a simpler feature set for smaller or less complex fleets; Core and Advanced add compliance, TCO and multi-asset reporting depth, priced separately.

Lonboard: Who maintains it?

Development Seed, a geospatial engineering consultancy, as an open source project. There is no commercial support offering.

Chevin FleetWave: Does it track non-vehicle equipment?

Yes, equipment and associated assets are tracked within the same platform, priced separately from vehicles.

Lonboard: Does it work outside Jupyter?

It is built as a Jupyter widget. Exporting to standalone HTML is possible, but the intended environment is a notebook.

Lonboard: Is it free for commercial use?

Yes, it is open source with no licence fee.

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