Traccar is a mature open-source tracking platform supporting thousands of device protocols. Geoblip is a narrower hosted service built specifically around scheduled geofence alerts.
Choose Traccar if you need protocol breadth, data ownership, or zero subscription cost and are comfortable running a server. It supports thousands of device models against our handful, it is Apache-2.0 licensed so nothing can be taken away from you, and self-hosting means your position data never leaves your infrastructure. For anyone technical who already runs servers, or who has hardware we do not support, Traccar is the better answer and we would rather point you there than waste your time. We have also learned from its source — our understanding of the GT06 protocol comes from reading its decoder.
Traccar is the reference open-source GPS tracking platform: Apache-2.0 licensed, actively maintained, and supporting a very large number of device protocols. If you have searched for self-hosted tracking, you have found it.
Geoblip is a much narrower product. This page is about whether that narrowness is useful to you or just a limitation.
| Traccar | Geoblip | |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | Apache-2.0, open source | Proprietary, hosted |
| Self-hosting | Yes — the main way it is used | No |
| Device protocols | Thousands of models | Phone apps; hardware in progress |
| Cost | Free self-hosted; hosted from $9.95/mo | From $9/mo |
| Server maintenance | Yours | Ours |
| Per-device, per-zone schedules | Not the primary model | Core feature |
| Data ownership | Complete, if self-hosted | Ours to hold, yours to export |
| API | Yes | Yes |
Pricing as of August 2026. Traccar’s software is free; their hosted service starts around $9.95/month for a tracking account and $49.95/month for a tracking server. Check both sites — this changes.
Protocol support is not close. Traccar decodes an enormous range of hardware — GT06, Coban, Teltonika, Queclink, Meitrack, Sinotrack, and hundreds more. Geoblip currently accepts positions over HTTP, which covers phone apps but almost no dedicated tracker hardware. See our devices page for exactly where we stand, stated plainly.
If you already own a tracker, Traccar probably supports it and we probably do not.
Data ownership. Self-hosting means position data never leaves your infrastructure. For some organisations that is a requirement rather than a preference, and no hosted service can satisfy it.
Cost at scale. Self-hosted Traccar tracking two hundred devices costs a VPS. Geoblip Business covers a hundred devices at $99/month. If you are technical and running many devices, the maths favours Traccar heavily.
Longevity. Apache-2.0 means it cannot be taken away, discontinued, or repriced. That is a real form of safety a hosted product cannot offer.
We also owe it a direct acknowledgement: our understanding of the GT06 protocol comes from reading Traccar’s decoder, which its licence explicitly permits.
Nothing to run. Traccar’s cost is not the software, it is the server — the VPS, the TLS certificates, the database backups, the upgrades, and being the person who notices when it stops. For a parent tracking one child’s phone, that is a disproportionate amount of infrastructure.
Scheduled alerting is the core model, not a feature. Geoblip attaches active hours to each device-zone pairing. A school zone can be live 08:30–16:30 on weekdays and dormant otherwise; a yard zone can be live only overnight. The whole product is organised around that idea — see school hours and equipment.
Alert state is documented. Geoblip tracks an ok/alerting status per
device-zone pairing. An exit notification fires only on the transition into
alerting; re-arming requires a genuine return, which also sends a
recovery alert. See
alert debouncing for the full state table. This
is a design choice suited to a narrow use case, not a claim of superiority over
a far broader platform.
Choose Traccar if you are comfortable running a server, you own hardware we do not support, you need data to stay on your infrastructure, you are tracking many devices, or you want software nobody can discontinue.
Choose Geoblip if you do not want to run infrastructure, your primary need is scheduled geofence alerts rather than tracking generally, and you are tracking a small number of things.
A reasonable third option: run Traccar yourself and use its geofencing. For plenty of people that is genuinely the right answer, and we would rather you reach it here than after a frustrating month with us.
If you are coming from a Traccar setup and want the hosted route, note that Traccar Client does not work with us yet and why — GPSLogger and OsmAnd do.
Pricing checked 7 August 2026; page last reviewed 7 August 2026. Competitors change their plans regularly — verify on their own site before deciding, and tell us if something here is out of date.
Seven-day free trial, cancel any time. Or draw a zone in the free builder first and see whether the idea fits.