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An honest comparison

A DAT Alternative That Starts At Nothing

If you are looking for a DAT alternative, start with the honest part: DAT carries far more freight than we do and has decades of rate history behind it. What we do differently is the commercial model, the board is free to use with no card, the paid tiers are flat monthly fees you cancel in one click, and we never take a percentage of your freight. If what sent you searching was the bill rather than the board, that is the part worth reading.

Try The Free TierSee Our Pricing
Both sides

Where Each Board Actually Wins

Where DAT One is better

  • Load volume. DAT is the largest load board in North America and it is not close. On a thin lane on a thin day, that difference is the whole product.
  • Rate history. Their analytics are drawn from an enormous base of transactions, which is why brokers quote DAT numbers at each other in negotiations. A new board cannot manufacture twenty years of data.
  • Broker familiarity. Almost every brokerage already posts there, and many post there first.
  • Depth of tooling. Carrier monitoring, factoring integrations, TMS connections and market analytics that a board our size has not built yet.

Where One Load Board is better

  • A free tier you can judge the board on. The whole board, every equipment type and three offers to send, with no card and no clock running. Rates, lane matching and alerts start on Pro.
  • No commission, ever. The rate on the board is the rate you invoice. Our only income is the flat subscription.
  • Flat pricing with no per-seat surprise: Pro is $49 a month for one truck and Fleet is $120 for up to five, which works out at $24 a truck rather than $49 each.
  • Cancel in one click from the dashboard. No notice period, no cancellation fee, no form, no phone call.
  • Brokers and shippers post free, permanently. They are the supply this board runs on, so charging them would only thin the freight carriers came for.
  • Every equipment type on one account, from cargo van to lowboy, changing what you run never means changing plans.
What each one costs

DAT One Pricing, And Ours

Their figures are read from their own published pricing page, not from a summary. Prices change, check theirs before you decide.

DAT One

DAT One Standard
$59 / month
DAT One Enhanced
$149 / month
DAT One Pro
$169 / month
DAT One Select
$259 / month
DAT One Office
$339 / month
  • No free tier for carrier load board access, the entry plan is the entry price.
  • Access is per user, so a dispatcher who needs their own login is another subscription.
  • Rate analytics sit on the higher tiers. Check which tier carries the feature you are actually buying it for.

Read from DAT’s pricing page on .

One Load Board

Free, 3 offers
$0
Pro, one truck
$49 / month
Fleet
$120 / month
Pro, billed yearly
$350 / year
Fleet, billed yearly
$720 / year
  • No commission on your freight, on any plan.
  • No application fee and no card to see the board.
  • Brokers and shippers post free, permanently.
  • Cancel in one click, no notice period, no fee.
Full price list
Side by side

DAT One vs One Load Board

A feature-by-feature comparison of DAT One and One Load Board.
FeatureDAT OneOne Load Board
Free tierNoYes, full board, no card
Entry paid plan$59 / month$49 / month
Commission on your freightNoneNone
Rate visible before you callVaries by postingOn every posting
CancelCheck your plan termsOne click, no notice period
Cost for brokers to postPaid plansFree, permanently
Load volumeLargest in North AmericaSmaller, we are new
Historical rate analyticsDeep, decades of dataFrom our own board only

Load volume is the one row where we lose outright, and it is left in rather than left out. A board that costs nothing and has nothing on your lane has not saved you money.

Who should stay on DAT

If your business depends on being able to find freight on any lane on any day, DAT is still the answer today and pretending otherwise would waste your time. The same is true if you negotiate against brokers using lane rate history, their data set is the reference point the whole industry argues from, and a two-year-old board cannot substitute for it.

That is a genuine recommendation, not a rhetorical one. A load board that costs you nothing and has nothing on your lane has not saved you money.

Who should look at us instead

The people who write to us are usually one of three. Owner-operators paying a monthly subscription in a soft market and struggling to justify it. Drivers running small vehicles, cargo van, sprinter, box truck, who found the big boards priced for a fleet and stocked for a semi. And people who wanted to look at a board before paying to look at a board, and could not.

All three of those are answered by the same thing: the free tier here is the product with a speed limit on it, not a locked door. You get the full board, every equipment type and the rate on every load. What you do not get is the alert the instant a load posts, free accounts receive matches on a delay, and paid ones do not. On the loads worth having, that delay is usually the whole difference, which is an honest reason to upgrade rather than a manufactured one.

The pricing difference is structural, not a discount

Sitting at $49 for Pro is not us undercutting anybody, it is close to the market anchor, deliberately. The difference is what happens on either side of it. Below it, there is a free tier with no card and no expiry date. Above it, Fleet at $120 covers five trucks rather than adding a feature you were previously denied, so the upgrade happens because your business grew rather than because we withheld something.

Our full price list, including the annual rates, is on the pricing page, and there is no tier above Fleet waiting to be quoted.

What we are not claiming

We are not claiming more loads, better rate data, or that DAT is bad. It is a serious product with a serious data set and a lot of carriers use it happily. We are claiming a different commercial arrangement: free access as a permanent tier, flat prices, no commission, no contract, free posting for the brokers and shippers whose freight you came for. Whether that is worth switching for depends entirely on which of those was the problem.

DAT One vs us

Questions People Ask Before Switching

  • Is DAT worth it for a new owner-operator?

    If your lanes are thin and you need volume on day one, probably yes, and the honest reason is above: DAT has the deepest board in the country and that is not something a newer board can talk its way past. The case against it is the same one every month — a subscription that has to earn itself back before you have profited a dollar. Many operators run both, and drop the paid one when it stops paying for itself.

  • What is the best free load board?

    The one with freight on your lanes, which is a different answer for a reefer operator in the Valley than for a hotshot in Texas. Judge a free board on three things rather than on the word free: whether the rate is visible before you call, whether the carriers and brokers on it are verified, and whether anything is taken out of the load. Ours answers yes, yes and nothing — and it is newer and smaller than DAT, which is the part a free board usually leaves out.

  • Can you use two load boards at once?

    Most working carriers do, and there is no reason not to. A board is a source of freight rather than a relationship, and nothing about posting or searching on one affects the other. The useful version of the question is which subscriptions still earn their keep once a free board is covering part of the week.

  • What does a paid load board subscription actually buy?

    Depth, mostly — more postings, and more of them on any given lane — plus tooling that grew up around it: credit data on brokers, rate history, dispute handling, integrations with dispatch software. Whether that is worth the monthly figure depends entirely on how much of it you use. Operators who use the rate history and the credit checks get value; operators who only search loads are paying for a search box.

  • Do you need to enter a card to try this board?

    No. Starting free takes no card at all, and there is no clock on it either: the whole board, every equipment type and the rate on every listing stay open until you send your third offer, however long that takes. Free is alerted too, fifteen minutes after a load posts. After the third offer the board blurs until you pick a plan, and the paid tiers are what add instant alerts and unlimited offers — so the comparison you make is against a board you have actually used, not against a screenshot.

  • Is there a free alternative to DAT?

    Yes. One Load Board is free to start: the whole board, every equipment type and three offers, with no credit card. Once those three are used the board blurs until you pick a plan. Pro is $49 a month and lifts the offer limit, makes those alerts instant, and adds the backhaul finder and lane rate history. Fleet covers up to five trucks. Free is alerted too, fifteen minutes after a post.

  • How much does DAT cost compared to One Load Board?

    DAT publishes carrier plans from $59 a month up to $339 a month, read from their own pricing page on 27 August 2026. One Load Board is free at the entry tier, $49 a month for Pro and $120 a month for Fleet covering five trucks. Check DAT's current figures directly before you decide, prices change.

  • Does One Load Board have as many loads as DAT?

    No. DAT is the largest load board in North America and we are new. If raw volume on every lane is what matters most to you, that is a real argument for staying. The free tier means you can measure the difference on your own lanes rather than taking anyone's word for it.

  • Do you take a commission on loads?

    No. We never take a percentage of your freight, the rate you see on the board is the rate you invoice. Our only income is the flat monthly subscription, and posting is free for brokers and shippers.