Best Freight Brokerage Software for Non-Asset Brokers
Two categories in a freight brokerage's stack have a direct 1:1 competitor priced within $50/mo of each other, covering the exact same employee band. When price and team-size fit are functionally tied, the decision has to come from somewhere else.
DAT vs. Truckstop and MyCarrierPortal vs. Highway both cover identical employee bands — team size isn't what decides either one
Load boards, shipper CRM, TMS, carrier vetting, and back-office finance make up the five core categories.
Two categories in a freight brokerage's stack look like classic 'good, better, best' software tiers, but they aren't: the load board pair and the carrier-vetting pair are each priced within $10-50/mo of each other and cover the exact same employee band. When price and team-size fit are basically tied, the decision has to come from somewhere else — lane liquidity and fraud-risk tolerance, not headcount.
Load Boards: DAT vs. Truckstop
DAT ($150/mo) and Truckstop ($140/mo) both cover the identical 2-200 employee band, so team size tells you nothing here. The real difference: DAT's own integration list names both Truckstop and Alvys, giving it the deepest cross-platform reach of any tool in the sales & marketing pillar, while Truckstop bundles carrier credit and rating checks directly into its load-search flow — a genuine advantage if you aren't already running a dedicated vetting tool. If you are running MyCarrierPortal or Highway, that built-in check is redundant, and Truckstop's $10/mo discount is close to the whole story.
Lane density in your specific lanes matters more than either platform's overall network size.
DAT vs. Truckstop
| Load board | DAT | Truckstop |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | $150 | $140 |
| Employee range | 2-200 | 2-200 |
| Built-in carrier credit/rating checks | ||
| Connects to Alvys (TMS) | ||
| Lists a direct connection to the other load board |
DAT's own integration list names Truckstop; Truckstop's list doesn't name DAT back. That's a one-sided declaration, not a bug — treat any 'these two connect' claim as unverified until you've confirmed it from both vendors, not just one.
Load board cost
How to pick your primary load board
- Which platform actually has more posted capacity in your top 5 lanes this quarter?
- Are you already paying for MyCarrierPortal or Highway? If yes, Truckstop's built-in credit checks are a feature you won't use.
- Does your TMS's load-board integration actually move rate confirmations, or does someone still copy-paste?
- What's the contract term and cancellation notice if lane density turns out weak?
Running both DAT and Truckstop costs $290/mo combined — $140-150/mo of that is pure duplication once you've actually picked a primary.
Carrier Vetting: MyCarrierPortal vs. Highway
MyCarrierPortal ($300/mo) and Highway ($350/mo) both cover an identical 2-150 employee band — again, team size tells you nothing. MyCarrierPortal's job is breadth: automated onboarding-packet review, FMCSA authority/insurance verification, and ongoing safety-score monitoring, catching an unsafe carrier before or after booking. Highway is built specifically around real-time double-brokering and carrier identity-fraud detection — a narrower but sharper tool aimed at the pattern where a bad actor books a load as one carrier and re-brokers it to an unvetted second carrier who then damages or steals the freight. If fraud exposure is the bigger risk in your lanes than incomplete onboarding paperwork, the extra $50/mo buys a genuinely different capability, not just a nicer dashboard.
The MyCarrierPortal-vs-Highway decision is about which risk you're checking for, not which platform has more features.
MyCarrierPortal vs. Highway
| Vetting tool | MyCarrierPortal | Highway |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | $300 | $350 |
| Employee range | 2-150 | 2-150 |
| Primary job | Onboarding automation + ongoing safety-score monitoring | Real-time double-brokering & identity-fraud detection |
| Connects to Alvys | ||
| Connects to Turvo |
Questions to ask before picking a vetting tool
- How many new carriers do you onboard in an average month, and how manual is that process today?
- Has your brokerage — or a peer's — faced a double-brokering or identity-fraud attempt in the last year?
- Does the tool's safety-score monitoring run continuously, or only at initial onboarding?
- Which tool does your actual TMS (Alvys or Turvo) have a live, tested integration with today?
Running both MyCarrierPortal and Highway costs $650/mo combined. For most brokerages, one tool covers the actual risk being managed — the second gets bought 'just in case' and rarely does anything the first doesn't already do.
Building the combination that fits your brokerage profile
The TMS decision — Alvys vs. Turvo — gets its own full breakdown elsewhere, since it's driven by employee-band center and shipper-collaboration needs rather than lane liquidity or fraud tolerance. Combined with the load-board and vetting picks above, two coherent profiles emerge for most non-asset brokerages.
Two brokerage profiles, two stacks
| Category | Cost-conscious, lower fraud-risk lanes | Fraud-averse, shipper-visibility-driven |
|---|---|---|
| Load board | Truckstop — $140 | DAT — $150 |
| TMS | Alvys — $600 | Turvo — $700 |
| Carrier vetting | MyCarrierPortal — $300 | Highway — $350 |
| Subtotal, these 3 categories | $1,040 | $1,200 |
The $160/mo gap between these two profiles ($1,920/yr) buys real, named capability in each direction — a shipper-facing tracking portal and dedicated fraud detection versus lower cost per category. That's a legitimate fit decision, not sprawl, as long as you're running one profile and not both sides of it at once.
Pick a profile, not a pile. The mistake in this pillar isn't choosing the wrong combination — it's choosing both combinations at once and paying for it every month.
Our engine ranks these purely on your brokerage's size and risk profile against the data above — it has no visibility into which vendor pays the biggest affiliate bounty. Run the free audit to see the right combination for your freight brokerage.