Basna

The problem: bus tracking costs too much

Most school bus tracking is billed every month, by the bus or by the child, so the bill grows with the fleet. For many small and mid-sized private schools in Jordan, and in other countries where school budgets are tight, it costs too much.

The cheapest system we could find that runs on the driver's phone, with nothing installed in the bus, comes to about $10 per bus a month at its listed price. It charges per child, so we assumed 40 children on a bus. At $10 a bus, a school with 20 buses would pay about $200 a month, and a school with 50 buses would pay about $500 a month. Other systems cost about $20 per bus a month or more. We checked these prices in October 2026.

What it is

Basna — باصنا, Arabic for our bus — is a bus tracking system for private schools, built around the one job that matters most to parents: they open the app and see their child's school bus moving on a map, live, in Arabic or English. Route planning, attendance and reports are left out on purpose, so it can be priced for small schools. It is in development.

What it does

• Parents see the bus live — A parent can see where the bus is right now, without calling the school or the driver.
• The driver's phone is the tracker — The bus's position comes from the driver's phone. There is no GPS device to buy, install or maintain.
• Each parent sees their own child's bus — The school adds its buses, drivers and parents, and each parent sees only the bus their child rides.

What it costs

Plans start at $4.95 a month for up to 50 buses — less than 10 cents per bus for a school with 50 buses. A school with 20 buses would pay $4.95 a month, against about $200 for the cheapest phone-based system we found. Most private schools in Jordan run fewer than 50 buses, so the $4.95 plan covers most of them. For more than 50 buses, write to us.

It can cost this little because it does one job — showing parents the bus — and leaves out the rest.