UWB vs BLE, RFID, video and long-range positioning: which one do you actually need?
Five technologies, five different answers to the same question. This page compares them on accuracy, infrastructure, tags, battery life and cost, and then tells you which one fits which problem. We are technology-agnostic: we do not sell one technology, we help you choose the one that fits your site and then we implement it.
Many projects that reach us as we need RTLS end up as RFID readers at two doors. If that is your case, we will say so on the call.
Why this choice is harder than it should be
The technologies are not the problem. All five work. The problem is that the buying process almost never starts from the question that decides everything, which is what you need to know and how often you need to know it.
Every vendor has one technology to sell
Ask a UWB company whether you need UWB and the answer is yes. Ask a BLE company the same question and the answer is also yes. The comparison you need is between technologies, not between suppliers.
Two quotes for the same building can differ by an order of magnitude
Usually because they are solving different problems. One reads a tag when it passes a door. The other maintains a continuous position on a floor plan. Those are different products at different prices.
Accuracy figures were measured somewhere else
A number produced in an empty test hall says very little about a warehouse with steel racking, metal cages and mirrors. Accuracy is a property of the site as much as of the radio.
The accuracy requirement gets copied, not calculated
Sub-meter sounds safer than 3 meters, so it goes into the specification. It also multiplies anchors, cabling and installation work, often to locate items that a person then has to walk over and pick up anyway.
Nobody asks whether continuous position is needed at all
Presence at a reader and position on a map are two different things. Many operations only need the first one, and the first one is by far the cheaper.
Three questions that decide the technology
Answer these three and the shortlist usually goes down to one or two options. We work through them with you on the discovery call, and the honest answer is sometimes that you do not need a positioning system at all.
1. Do you need continuous position, or just passage?
If knowing that a pallet left the building at 14:32 is enough, readers at the gates will do it for a fraction of the cost of a real time system. This single question is what separates RFID from RTLS, and it is the question most often skipped.
2. How precise does it really need to be?
Room or zone, 1 to 3 meters, or under a meter? Every step up multiplies hardware and installation effort. Decide it by asking what action the data triggers: walking into the right room is a different requirement from stopping a forklift.
3. How fast must the system react, and how large is the area?
An operator searching for a trolley can wait a few seconds. A safety interlock cannot. And covering 300 square meters, a full plant or several buildings are three different hardware budgets.
The five technologies we compare for you
Two of these are our own systems, the Bluetooth Beacon Tracker and the Sentinel Video Tracker. The others we assess, specify and integrate. We have no reason to push you towards ours if the fit is wrong.
Sources: the Bluetooth Beacon Tracker and Sentinel Video Tracker figures are our own. The Wheere figures are published by Wheere, a French company we work with as a partner. The RFID and UWB entries describe how those technologies behave in general, not a specification we guarantee.
RFID, passive UHF
Accuracy: presence at a reader, not a mapped position
Infrastructure: readers and antennas at chosen points only, no coverage in between
Tag and battery: passive label, no battery, lowest cost per item
Relative cost: lowest
Best for: high tag counts, inventory, check-in and check-out at gates and doors
Not for: finding one single item somewhere in a large open area
BLE, our Bluetooth Beacon Tracker
Accuracy: 1 to 3 meters in 90 percent of cases
Infrastructure: ceiling-mounted BLE nodes, Wi-Fi 2.4 GHz or Ethernet, mains power, ceilings up to 7 meters
Tag and battery: standard iBeacon, years of battery life, range up to 50 meters
Relative cost: moderate
Best for: locating equipment and people across floors and buildings, up to 30 levels
Not for: sub-meter precision, or anything that must react in under a second
UWB
Accuracy: the technology people choose when they need under one meter
Infrastructure: a dense network of anchors, usually cabled, with careful geometry
Tag and battery: active device, shorter battery life than a beacon
Relative cost: high, and it scales with area, not with the number of tags
Best for: process control, safety zones, forklift anticollision, robotics
Not for: covering a large area on a limited budget
Video, our Sentinel Video Tracker
Accuracy: 20 centimeters
Infrastructure: the CCTV cameras you already have, where their coverage is adequate
Tag and battery: none, nothing to attach and nothing to charge
Relative cost: low where cameras are already installed
Best for: counting people, occupancy, flow analytics, movement in open areas
Not for: telling two identical objects apart, or anything a camera cannot see
Long-range positioning, Wheere (partner)
Accuracy: sub-meter, according to Wheere
Infrastructure: about 4 gateways covering up to around 1 square kilometer, according to Wheere, using low-frequency radio at 148 to 174 MHz that passes through concrete
Tag and battery: active device, unlimited number of devices according to Wheere
Relative cost: premium
Best for: large sites, several buildings, thick concrete, places where indoor infrastructure is hard to install
Not for: a single floor, a shop or a small office, where BLE or RFID cost less
If your answer is this, then you need that
The same five technologies, read from your problem instead of from the hardware. Find the line that sounds like your site.
You need to know that an item passed a door, a gate or a bay
You need RFID, not RTLS. Passive UHF readers at the points that matter will cost less to buy, less to install and almost nothing per tagged item. The gap between what you are being quoted for RTLS and what this costs is usually large enough to fund the rest of the project.
You need to find equipment somewhere in a building, within a few meters
You need BLE. That is what our Bluetooth Beacon Tracker does: 1 to 3 meters in 90 percent of cases, beacons with years of battery life, nodes on the ceiling. This is the answer for most equipment searches. See our indoor asset tracking page for how that plays out in a real deployment.
You need under one meter, and a reaction in under a second
You need UWB. This is the case for forklift anticollision, safety zones, machine and robot interaction, and tightly defined workflows. Our BLE system updates in the order of seconds and is the wrong tool here, and we will tell you that rather than stretch it.
You need to count people, measure occupancy or understand flows
You need video, not tags. Our Sentinel Video Tracker works at 20 centimeters using the cameras you already have. Nobody carries a badge, nobody charges a battery. In the EU this needs a clear privacy position, which we set out before the pilot, not after.
You need to cover a large or multi-building site with as little hardware as possible
Look at Wheere. According to Wheere, about 4 gateways cover up to around 1 square kilometer with sub-meter accuracy, and the low-frequency signal passes through concrete. We are a Wheere partner and we assess whether it fits before recommending it.
You cannot answer the three questions yet
Then no technology is the right answer today. Start with the discovery call. If the real problem is that your asset register is out of date, or that nobody owns the process of putting things back, tracking hardware will not fix it and we will say so before you spend anything.
What this comparison does not solve
A comparison page narrows the field. It does not replace the three things that actually determine whether a project works.
It cannot predict the accuracy you will get in your building
Steel racking, metal cages, mirrors and thick walls all change the result. Our BLE system is reliable inside the perimeter formed by the outermost nodes, and outside that perimeter positions land on the edge. The number you can plan with comes out of a pilot, not out of a table.
It does not tell you whether the data will be used
Location data tells you where an item is. It does not make anyone put it back, update the register or act on an alert. If no role owns that, the system will be accurate and ignored.
It does not cover every technology in existence
Wi-Fi positioning, GPS and magnetic or inertial approaches all exist and can be right in specific cases. We left them out because they are rarely the deciding option in the projects we are asked about. Ask on the call if you think one of them applies.
It will not make a mixed site simple
Large sites often end up with two technologies, for example RFID at the gates and BLE inside. That is a normal outcome, not a failure, but it means two sets of hardware and one integration job. Plan for the integration, not just for the tags.
What a project costs
Our minimum commitment is USD 5,000. Below that a project cannot be run properly, and you are better served by a simpler solution that you buy and install yourself. Four factors drive everything above that figure.
The area to cover
Infrastructure cost follows square meters and the density of nodes, anchors or readers needed. It is the single biggest driver, and it is why covering a whole plant and covering one department are different projects.
The number of items, and what they are
Tag cost per item changes the arithmetic completely between a passive label and an active device. Fifty high-value instruments and fifty thousand pallets point to different technologies for the same reason.
The accuracy you ask for
Every step up in precision multiplies the infrastructure. Asking for sub-meter where 3 meters would do is the most common way to double a budget without improving an operation.
Installation and integration
Cabling, power, mounting, and connecting the system to your own software. The REST API and raw data are part of what we deliver, so your team can build on top of it.
How we work
Four steps, in this order. The first one is free and it is the one that decides the rest.
01. Free 30-minute discovery call
We work through the three questions with you. If the honest answer is that you do not need us, we say so on the call. No proposal is written before this.
02. Site assessment
We need a floor plan in scale with the areas to monitor, optionally the position of the power sockets, and a few photos of the environment. That is usually enough to size the job.
03. Pilot
A real deployment on a limited area. For BLE, at least 6 nodes covering roughly 300 square meters, which is enough to produce numbers you can trust for your own building.
04. Rollout and integration
Full deployment, integration with your systems through the REST API and push callbacks, then support. The raw data is yours.
Frequently asked questions
Is UWB always more accurate than BLE?
In terms of raw positioning, UWB is the technology you choose when you need under one meter, and our BLE system delivers 1 to 3 meters in 90 percent of cases. But accuracy on paper is not the same as accuracy in your building. A dense, well-placed BLE network in a building with walls can outperform a thin UWB deployment with poor anchor geometry. And in most equipment searches, the difference between sub-meter and a couple of meters changes nothing about what the operator does next.
What is the difference between RFID and RTLS?
RFID tells you that a tagged item was read at a specific reader, at a specific moment. An RTLS maintains a position on a floor plan, continuously, whether or not the item passes anything. RFID is cheaper per item and needs infrastructure only where you put the readers. If your process is built around defined passage points, RFID is usually the right answer and RTLS is an expensive way to get the same information.
Can I combine two technologies on the same site?
Yes, and on large sites it is common: RFID at the gates for inventory movements, BLE inside for finding things, video for counting people. The cost of combining is not in the hardware, it is in the integration. Decide early which system is the source of truth for which question.
Which of the five is the cheapest?
Passive UHF RFID has the lowest cost per tagged item, by a wide margin, because the tag has no battery. Video can be the lowest total cost when the cameras are already installed and nothing needs to be attached to anything. But the cheapest technology that does not answer your question is not cheap, so run the three questions first.
How do I know your accuracy claims hold in my building?
You do not, until the pilot. That is the reason we run one. Our BLE claim of 1 to 3 meters in 90 percent of cases holds in most environments, and it works better in buildings with walls than in large open halls, because the signal attenuates more. Large metal objects and mirrors degrade it. A pilot on 300 square meters tells you what your site will actually give you.
What is the minimum budget?
USD 5,000 is our minimum commitment. If your case does not justify it, we will tell you on the discovery call and point you at the simpler option, including the ones we do not sell.
Talk to an engineer, not a salesperson
Tell us what you need to locate, how precisely and how often. We will tell you which of the five technologies fits, and whether you need one at all.