G-Guest · what things cost · 27 August 2026
What a booking system actually costs
Every figure below was read on the vendor’s own pricing page on 27 August 2026. Where a company does not publish a price, we say so instead of quoting somebody else’s estimate. Three of them publish nothing at all.
The sticker and the receipt are different numbers — but not always in the direction the comparison articles suggest.
There are three ways to be charged, and they buy different things
A flat fee — you are buying the tool
One price a month whatever happens. A busy month costs the same as a quiet one, which means the cost per booking falls as you fill up.
A share of new clients — you are buying demand
The platform puts you in front of people who do not know you and takes a cut the first time one of them books. Repeat visits are normally free. This is a fair trade when those people are genuinely new to you.
A fee per seated guest — you are buying deliveries
Restaurant platforms charge for each diner arriving through their network. On the bigger plans, guests who came from your own website are not charged at all.
Salons, barbers and clinics
The advertised prices here look small. The number that decides your year is the second column.
Booksy
US pricing page
Subscription: $29.99/mo, plus $20/mo per extra team member
Per new client: 30% of the full price of a new client's first visit, when that client came from Boost
No free plan; 14-day trial. Card processing 2.49%–2.69%.
Treatwell
UK partner page
Subscription: Not published — the page says “your monthly fee” and names no figure
Per new client: 35% of a new client's first booking from their marketplace; 0% on repeat bookings
Commission is marked “subject to location”. 2.5% + VAT on prepayments.
Fresha
EUR pricing page
Subscription: €11.95/mo solo, or €6.95/mo per team member
Per new client: Not published. Their pricing page lists the new-client fee as “Free”; their help centre says the rate and minimum are “on our pricing page”
No free plan; 7-day trial. Processing 1.09%–1.29%.
Setmore
US pricing page
Subscription: $12/user/mo billed monthly (the advertised $5 is the annual rate)
Per new client: None — it is a calendar, not a marketplace
Free for up to 4 users.
Square Appointments
US pricing page
Subscription: $0 / $49 / $149 a month, per location
Per new client: None
Processing 2.4%–2.6% + 15¢, and the rate improves as the plan goes up.
A worked example, using published figures only. A salon with two chairs on Booksy pays $49.99 a month in subscription before a single commission. Ten new clients in a month at a $40 service add $120in one-off fees. The same salon on Fresha’s Team plan pays €13.90 in subscription — plus a new-client fee whose rate is not published anywhere we could find.
Restaurants
Bigger monthly numbers, and a fee structure that is fairer than it is usually described.
OpenTable Basic
US plan and comparison pages
Subscription: “$149 per month plus a per cover fee”, after a 30-day trial
Per guest: Per seated guest — and on this plan the fee reaches bookings from your own website too. That channel is billed “$0.25/cover or a $49/month flat fee”, on top of the subscription
Both quoted from OpenTable. The $49 is not a plan — it is the option to settle your own website's covers at a flat monthly rate instead of per head. The cheapest plan is the one that charges you for your own traffic.
OpenTable Core & Pro
US plan and comparison pages
Subscription: No price on either plan page. We opened both: they describe the plans and state no figure at all
Per guest: “For reservations that come directly through from your own website, there are no cover fees on our OpenTable Core and Pro plans”
The quote is OpenTable's. The monthly figures that circulate for these two plans, and the per-cover rates for network diners, come from third parties rather than from OpenTable — so they are not printed here.
TheFork
Manager pricing page
Subscription: “Ask for pricing”
Per guest: A percentage of your average bill per guest — on bookings from their marketplace only
Bookings from your own website and social media are listed as included.
Tock
US pricing page
Subscription: $289/mo, or $459/mo on the upper plans
Per guest: None per cover; 2–3% on prepayments
Two of their four plans now read “Powered by Resy”.
resOS
USD, with a currency switcher
Subscription: $24/mo promotional, list $47 — up to $75/mo unlimited
Per guest: “Resos never charges per booking, per cover, or any commission”
A genuinely cheap flat option for restaurants. It exists, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
Resy · SevenRooms · ResDiary
US pages
Subscription: None of the three publish a subscription price
Per guest: Resy states it charges no cover fees at all; ResDiary states zero commission wherever the booking comes from
SevenRooms shows tiers with “Get a quote” and no figures anywhere.
If a marketplace is working for you, stay on it
A commission is not a penalty. It is the price of a guest somebody else found for you, and if they are genuinely finding guests you could not find yourself, it is money well spent. Plenty of places run a marketplace and their own booking side by side on purpose.
The question worth asking is narrower: how many of the people you paid for already knew your name? Someone who typed your business into a marketplace app was your customer before the app was involved. That is the part of the bill that stings, and it is the part you can move.
Where we fit, and where we do not
What G-Guest does not do
- It takes no money from guests. No deposits, no card held against a no-show. Reminders and a waitlist that resells the cancellation are what we have instead.
- It brings no demand of its own. We are not a marketplace. What we do instead is make you readable and bookable where people are now asking — which is a slower, different thing.
- It books within a day. Tables, appointments, class places. Not hotels, not overnight stays.
- It is not an enterprise floor-management suite. A large restaurant group that needs the full toolset should buy the tool built for it, and pay what it costs.
What €49 a month buys, and what is rare about it
One price, at two bookings or two thousand
Flat, per venue, every staff member included. Your best month is not your most expensive one.
A booking an AI assistant can actually complete
This is the rare part, and it is measurable. In our field study of 200 Amsterdam restaurants, not one of the 163 working websites published a booking interface an assistant could call. Every G-Guest venue publishes one.
A page we build and shape around the venue
Your hours, your tables or your timetable, your colours, your facts — set up by us, not left to you in an empty admin panel. Most of this market is self-serve.
A guest base that leaves with you
Names, visits and contacts belong to the venue and export in one click. Worth checking on whatever you use today: the answer decides what leaving costs.
Straight answers
How much does a booking system cost?
Between nothing and several hundred a month, depending on which of three things you are buying. A calendar that takes appointments starts around $12 a user. A booking system with a guest base, a waitlist and a page of its own runs from roughly €25 to €75 a month flat. A marketplace charges a subscription plus a share of the guests it brings you — 30% of a new client's first visit at Booksy, 35% at Treatwell, a percentage of the average bill per guest at TheFork. Restaurant platforms start at $149 a month plus a per cover fee at OpenTable, and $289 a month at Tock.
Do booking marketplaces charge for bookings that come from my own website?
Usually no, and this is the detail most comparisons get wrong. OpenTable states that on its Core and Pro plans there are no cover fees on reservations from your own website; TheFork lists bookings from your website and social media as included. The exception is OpenTable's cheapest plan, Basic, which their page describes as $149 per month plus a per cover fee: there, covers from your own website are billed at $0.25 each, or at a flat $49 a month for that channel, on top of the subscription. That $49 is a fee option, not a plan.
What is a “new client fee”?
A one-off share of the first visit of a customer the marketplace says it introduced to you. Booksy charges 30% of that first visit, Treatwell 35% of the first booking. Repeat visits are not charged. Fresha operates a new-client fee too but does not publish its rate: its pricing page shows the fee as “Free” while its help centre says the rate is on the pricing page.
Is a commission-free booking system always cheaper?
No. It is cheaper when your customers already know you and arrive by your own name, search, social or word of mouth — then a commission bills you for people you had. It is more expensive when a marketplace genuinely fills tables you could not fill yourself, because that commission is the price of demand, not a tax.
How much is G-Guest, and what changes as it gets busier?
€49 a month, flat, whatever the volume. Nothing per booking, no fee per staff member, no share of any guest. A hundred bookings a month works out at €0.49 each; two hundred at €0.24. The guest base belongs to the venue and exports in one click.
What does G-Guest not do?
It does not take deposits or payments from guests, so it cannot hold a card against a no-show — reminders and a waitlist that resells cancellations are the answer today. It is not a marketplace and brings no demand of its own. And it books within a day: not hotels, not overnight stays.
Which booking systems can an AI assistant complete a booking on?
Very few. In a field study of 200 randomly selected Amsterdam restaurants published by G-Lab Studio in July 2026, none of the 163 working websites published a booking interface an assistant could call. G-Guest publishes one on every venue page, and the booking can be completed end to end by an agent without a human touching the form.
How this was checked
On 27 August 2026we opened each vendor’s own pricing page and recorded what it said, in the currency and region that page served. Nothing here is averaged, converted or taken from a review site. Where a page could not be opened from our side, or where a vendor publishes no figure, we say that instead of filling the gap.
One pattern worth naming: several of the figures most often quoted for this market do not come from the companies that charge them. OpenTable’s Core and Pro pages carry no price; the numbers attached to those plans elsewhere are third-party reports. We have left them out rather than pass them on.
Not published by the vendor at the time of checking: Treatwell’s subscription, Fresha’s new-client rate, TheFork’s subscription and percentage, Resy’s and SevenRooms’ and ResDiary’s subscriptions, and and OpenTable’s Core and Pro monthly prices — their plan pages state none, and their main pricing page refused our request, so we quote only what their public pages actually say. Prices change; if you are reading this much later, check again.
One market note from the same round of checking: Quandoo’s restaurant pages now carry a closure notice, with services running until 30 September 2026.