Comparisons

Booking systems for an independent restaurant: what each one costs, and who owns the diner

Five options a single UK restaurant would shortlist, with the one published price ladder in the category and an honest read on what the other four are likely to quote.

Alex Riesenkampff

8 September 2026 · 10 min read · Markdown

Four of these five will not tell you what a booking costs. The fifth publishes every figure, on a page that carries a no-index tag and therefore never turns up in a search, which is why almost nobody has seen it. ResDiary runs £109 a month for up to 150 bookings, £145 up to 450, £205 up to 1,000 and £295 for unlimited, plus a £99 set-up fee. The other four route you to a salesperson.

Two of them charge you for diners they find. Two charge a subscription and take nothing per cover. And both marketplaces state, on their own pricing pages, that a booking from your own website or your own phone costs you nothing. OpenTable puts it as "we don't take a penny". TheFork lists bookings from your website, Instagram and Facebook as "Included".

That reframes the category. The cover fee is not what the software costs. It is what a stranger costs. You are not comparing reservation systems on price, you are deciding how much of your dining room you want to buy from somebody else, and at what rate.

Who publishes this, and what connects us to it

Super44 publishes this page and is not one of the entries, because we do not take bookings and never have. Nobody pays to be listed and we have no commercial relationship with any of the five.

Your own booking link and the phone

The option none of the others will mention, and the correct one for more restaurants than admit it. Google lets you put your own booking link on your Business Profile, up to ten per category, and booking an appointment is one of the jobs those links are for. Point it at a free form, or at nothing, and take the call.

What it does well is cost nothing and keep everything. Every diner is yours, every phone number is yours, and there is no third party between you and the person who wants a table on Friday. For a neighbourhood restaurant whose bookings mostly come from people who already know the name, that is the entire job.

Who should not do this: anyone losing tables to voicemail, and anyone with a no-show problem. You cannot take a card guarantee over a paper diary, you cannot send an automated reminder, and you have no record of who came twice. Those three are what the systems below are really selling.

One thing worth checking today whatever you decide. Google says that "Links to certain services can automatically appear on your Business Profile on Google Search and Maps", provided "by third-party partners or through automated data from Google". A booking link you never agreed to can therefore be sitting on your listing right now, sending your diners through somebody else's funnel. If you find one, Google gives those providers five days to take it down once you ask.

Cost: nothing. Our guide to where guests actually discover restaurants has the channel numbers if you want to know how much of your booking flow this covers before you pay for more.

OpenTable

The one that sells diners rather than software, and the most transparent about the boundary. Its Core and Pro plans both say "Contact us for pricing", but its FAQ is unusually specific about what triggers a charge: OpenTable "only charges cover fees for diners that discover your restaurant on OpenTable's website, app or through our affiliate network. If a diner books directly through your website or by calling the restaurant, we don't take a penny."

What it does well is turn a marketing spend into a measured one. You pay per diner delivered, so the cost scales with the benefit, and the terms are better than most performance marketing: "restaurants only pay for seated diners. No-shows and cancellations are hard enough, we're not going to charge you for them." A no-show through OpenTable costs you the table and nothing else. Its plans also include Google's "Reserve a table" button, so the marketplace reach extends into the place people actually search.

Who should not pick it: an established restaurant that is already full. If the diners booking through OpenTable would have found you anyway, you have added a per-head charge to your existing trade, and no feature on the platform compensates for that. The commitment is also real: "The standard contract is one year. Contracts will auto-renew annually", with 30 days' notice needed before renewal to stop it.

Cost: subscription not published, cover fee not published. A Premium SMS add-on at £19 a month is the only figure on the page. Third-party guides put the UK cover fee anywhere between about 25p and £2, and the mid-tier subscription between £199 and £449, but the sources disagree by roughly four times and several are published by competitors, so treat that as an order of magnitude and nothing more. What it does tell you is the shape: hundreds a month plus a per-cover fee, not tens.

TheFork Manager

The other marketplace, and the one whose pitch is filling the tables you cannot fill yourself. Its Performance and Enterprise plans both say "Ask for pricing". Its published structure is the same shape as OpenTable's with one meaningful difference in how the fee is calculated: bookings from TheFork, Tripadvisor and partners carry a "Fee based on a percentage of your average bill per guest", while bookings from "your website, Instagram and Facebook" are "Included".

That difference matters more than it looks. A percentage of the bill means a £90 tasting menu costs you more per head than a £22 midweek plate, so the fee scales with your prices rather than sitting flat on every cover. On its own numbers the reach is substantial: "20M+ monthly visits across 11 countries", "55,000 Satisfied restaurant partners" and "2,500 MICHELIN restaurants", with booking integrations named as Google, Tripadvisor, MICHELIN and Meta.

What it does well beyond reach is no-shows, and it is the most equipped of the five on paper: credit card guarantees and pre-payments, reconfirmation by email and SMS, AI alerts tagging bookings at risk, and a stated policy to "ban diners who no-show 4+ times" across the platform. That last one is something a single restaurant cannot do alone, and it is a genuine argument for being on a network.

Who should not pick it: a restaurant with a high average spend and no empty tables. A percentage of a large bill, on covers you already had, is the most expensive version of this arrangement. TheFork's own strength is promotions into quiet services, so if you have no quiet services you are buying the wrong half of the product.

Cost: subscription not published, and the commission percentage not published either. Get the effective percentage and the VAT treatment in writing before signing.

ResDiary

The subscription-only option, and the one that answers the question the others leave alone. Its pricing page leads with "Zero commission, low monthly fee and more bookings", and its FAQ states that "Regardless of where the booking is made, via your website, social media channels, Reserve with Google, or Dish Cult, you won't pay a commission-fee."

What it does well, and what no other entry here matches, is say who owns the diner. Asked who owns the customer's data, ResDiary answers: "The short answer is it's you, the venue who is the controller of the data", with ResDiary as the processor acting on the venue's instructions, and points readers to Clause 14 of its terms. For a restaurant whose long game is regulars rather than reach, that sentence is worth more than a feature list.

Who should not pick it: a restaurant that needs to be discovered. Zero commission is only a saving if you have bookings to save it on, and a new room with no reputation needs the thing OpenTable and TheFork sell. ResDiary has its own diner platform, Dish Cult, with a complimentary listing for every venue, but nobody should mistake that for the reach of a marketplace with twenty million monthly visits.

Cost: £109 a month for up to 150 bookings, £145 up to 450, £205 up to 1,000 and £295 for unlimited, plus a one-off £99 set-up fee, with two months free if you pay annually. Read the cap, not the headline: five bookings a day is 150 a month, so most restaurants are looking at £145 or £205 rather than £109. Add-ons are £10 a month each for SMS, POS, PMS, CRM and Group Bookings, and £35 for Order and Pay, Gift Vouchers, Event Manager and ResPhone, and a surcharge of 1% applies to deposits and payments, 3% on gift vouchers.

SevenRooms

The one built around remembering people. It publishes no price at all, only a Get a quote button and a Starter plan described as a way to grow revenue and win repeat business.

What it does well is the guest record: profiles, tags, preferences and the marketing built on top of them. If your business depends on knowing that table nine's anniversary is in March and that they drink Riesling, this is the category leader at doing something with that. It also advertises access to the DoorDash and Deliveroo reservation marketplace with no cover fees, an unusual combination of reach without a per-cover charge and the only offer of that shape here, so ask about it directly.

Who should not pick it: a forty-cover neighbourhood restaurant that mostly wants a diary that works. It says it serves more than 15,000 restaurants, and its packaging assumes somebody in the building will use the guest data. If nobody in your building is going to run an automated campaign, you are buying a CRM to use it as a booking sheet.

Cost: not published, in any form, anywhere on the pricing page.

So which one

Count last month's bookings by source before you speak to anybody. Direct, phone, walk-in, marketplace. That single count decides this, and almost nobody does it before taking the sales call.

If most of your bookings already come direct and your tables are full, do not buy reach. ResDiary is the entry built for you: zero commission is worth something only when there are covers to not pay commission on, it is the only one of the five that puts data ownership in writing, and at £145 to £205 a month for most restaurants it is the only one you can budget for without a phone call.

If you opened this year and the problem is that nobody knows you exist, pay a marketplace, and pay it gladly. OpenTable's terms are the friendlier of the two for a venue with a no-show problem, because a cover fee only lands when somebody sits down. TheFork is the better fit if you have specific quiet services to fill and can live with a fee that scales with your average spend.

If your restaurant runs on regulars and what you remember about them, get a SevenRooms quote alongside the others, and be honest about whether anyone on your team will use the guest data. If the answer is no, buy the cheaper diary.

And if you have fewer than about twenty bookings a week and a phone that gets answered, put a booking link on your Google Business Profile this afternoon and spend nothing. The money is better aimed at the reason people book in the first place, which our pieces on Google Maps ranking and filling quiet weeknights both address without a per-cover charge attached.