Most people ask me what a booking system costs and expect one number. The honest answer is that the number on the sign is rarely the number you pay. The good news is that for a solo operator it is almost always cheap enough that the monthly fee should not be your reason to hesitate. The bad news is that payment fees and per-seat pricing will quietly turn a £10 a month tool into a £60 a month habit if you are not watching. Here is what the market actually charges in 2026.
The sticker prices
The headline plans, checked against each vendor’s pricing page in mid 2026:
| Tool | Free tier | Paid plan | How they charge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calendly | Free, 1 event type | Standard $10 per seat a month (yearly) | Per user |
| SimplyBook.me | Free, 50 bookings a month | Basic €13.90 a month | Flat, staff included |
| Square Appointments | Free, unlimited staff calendars | Plus $49 a month | Flat per location |
| Fresha | None anymore | $19.95 a month | Flat |
| Acuity | 7 day trial only | From about $20 a month | Per business |
| Setmore | Free | $12 a month per user | Per user |
| SuperSaaS | Free | $9 a month | Flat |
| Reservio | Free, 40 bookings a month | From about €8 a month | Flat |
Most of these price in dollars or euros because that is what the vendors charge. Convert them and almost every solo plan lands at roughly £8 to £12 a month. That part is cheap.
The fee nobody puts on the sticker
The monthly fee is the smallest number you will see. The one that decides whether a booking system actually saves you money is the payment processing fee, because it stacks on top of whatever you already pay to take a card.
Square is the cleanest example because it publishes both numbers. Its Appointments software is free on the base plan, but a customer paying online costs you 3.3% plus 30 cents. Take an £80 appointment that way and that is about £2.94 before you look at anything else. Do that twenty times a month and the free booking system is quietly costing you the price of a paid plan.
Most of the tools route payments through Stripe or PayPal, so you pay their standard card rates on top of the subscription. The software vendor does not absorb that. You do.
The per-seat trap
Then there is the way some tools bill per user. Calendly charges per seat, not per business. One person is $10 a month. Add a receptionist and a second staff member and you are at $30, $40, $60. A five person team on Calendly is $60 a month before any payment fees. That is the classic surprise for a growing business: the tool that looked cheap for one person becomes a real line item the day you hire.
The flat-priced tools, things like SimplyBook.me and SuperSaaS, do not do that. They include your staff in the plan. If you run a team, that difference matters more than any feature comparison.
What the free plans leave out
Free tiers are real but small. SimplyBook.me caps the free plan at 50 bookings a month, Reservio at 40, Calendly gives you one event type. Fine for a very quiet solo operation, and almost always outgrown. The bigger gotcha is what the cheap plans leave out. No-show deposits, cancellation fees and holding a card on file to protect your calendar are typically paid-tier features. Square only offers no-show fees and deposits on its $49 a month Plus plan. If the whole reason you wanted a booking system was to stop no-shows, the free version probably does not do it.
The number on the sign is the smallest part of the cost. Payment fees, per-seat pricing and the tier that actually lets you charge for a no-show add up to more than the subscription. Compare those, not the sticker.
The worked example
Here is a realistic scenario: a two person beauty business, taking deposits online, thirty bookings a month.
| Item | What it runs |
|---|---|
| Booking software, flat plan | About £10 a month |
| Card processing on 30 online deposits at ~3% | About £36 a month if deposits average £40 |
| SMS reminders, if not bundled in | £5 to £10 a month |
| Real monthly total | £50 to £55 |
Notice what happened. The subscription is the cheap part. The processing fees on deposits you actually take are three times the subscription, and that is before any per-seat or SMS extras.
When it pays for itself
The decision comes down to one number: what a missed call or a no-show costs you. If a no-show costs you a £60 slot, preventing a single one in a year covers the £10 a month subscription. If online booking catches one booking a month that would otherwise be lost because it happened after you put the phone down, that is new money.
One figure keeps turning up in the scheduling software data: roughly 40% of bookings happen outside normal opening hours. A booking link answers at midnight. A phone does not.
When to skip it
Not everyone needs one. If every job comes in by repeat phone call, you already book out weeks ahead, and no-shows are rare, a booking system is a calendar with extra steps. Use a free tier or do nothing at all. That is the honest call for plenty of perfectly good businesses, and the money you save is real money.
What to do now
Before you pay anything, write down three numbers: how many appointments you take a month, what a no-show costs you, and how many staff calendars you need. Then price the tools against those numbers, payment fees included, not the sticker price. If the maths shows a booking system catching one lost booking a month, that is your answer.
If you want a second opinion, we build booking into small business sites and will tell you straight whether you even need one. But the right decision starts with your real numbers, not a marketing page.