Booksmith › Guides › Costs
A plain-English pricing guide
Headline prices for booking software range from “free” to hundreds a month, and the headline is rarely the bill. Here are the four pricing models in use in 2026, what each one actually costs once your business is busy, and how to pick. Figures were checked on 29 August 2026 and change often; always verify before deciding.
Almost every booking product on the UK market fits one of these. The model matters more than the number, because it decides whether your bill grows with your success.
Marketplace apps such as Fresha, Treatwell and Booksy charge little or nothing for the software and earn when your customers book: typically 20–35% (plus VAT in some cases) of a new marketplace client's first appointment, plus payment processing fees, and sometimes per-staff-member subscriptions on top. Independent analyses of UK barbers and salons put real all-in costs at roughly £70–£180 a month once card volume and new-client flow are included. Fair value if the marketplace genuinely brings you strangers; expensive rent if it's mostly processing your regulars.
Meeting schedulers like Calendly price per user: around $10–$16 per seat per month billed annually for the tiers that allow payment collection. Cheap for a sole trader, and built for meetings rather than paid appointments, so local businesses usually outgrow the feature set before the price.
Products like Acuity Scheduling start around $16–$20 a month and unlock features (more staff, SMS reminders, packages) at higher tiers. You configure everything yourself. Honest budgeting adds your evenings to the subscription: setup, payment wiring, and every tweak when your services change.
One monthly price covering unlimited staff and bookings with setup, hosting, maintenance and support included, and no commission on anything. Booksmith sits here at £75 a month with nothing upfront. Higher than a self-serve starter tier on the subscription line; usually lower than a busy business's real marketplace bill, and the only model where a good month costs the same as a quiet one.
If you take under 40 bookings a month and don't need deposits or staff diaries, a free or per-seat tool is genuinely enough. Spend nothing, or under £15 a month, and revisit when no-shows or admin start costing real time.
Once no-shows, deposits, several staff and evening admin are real costs, budget £60–£100 a month all-in and judge products on what's included at that price, not the headline. This is where flat-rate wins on predictability and where commission models quietly become the most expensive option.
Pay the marketplace commission for a while; discovery is worth it when nobody knows your name. Set a calendar reminder to redo the maths in six months, when your regulars carry the diary and the commission has become a tax on work you'd have got anyway.
Payment processing fees (and whether the platform adds margin on top of the card processor), SMS reminder charges, per-staff-member fees, setup or onboarding fees, minimum terms, and what happens to your customer data when you leave. Any product that can't answer all six plainly is hiding one of them.