Fresha vs Booksy: which is better for UK salons and barbers?

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The short answer

At the time of writing (July 2026), the choice between Fresha and Booksy for a UK salon or barbershop comes down to how you would rather pay:

• Booksy is one all-features plan at £40 a month plus VAT, with £5 a month plus VAT per extra team member. Its new-client commission, called Boost, is optional: switch it on and Booksy takes a one-off 30% (minimum £5, plus VAT) of a new marketplace client's first visit. Leave it off and there is no commission at all.
• Fresha is no longer free. It moved to subscription pricing, currently around £14.95 a month plus VAT for a solo user or £9.95 plus VAT per bookable team member a month on the Team plan. Its new-client fee is automatic rather than opt-in: a one-off 20% (minimum £4) of the first booking from a client who first discovers you on the Fresha marketplace.

Both charge their own card processing rates, both include proper no-show protection, and both are month to month with no contract to escape from. Neither is plainly "better". The right answer depends on your team size, how much card payment you take, and how much you expect the marketplace to bring you. Let's do the sums.

What Booksy costs

Booksy keeps it simple: one plan, all features, £40 a month for one person. Two things are worth knowing before you pencil that number in.

First, Booksy's prices exclude VAT. If your business is not VAT registered and cannot reclaim it, the real cost is £48 a month. Second, each additional team member is £5 a month plus VAT, so a three-person barbershop is £50 a month plus VAT, or £60 all in.

For that you get a genuinely complete kit: unlimited bookings, a free listing on the Booksy marketplace, appointment confirmations and reminders, email marketing, 500 free SMS a month (then 5p each), memberships and packages, gift cards, waitlists, and reporting and stock tools. There is no feature-gated tier to climb; everything is in the one plan.

Payments taken through Booksy have their own rates: 1.29% + 20p + VAT for mobile and in-app payments such as deposits and prepayments, and 0.99% + 20p + VAT for in-person Tap to Pay. Optional Fast Payouts, which get your money in around half an hour, cost an extra 1.5%.

There is no permanent free plan (the free part of Booksy is the customer-facing app), but at the time of writing the UK pricing page offers a 7-day trial with no card required. For the full breakdown with worked examples, see our guide to how much Booksy costs in the UK.

What Fresha costs

For years Fresha's headline pitch was that the core booking tools had no monthly subscription, and plenty of older guides still say so. That has changed: Fresha moved to subscription pricing, and its UK pricing page now shows a solo plan at around £14.95 a month and a Team plan at £9.95 per bookable team member a month, with custom rates for businesses with 20 or more team members. There is a 7-day free trial at the time of writing. Like Booksy, Fresha advertises its prices excluding VAT: the pricing page footnotes that rates exclude 20% sales tax, so a solo user who cannot reclaim VAT actually pays about £17.94 a month.

The subscription covers the calendar and online booking, a profile on the Fresha marketplace, your client list, and point of sale with payments. Support is email and chat on the solo plan, with phone support added on the Team plan.

Fresha's UK card rates are competitive: 1.40% + 25p for online payments and 1.19% + 20p in person, plus a 7p authorisation charge per Tap to Pay transaction. Manually keyed card payments cost 2.20% + 20p, and Klarna runs at 4.49% + 50p.

Messaging is more metered than Booksy's: 20 free automated messages per team member a month, then around 5p to 6p per text after that, alongside 50 free marketing emails per team member a month. And then there is the marketplace fee, which deserves its own section below. Our separate guide to how much Fresha costs in the UK goes deeper on the numbers.

Fees side by side

On subscription alone, Fresha is clearly the cheaper entry, and both platforms advertise prices before VAT, so we can compare like with like. A solo barber pays about £14.95 a month on Fresha against £40 on Booksy before VAT, or roughly £17.94 against £48 once VAT is added. A three-person team pays about £29.85 before VAT on Fresha's Team plan (every bookable member is £9.95; there is no separate base fee) against £50 before VAT on Booksy, roughly £35.82 against £60 all in.

But subscription is only one of three cost lines. Card processing depends on your volume and mix of in-person versus online payments, and the new-client fees depend entirely on how many fresh faces each marketplace actually sends you. A busy shop getting lots of new marketplace clients can find the fee line outweighing the subscription line on either platform.

The new-client fees explained

This is the bit that generates the most confusion online, so here are the mechanics straight.

Booksy Boost is opt-in and free to switch on. While it is active, Booksy charges a one-off 30% fee (minimum £5, plus VAT) on the total of a new marketplace client's first visit only. It never applies to your existing clients, it does not apply to bookings made through your own direct profile link, and it never applies to any visit after the first. Turn Boost off and no commission applies to anything.

Fresha's new-client fee is not opt-in. It is a one-off 20% fee, minimum £4 in the UK, on the first booking of a client who first discovers your business through the Fresha marketplace. The protections are meaningful, though: it does not apply to clients already on your client list at the time of booking, to clients you import into your list before their first booking, to clients who confirm they have visited you before, or to any visit after the first. If that first appointment is cancelled online, the fee simply defers to their next one. Returning clients are never charged.

The fair way to put it: Booksy gives you a switch, Fresha gives you a filter. With Booksy you decide whether the commission exists at all. With Fresha the fee applies automatically to genuine marketplace discoveries, but importing your existing client list before you start protects everyone who already knows you. Neither platform takes an ongoing cut of repeat business, which is a genuinely important point in both their favour.

What both platforms do well

It is easy for comparisons like this to turn into a fault-finding exercise, so credit where it is due.

Both platforms take no-shows seriously. Booksy lets you require deposits that are kept on a no-show, or enable cancellation fees where the client puts a card on file at booking and can be charged (or waived) if they cancel late. Fresha offers the same two routes, deposits or secure card capture, with policies you can apply by client, service, appointment or booking value. Either way, empty chairs stop being free for the person who caused them.

Both are month to month with no lock-in, both offer a free trial, and both give you a marketplace where potential clients are already searching. That marketplace presence is real distribution that a standalone website has to earn slowly through SEO.

One shared limitation worth naming honestly: with both, your online home is a profile on their marketplace plus booking links you can share on social media and Google, rather than a standalone website you own. For many busy shops that is plenty. If owning your own website and web address matters to you, neither is built for that, and it is worth factoring in.

Who should pick which

Booksy suits you if you want everything in one flat plan with no feature tiers, you send a lot of texts (500 free a month is a generous allowance), you take plenty of in-person card payment (0.99% + 20p + VAT on Tap to Pay is a strong rate), and you want full control over whether a new-client commission exists at all. The trade-off is the highest subscription of the two, especially once VAT is on top.

Fresha suits you if you want the lowest monthly commitment, especially as a solo user at around £14.95 a month plus VAT, or a growing team paying per bookable member. Its card rates are competitive, and if most of your clients already know you, importing your client list on day one means the 20% fee only ever touches genuine marketplace discoveries. The trade-offs are the tighter messaging allowance and a new-client fee you manage rather than switch off.

If you would rather see how each stacks up against a flat-fee, commission-free setup, we keep full side-by-side pages for Solovi vs Booksy and Solovi vs Fresha.

The cost of switching

Here is some genuinely good news: because both platforms are month to month, there is no exit fee and no contract to buy your way out of. The real cost of switching, in either direction or away from both, is admin rather than money.

Budget time for the unglamorous jobs: exporting and re-importing your client list, moving future appointments across so nobody falls through the cracks, updating the booking links on your Instagram bio and Google profile, and telling your regulars where to book. If you sell gift cards or memberships, work out how outstanding balances will be honoured before you move, not after. Many owners run the old and new systems side by side for a week or two so no booking gets lost in the handover.

None of that should trap you in a platform that is not working for you. It is a weekend of admin, not a penalty.

The third option: flat fee, 0% commission

We should be upfront: we make Solovi, so this is the part where we tell you about our own approach. Both Fresha and Booksy are polished products with real marketplaces behind them, and nothing above is meant to talk you out of either. Solovi simply answers a different question: what if the bill was just flat?

Solovi is a done-for-you website with booking and Stripe payments built in, for UK service businesses. You get your own website, not a profile on someone else's marketplace, built for you and live in 7 days or your money back. There is 0% platform commission on every booking, new client or regular, forever. The only payment cost is Stripe's standard card fee, the same pass-through rate any business pays.

Plans are simple and flat. Solo at £19 a month (30-day free trial, no card needed) covers your own website, online booking, deposits and no-show protection, loyalty cards and customer chat. Local at £39 a month adds a small team of up to three, gift cards and local SEO. Bespoke at £79 a month adds a fully custom design. The first 100 customers lock the Founding rate for good: Local at £29 a month, Bespoke at £49.

If a predictable bill and a website you own sounds like your kind of simple, see how Solovi compares to Booksy and to Fresha, or start free from any page on this site. No card, no pressure, and 30 days to decide if it fits.

Frequently asked

Is Fresha really free? Not any more. Fresha was known for having no monthly subscription, but it has moved to subscription pricing: at the time of writing, around £14.95 a month for a solo user or £9.95 per bookable team member on the Team plan, both excluding VAT, plus card processing and a one-off 20% fee (minimum £4) on new clients who first find you through its marketplace.

Does Booksy charge commission on existing clients? No. Booksy's Boost commission is optional, and even when it is switched on it only applies once, to a new marketplace client's first visit. Existing clients, bookings through your direct profile link, and every repeat visit are commission-free.

Does Fresha's 20% fee apply to my existing clients? No. The fee only applies to clients who first discover your business through the Fresha marketplace. Clients already on your client list, clients you import before their first booking, and clients who confirm they have visited you before are all exempt, and returning clients are never charged.

Which is cheaper overall, Fresha or Booksy? On subscription alone, Fresha: roughly £14.95 against Booksy's £40 for a solo user, with both platforms advertising prices that exclude VAT. But the total depends on your card volume, your team size and how many new clients each marketplace sends you. Run the numbers for your own diary before deciding.

Can I cancel either platform whenever I want? Yes. Both Fresha and Booksy are month to month with no lock-in, so you can leave whenever you like. The switching cost is admin (moving clients and appointments across), not a fee.

Still weighing it up? If you would like to try the flat-fee route while you decide, Solovi's Solo plan is free for 30 days, with no card needed.

Related reading: the best Booksy alternatives, How much does Booksy cost? and How much does Fresha cost?