Restaurant Booking System Cost UK: Plans, Fees and a Worked Example

A restaurant booking system in the UK costs from £0 to about £295 a month on the published price lists, before SMS, payment processing and set-up fees. As listed in October 2026, resOS is free up to 25 bookings a month, TableTango is £29.99 a month, ResDiary is £109 to £295 plus VAT with a £99 set-up fee, and Tablein is about £60 to £157. Marketplace systems such as OpenTable and TheFork do not publish UK prices that we could verify, so you will need a quote. For a 60-cover restaurant taking 600 bookings a month, the monthly bill for subscription and add-ons ranges from about £30 to about £290 depending on the vendor, before card processing and, for some vendors, SMS usage.

What goes into the bill

The subscription is rarely the whole cost. Check five lines.

• Subscription. Flat monthly, or tiered by bookings per month.
• Set-up. ResDiary lists a £99 set-up fee. Many others list none.
• Add-ons. Deposits, Reserve with Google, SMS, waitlist, events and POS links are often priced separately.
• Messaging. SMS is usually metered per message, or comes from prepaid credit.
• Payment processing. Deposits are card payments, so processing fees apply on top, and some vendors add their own surcharge.

UK booking system prices compared

All prices are as listed on each vendor's own pricing page in October 2026, and ex VAT where the vendor says so. Several vendors show different prices for annual billing. Check the page on the day you buy.

A note on the table. Eat App's page shows approximate GBP conversions of prices set in dollars, so treat them as indicative. Tablein's page lists prices in euros with GBP equivalents beside them.

The pricing models, explained

Flat monthly fee. The same price however many bookings you take. TableTango lists one flat price. That is predictable, and the lowest-priced option here if your volume is high.

Tiers by booking volume. resOS and ResDiary move you up a tier as bookings grow. Cheap when you are small, but a seasonal spike can force you into a higher tier, so read how upgrades are billed.

Included bookings plus overage. Tablein's lower plans include 50 or 150 reservations and charge for each extra. At 140 bookings a month, its Starter plan costs about €67 plus 90 extra reservations at €0.67, or roughly €127, which is more than the €117 Growth plan. Work out your normal month before picking the cheapest tier.

Commission and per-diner fees. Marketplaces charge for diners they send. The fee is per seated diner or per cover and is negotiated, so you cannot compare it from a price list. The test is whether the diner is new. SevenRooms' pricing page markets access to DoorDash and Deliveroo reservation-marketplace diners with no cover fees on its Starter package, so ask each vendor what applies to which channel.

Break-even. To compare a flat plan with a per-cover fee, divide the flat monthly price by the fee. At a hypothetical £2 per diner, a £150 flat plan breaks even at 75 marketplace diners a month. That £2 is an illustration, not any vendor's rate.

Payment surcharges. ResDiary's page notes a 1.2% surcharge on deposits and payments, with Stripe fees possibly applying on top. resOS and TableTango pass through Stripe's own fees. Neither pricing page states Stripe's rate, so check it with Stripe.

Worked example: a 60-cover restaurant

Assumptions: 600 bookings a month, about 1,500 covers, one SMS reminder per booking (600 messages a month, with other messages by email), and 40 bookings a month with a deposit averaging £150, which is £6,000 of deposits. Prices are as listed in October 2026: ResDiary and TablePort state ex VAT, while resOS, TableTango and Tablein do not state their VAT treatment on the pages we checked, so compare with care.

Two things stand out. First, subscription price is not the same as monthly cost: ResDiary's headline is nearly seven times TableTango's, and add-ons, SMS and surcharges change the ranking again. Second, SMS is the line that varies most. TablePort's published rate to a UK mobile is 20.8p a message on its SMS pricing page, well above resOS at 4p, so on this example TablePort is not the cheapest option. The way to control it is to use SMS only for the high-risk bookings and email for the rest.

Card processing on £6,000 of deposits comes on top of every option. At TablePort's published online card rate of 1.9% plus 20p, that is about £122 a month. Stripe-based systems pass on Stripe's fees. On Tablein's cheaper Growth plan, 450 extra reservations at €0.37 add about €166, roughly £149, to the €117 base, so the unlimited Success plan is the better fit at this volume.

Contract terms and fees to check

• Minimum term. Tablein says there is no minimum term. resOS says you can pause or cancel anytime. ResDiary lists prices as paid in advance monthly or yearly. TablePort is month to month with 30 days' notice.
• Annual discounts. ResDiary lists 2 months free on annual plans, and Tablein charges for 10 months on an annual Success plan. Annual billing saves money but locks in cash.
• Set-up and migration. Ask for a written quote for importing guests and bookings.
• Price rises. Ask how much notice you get and whether prices are fixed for the first term.
• Data export. Make sure you can take your guest list and booking history with you.

Questions to ask on a sales call

1. What is the total monthly cost for 600 bookings, 40 deposits and 600 SMS, written down?
2. Which of deposits, waitlist, Reserve with Google and reporting are add-ons?
3. Is there any fee per cover, per diner, per booking or on bookings from Google or Meta?
4. What are the SMS and card processing rates, and who sets them?
5. What happens in a month when I pass my tier's booking limit?
6. What is the contract term, notice period and set-up fee?
7. Can I export my full guest list and booking history for free?
8. Under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, how does the guest-facing widget display any mandatory fee before the guest commits? (The Act has required total prices to be shown up front since 6 April 2025.)

TablePort pricing in one paragraph

TablePort Reservations is £49 per location per month ex VAT, with no per-cover fees, no setup fee and month-to-month terms with 30 days' notice. SMS is metered per message and card payments carry published processing rates (1.9% plus 20p for standard online cards). Plan prices are on the pricing page. It runs on your own iPad or Android tablet, and you get 30 days free with no card. The trade-offs are that TablePort is a newer company with a smaller network than ResDiary or OpenTable, it does not run a consumer marketplace, and for a booking-only restaurant a lower-priced standalone tool such as TableTango or resOS can cost less. The case for TablePort is when you want reservations on the same floor plan, guest profiles and bill as your till. See the booking system buyer's guide for the wider checklist.