What Salon Booking Software Really Costs: Fees, Commissions & More

Salon booking software is sold on a headline number: $20 a month, $30 a month, or free. The number you actually pay is made up of five parts, and the headline is often the smallest of them. This guide explains each part, shows how the three common pricing models behave as a salon grows, and gives you a worksheet to compare vendors on total cost.

The five components of salon software cost

1. The base subscription

This is the advertised price. It may cover one user, one location, or the whole business depending on the model. Check whether it is quoted monthly or as a monthly equivalent of an annual contract, and whether tax is added.

2. Per-staff or per-user fees

Many platforms charge for each bookable team member beyond the first. According to Booksy's pricing page (Sept 2026), for example, the base plan is $29.99 a month plus $20 a month per additional staff member; Fresha's pricing page (Sept 2026) lists $14.95 per team member per month on its Team plan. This is the component most likely to surprise a salon owner who hires.

3. Marketplace commission

Platforms with a consumer marketplace often charge a fee when a new client books you through it. Fresha's pricing page (Sept 2026) lists a one-time 20% commission on new marketplace clients with a $6 minimum; Booksy's optional Boost programme is listed at a one-time 30% of the new client's first visit. The commission is not part of the subscription, so it never appears in the headline price, but for a salon that gets several new clients a month through the app it can exceed the subscription.

4. Add-ons

Features such as loyalty, text marketing, forms, a website builder or a branded app are sometimes sold separately. Fresha's pricing page (Sept 2026), for instance, lists client loyalty at $59.95 per location per month. Before comparing products, list the features you will actually use and check which column they fall in for each vendor: included, add-on, or higher tier.

5. Card processing

Every platform charges a percentage plus a fixed amount on each card transaction, either through its own processor or through a connected one such as Stripe or Square. Rates published in September 2026 range from a flat 2.6% (GlossGenius) to 2.79% + $0.20 for online payments (Fresha), according to their respective pricing pages. On $10,000 of monthly card revenue, a 0.3 percentage-point difference is $30 a month, which is more than many subscription differences.

Three pricing models and how they scale

The five components combine into three broad models. The table below shows how each behaves for three salon sizes. The per-staff and marketplace rows use illustrative rates chosen to be typical of the market, not the pricing of any single vendor; the flat row uses SalonBook's published prices.

What each model rewards

• Flat pricing rewards growth within the plan limit. Adding a second and third stylist costs nothing extra on SalonBook Pro; the jump comes at the fourth, when Enterprise is required.
• Per-staff pricing rewards staying small. It is often the cheapest option for a solo professional and becomes expensive quickly for teams.
• Marketplace commission rewards salons that rarely take new clients from the app. A busy salon full of regulars pays little; a new salon relying on the marketplace for growth pays the most, at exactly the stage when cash is tightest.

Costs that hide outside the pricing page

Some costs never appear on any pricing page but are real money over a year.

• SMS reminders billed per message once a free allowance is used. Fresha's pricing page (Sept 2026) lists 100 free texts a month then $0.02 per text; a salon sending two reminders per appointment for 400 appointments a month would exceed the allowance.
• A separate website subscription because the booking platform only gives you a profile page. A basic site builder plus domain typically adds a second monthly bill.
• Contract terms. A monthly-equivalent price that requires a 12-month commitment is not a monthly price. SalonBook has no contract and can be cancelled at any time.
• Setup or onboarding fees, and fees to export your data when you leave.
• Time. A platform that needs a staff member to manually charge no-show fees or chase confirmations costs labour every week.

A worksheet for comparing vendors

For each vendor you are considering, fill in these six lines using its pricing page. Do the math for your salon today and for the size you expect in two years.

1. Base subscription per month, on the billing term you will actually choose.
2. Number of bookable staff beyond the first, multiplied by the per-staff fee.
3. Add-ons you will use: loyalty, forms, SMS marketing, website, custom domain.
4. Expected new marketplace clients per month, multiplied by average first-visit value, multiplied by the commission rate.
5. Monthly card revenue multiplied by the processing rate, plus the per-transaction fee multiplied by transaction count.
6. Any separate website or domain subscription you would keep paying.

Add the six lines. That is your real monthly cost. Compare that figure, not the headline.

Where SalonBook sits

SalonBook uses flat pricing. Free is $0 a month for one staff member and five services with online booking, calendar, client list, email confirmations and a public website. Pro is $39 a month, or $348 a year (about $29 a month), for up to three staff with unlimited services, deposits and no-show fees, SMS and email reminders, waitlist, client portal, forms, loyalty, memberships, gift certificates, online shop, reports, ten website templates, custom domain with SSL and an embed widget. Enterprise is $89 a month, or $828 a year (about $69 a month), for unlimited staff plus a JSON data API and headless mode.

There is no marketplace and therefore no commission, no per-booking or per-client fee, no setup fee and no contract. Payments run through your own Stripe, Square or PayPal account, and their processing fees apply. For most salons of one to three staff the total cost is the Pro subscription plus processing, and nothing else.

If a vendor cannot tell you what a three-person salon will pay next year, the pricing page is not finished.