What should a booking system cost?
Before we set a price for Thezi, we went and found out what everybody else charges. It took far longer than it should have, so we thought we'd share the findings and save you the trouble. It is worth reading whether you end up with us or not.
Here is the first thing we learned. Of the seven systems we looked at, only three will tell you a price without a phone call. We decided we did not want to be a fourth.
Two things decide your bill.
First, whether there is a fee on every cover. Most of these charge a flat monthly fee and nothing per booking. Two run a diner marketplace and charge for each guest it sends you, so the bill grows as you get busier. Neither is wrong. They suit different restaurants, and the marketplace fee can be money well spent if it is filling tables you would not have filled. Just know which one you are signing.
Second, whether the price is published at all. Three of the seven put a figure on their website. The other four quote you privately, which means the number can be different for you than for the restaurant down the road.
The cost, at a glance.
| System | Published price | Per-cover fee | Contract | Try it without a call |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thezi | £0 during early access. £20 / month planned, £49 unlimited | None | Rolling monthly | Yes, no card |
| NomNom | £29.99 / month | None | Rolling monthly | Yes, 14 days |
| resOS | Free to a monthly booking cap, then tiered | None | Rolling monthly | Yes, free tier |
| Sugarvine | £75 + VAT / month | None | 12 months | No |
| OpenTable | Quote only in the UK | Yes, on marketplace covers | Not published | No |
| ResDiary | Quote only | None on bookings | Not published | No |
| SevenRooms | Quote only | None | Not published | No |
| TheFork | Quote only | Yes, on marketplace covers | Not published | No |
Scroll the table sideways.
One of those needs a sentence rather than a column. Everyone else's answer to a phone is an app to install; ours is that there is nothing to install, and that the screen you run service from keeps working when the restaurant's wifi does not. Open it on the counter iPad with the line down and tonight's bookings are still there — times, party sizes, tables, allergies, the floor plan — with a strip across the top saying how fresh it is. It refreshes itself when the line comes back.
What it will not do offline is take, move or cancel a booking, and that is on purpose rather than unfinished. The one promise a booking system has to keep is that two parties never get the same table, and a device with no connection cannot check that — so those buttons say so before you tap them instead of failing after. The full story is in the help centre.
Taken from each company's own pricing page in September 2026. Where a company does not publish a figure we have left it blank rather than guess, because an estimate in a grid stops looking like an estimate very quickly. Prices move, so confirm anything here with the vendor before you sign. Spot something out of date and we will fix it: hello@thezi.app.
So we set ours at £20.
Once the grid was in front of us the sums were fairly simple. Thezi runs on infrastructure that costs us very little per restaurant, and there is no sales team to pay for. So we do not need £75 a month.
£20 a month covers our costs and leaves enough to keep building. That is the whole calculation. We would rather charge a fair price to a lot of restaurants than a big one to a few, and we would rather you could work out your bill in your head.
Early access is free while we are new, there is no card and no trial clock, and you can run it alongside whatever you use now for as long as you like.
And what you get for it.
Everything here takes bookings, seats tables and holds a card, so there is no point listing that. These are the columns that actually vary.
| System | Text reminders | Diner marketplace | Phone apps | API for your own software |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thezi | Not yet | No | No app to install. Runs in a phone browser, and the diary still opens when the wifi drops | Yes, and built for assistants |
| NomNom | Yes, credits extra | Own directory | Yes | Yes |
| resOS | Paid add-on | No | Yes | Yes |
| Sugarvine | Yes | Own guide | Not published | Not published |
| OpenTable | Plan-dependent | Yes, large | Yes | Partner programme |
| ResDiary | Paid add-on | Own guide | Yes | Yes |
| SevenRooms | Tier-dependent | No | Yes | Yes |
| TheFork | Plan-dependent | Yes, large | Yes | Partner programme |
Scroll the table sideways.
Where we are honestly behind.
Text reminders, and what we are doing about them
Nearly everyone above sends them and we do not yet. Not because we think they are a gimmick. A text on the morning of a booking is one of the best ways there is to cut no-shows. The problem is that every message costs real money, so the usual answers are to bundle them in and quietly charge every restaurant for what a few use, or to sell credits at a markup. We did not fancy either. We are working on a third way: you pay close to what the message actually costs, and we take no margin on your reminders. If you need texts this month rather than soon, one of the others is your answer today and we would rather tell you that than sell you something.
A diner marketplace
Four of the systems above come with a directory that can put you in front of somebody who has never heard of you. We do not have one. If filling quiet Tuesdays from a big network is the main thing you are buying, OpenTable or TheFork reach people we cannot, and that is worth paying for.
A long list of names
We are new, and we are not going to dress a short customer list up as a movement. If you would rather have a system with fifteen years of pubs behind it, that is a completely reasonable thing to want, and several are listed above.
If you have read this far and picked somebody else, that is genuinely fine. The grid was worth writing either way, and we would rather be the people who helped you work it out.