ResDiary or OpenTable? A subscription, or a per-cover fee.
ResDiary sells a booking diary for a published monthly fee. OpenTable sells a reservation platform attached to a consumer marketplace, and charges for the diners that marketplace sends you. Two names on the same shortlist, two different ways of paying — here is the side-by-side.
Seatly makes a competing product, so read this the way you would read anything written by a rival: check it. Every figure carries where it came from and the date we last verified it — ResDiary's own published UK price list, verified 10 August 2026. OpenTable publishes no UK price at all, so every OpenTable figure below is its last published rate card, withdrawn in January 2025 and quoted from the archive; we last checked that the prices are still quote-only on 14 July 2026. Our own pitch is one section near the bottom, labelled as such.
Around a 5-minute read.
The short answer
The choice turns on one question, and it is not which platform has the better diary. Are you paying for software to serve demand you already have, or paying per seated cover for demand a marketplace brings you? ResDiary is the first: £109 to £295 a month plus VAT on a published list, 0% commission on every channel by its own account, and a booking cap on every tier below the £295 top one. OpenTable is the second: a subscription you can only get by quote, plus a fee for every diner its app and network send you — £2 per seated cover on the last rate card it published in the UK.
So the maths turns on where your bookings actually come from. If they are locals and regulars finding you directly, a per-cover fee is a charge on demand you created. If a real share of your covers are strangers who found you inside the OpenTable app, that fee is customer acquisition cost, and ResDiary has nothing that replaces it.
There is a third shape — flat monthly, rolling, no per-cover fee — and it is ours, so it sits further down where you can take it or leave it.
Side by side
ResDiary's figures are from its own published UK (GBP) price list and its GB terms and conditions, verified 10 August 2026. OpenTable's UK pricing has been quote-only since January 2025, so its figures here are the last ones it published — taken from its UK plans page as archived between October 2024 and January 2025 — and they are historic, not a quote you can expect today. Both exclude VAT. Confirm your own numbers with each vendor before you sign anything.
| ResDiary | OpenTable | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Dedicated booking diary and widget, software only | Consumer marketplace plus a reservation platform for the venue |
| Booking pricing | £109 to £295/month + VAT, published tier by tier | Quote-only since January 2025. Last published UK rate card: £179/month (Core) and £299 (Pro), plus £2 per seated network cover |
| Booking caps | 150 bookings/month on the entry tier, rising by tier; unlimited on the top tier | Not applicable — network covers are metered by the cover, not capped |
| Setup fee | £99 | Not published |
| Contract and notice | Annual rolling term, 90 days' notice before the anniversary (GB terms) | One-year term, auto-renews unless you give 30 days' notice; confirm on your quote |
| Where diners book, and whose brand | White-label available; any website, but more involved to embed | Typically redirects to OpenTable, under OpenTable branding |
| Demand generation | No consumer marketplace of OpenTable's scale; you fill the room yourself | The consumer app and network put diners in your room who had not chosen you yet — this is what the cover fee buys |
| Customer data ownership | Restaurant owns it, export on request | Data flows through OpenTable, which uses it to promote other venues on its diner network |
Where ResDiary is strong
- 01. You can price it before you ring anyone. Every tier, from £109 to £295 a month plus VAT, sits on ResDiary's own GBP price list. Against a vendor whose UK prices have been quote-only since January 2025, that is the whole difference between budgeting and guessing.
- 02. No exposure to your own busy nights. ResDiary's own claim is 0% commission "regardless of where the booking is made", so a full room costs the same as a quiet one. The subscription is the booking cost, and it does not move with covers.
- 03. The diary has real depth. POS integrations (Vita Mojo, Lightspeed, ICR Touch, Zonal), real-time table-mix optimisation, gift cards, pre-orders and phone-booking routing. A 120-cover venue juggling table combinations through a full service is the operation it was built for.
What you take on with it
- • An annual rolling term. ResDiary's GB terms renew automatically unless you give 90 days' written notice before the anniversary, and reviewers describe being held to 12-month minimums.
- • Booking caps on every tier below the top one — 150 bookings a month on the £109 Evo Connect, 450 on the £145 Evo Express, 1,000 on the £205 Evo Pro. A strong month can move you up a band rather than simply filling the room.
- • A £99 setup fee before the first month's subscription.
- • No marketplace behind it. Every booking still has to come from your own website, your social channels or a diner who already knows your name, and nothing in the subscription changes that.
- • Extras outside the headline price: add-ons at £10 to £35 a month each covering text messaging, POS and PMS integrations, gift vouchers, pre-orders and the phone module, plus payment-processing surcharges of 1.2% on deposits and payments and 3% on gift vouchers, on top of Stripe's own fees.
Where OpenTable is strong
- 01. The marketplace is real demand. The OpenTable app and website genuinely surface inbound diners, and for tourist-destination fine dining in central London, Edinburgh or Bath that is a stream of bookings ResDiary cannot manufacture. If you can show that 30% or more of your covers originate there, the cover fee is customer acquisition cost rather than a tax on existing customers.
- 02. Diners already recognise it. A guest who has booked through OpenTable before knows the flow, has their details saved and does not have to be talked through anything. Familiarity converts, and it is worth something on a booking page.
- 03. Enterprise reach. Physical reservation terminals, multi-property features and deep PMS integrations, aimed at large operators with complex floor management. If that describes you, this is the side of the table those features live on.
What you take on with it
- • Cost that scales with covers. On the last UK rate card OpenTable published, £2 was charged per seated diner arriving through its network — per cover, not per booking, so a table of six was £12 — and bookings from your own website carried no cover fee. A busy month costs more than a quiet one.
- • No published UK price. The plans page lists Core and Pro as "contact us for pricing" and has done since January 2025, so the only way to see your own number is a sales call. Treat the £179 and £299 above as history, not as a quote.
- • A regular who searched your name on Google, landed on your OpenTable profile and booked there counts as a network cover. That is the part operators tend to find out after signing, not before.
- • A one-year term that renews automatically unless you give 30 days' notice, and an April 2026 client-agreement change requiring partner restaurants to designate OpenTable as their primary table-management system — a change already drawing regulatory scrutiny in the US.
- • The booking finishes on OpenTable's page, under OpenTable's branding, and the customer data flows through OpenTable, which uses it to promote other venues to the same diner.
The third option — and yes, this bit is our pitch
Flat monthly, published, no fee on the cover
Seatly is £59 to £129 a month flat, monthly rolling, cancel anytime, with no per-cover fees, no booking caps at any tier and no setup fee for founding members. The price is on the website rather than behind a quote form, and the booking flow stays on your own domain, in your colours and under your restaurant's name*, so the diner never gets handed off to a marketplace to finish.
The honest limit is the same one ResDiary has: we do not run a consumer marketplace. If a real share of your covers genuinely arrives from strangers browsing the OpenTable app, that is OpenTable's argument, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
Common questions
- Which is cheaper, ResDiary or OpenTable?
- Nobody can answer that flatly, and anyone who does is guessing. OpenTable's UK pricing has been quote-only since January 2025, so there is no current figure to compare against: its last published UK rate card charged £179 a month for Core and £299 for Pro, plus £2 per seated cover on bookings arriving through its network. A per-cover fee moves with your volume, so your own answer depends on how many covers arrive that way. ResDiary is the one you can price before a sales call — £109 to £295 a month plus VAT on its published UK list, plus a £99 setup fee, with a booking cap on every tier below the top one.
- Does ResDiary bring diners the way OpenTable does?
- No, and that is the honest difference between them. OpenTable runs a consumer marketplace — an app and a website where diners browse restaurants they have not chosen yet — and the per-cover fee is what that marketplace costs. ResDiary has no consumer marketplace of that scale; it takes bookings from your own website, your social channels, Reserve with Google and DesignMyNight, and charges 0% commission on all of them, which is ResDiary's own claim. With ResDiary you are serving demand you already have. With OpenTable you are also buying some.
- What happens to the per-cover bill in a busy month?
- The subscription and the marketplace fee behave in opposite directions. A ResDiary subscription is flat within its tier, so a strong month costs you nothing extra until the booking cap pushes you into the next band. A per-cover fee scales with the room: on the last published UK rate, a table of six arriving through the OpenTable network cost £12 in cover fees on top of the subscription, so a full December costs more than a quiet February. On that rate card the fee applied to network covers only, so bookings taken on your own website carried none. Your own quote may differ, so ask what the per-cover rate is now before you sign.
- Is there a flat-price option with no annual term?
- Yes, and it is ours, so weigh it accordingly. Seatly is £59 to £129 a month flat, monthly rolling, cancel anytime with no notice period, no per-cover fees at any tier, no booking caps and no setup fee for founding members, with the booking flow on your own website under your own branding. The honest limit is the same one ResDiary has: we do not run a consumer marketplace, so we bring you no diners you did not already have.
Weighing either of them against us rather than against each other? Seatly vs ResDiary and Seatly vs OpenTable cover how each compares to Seatly head-to-head, and ResDiary vs Dojo takes ResDiary against the payments-led option instead. If you are earlier in your research, the guide to choosing a UK restaurant booking system walks through 10 platforms against the same six criteria.
Still deciding between the two?
Tell us where your bookings actually come from — your own website, or diners who found you in an app — and we will tell you straight whether Seatly is the right fit or whether one of the two above is. We are onboarding UK independents into the first cohort now.
* A note on Seatly branding. Seatly branding is optional and entirely your choice. A single toggle in your admin Settings controls whether a small "Powered by Seatly" line appears on your booking widget AND in confirmation, reminder, and cancellation emails. When enabled, you receive a tier-matched discount on your subscription (£5/month on Starter, £10/month on Professional, £15/month on Business). The toggle defaults to ON for Starter accounts and OFF for Professional and Business — you can change it whenever you like.
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