ResDiary vs TheFork

ResDiary or TheFork? A price you can read, or a share of the bill.

ResDiary sells a booking diary for a published monthly fee. TheFork is a consumer marketplace with a booking system attached, and it charges a percentage of your average bill per guest on the diners its own network sends you. Two names on the same shortlist, two different things being sold — 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. TheFork publishes no price at all, in any currency, so there is no TheFork figure below to check; what we checked on 28 August 2026 is that every plan on its pricing page still reads "Ask for pricing". Our own pitch is one section near the bottom, labelled as such.

Around a 5-minute read.

Talk to us See Seatly Pricing

The short answer

One question decides this, and it is not which platform has the better diary. Are you buying software to serve demand you already have, or buying demand and paying a share of the bill for it? 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. TheFork is the second: a plan price you can only get by asking for it, plus a fee worded as a percentage of your average bill per guest on reservations arriving from TheFork, Tripadvisor and partner channels.

The part most write-ups get wrong is the scope, and it cuts in TheFork's favour. The commission is not charged on everything. TheFork's own pricing table marks reservations coming from your website, Instagram and Facebook as included, so bookings you generated yourself are commission-free even when they run through TheFork's widget. What you pay for is the strangers.

So the maths turns on your booking mix, and on one thing you cannot see before you sign: TheFork's price.

There is a third shape — flat monthly, published, rolling, no commission — 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, and exclude VAT. TheFork's column carries no figures because TheFork publishes none — every plan on its pricing page reads "Ask for pricing", checked 28 August 2026, and it states no VAT basis either. Where a TheFork cell says "not published", that is exactly what it means: the answer exists, it sits in the contract you would sign, and we are not going to invent it. Confirm your own numbers with each vendor before you sign anything.

  ResDiary TheFork
What it is Dedicated booking diary and widget, software only Consumer marketplace and app, plus a booking system for the venue
Booking pricing £109 to £295/month + VAT, published tier by tier Quote-only. Every plan on TheFork's own pricing page reads "Ask for pricing" — no figure is published, in any currency
Which covers cost money None. 0% commission "regardless of where the booking is made", which is ResDiary's own claim; what it meters instead is booking volume, by tier Only the ones TheFork sends. "Reservations coming from TheFork, Tripadvisor and partners" carry a "fee based on a percentage of your average bill per guest"; reservations from your own website, Instagram and Facebook are marked "Included"
Booking caps 150 bookings/month on the entry tier, rising by tier; unlimited on the top tier Not published
Setup fee £99 Not published; set in the Special Conditions you sign at registration — confirm before signing
Contract and notice Annual rolling term, 90 days' notice before the anniversary (GB terms) Not published; set in the Special Conditions you sign at registration — confirm before signing
Where diners book, and whose brand White-label available; any website, but more involved to embed Both — TheFork's own app and site, and TheFork's widget on yours. Control over that widget's branding is listed on the Performance and Enterprise plans, so ask which plan a quote is for
Demand generation No consumer marketplace; you fill the room yourself The app, the website, Tripadvisor and partner channels genuinely surface inbound diners — this is what the commission buys
Customer data ownership Restaurant owns it, export on request A guest database you can import and export from is listed on the Performance and Enterprise plans, so ask which plan a quote is for

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 that publishes no figure at all, that is the whole difference between budgeting and guessing.
  • 02. Your busy nights stay your own. 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 and a big spender costs the same as a light one. The subscription is the booking cost.
  • 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 TheFork is strong

  • 01. The marketplace is real demand. Diners browse TheFork's app and site, and it reaches further than that — its own pricing page groups the covers it charges for as "reservations coming from TheFork, Tripadvisor and partners", so a listing works across more than one channel. For destination and tourist-facing venues that is a stream of covers ResDiary cannot manufacture, and it is what the commission is actually buying.
  • 02. Your own bookings are not taxed. This is the fairest thing on TheFork's pricing page and it gets lost in most write-ups: reservations coming from your website, Instagram and Facebook are marked "Included". TheFork supplies a booking widget for your own site, and the covers you bring in through it carry no commission.
  • 03. The rate is scaled to your own prices. The fee is a percentage of your own average bill per guest, so a neighbourhood dining room and a tasting-menu restaurant are not billed the same for the same cover — it is set against what you charge rather than at a flat pound figure fixed across everybody. Whether that works out cheaper than a flat per-cover fee depends on the percentage, and TheFork does not publish that either.

What you take on with it

  • • No published price, anywhere. Every plan on TheFork's pricing page reads "Ask for pricing", checked 28 August 2026, so the only way to see your own number is a sales call, and you cannot benchmark the quote you get against what anyone else pays.
  • • A percentage rate you also cannot see in advance. The basis is published — a fee based on a percentage of your average bill per guest — but the percentage itself is not, so the cost of a marketplace cover is a number you only learn in the negotiation.
  • • Term, notice period and any setup charge are not published either. TheFork's legal pages defer to the General Conditions plus the Special Conditions signed at registration, so what leaving costs is settled in the contract in front of you. Read that section before you sign it, because nobody can read it for you beforehand.
  • • The widget on your website is TheFork's widget. Control over its branding is listed on the Performance and Enterprise plans, alongside the guest database you can export from, so which plan a quote puts you on decides whether the booking flow looks like your restaurant and whether your customer list travels with you. Checked 28 August 2026 — ask, and get the answer in writing.
  • • Ownership is mid-change. Tripadvisor owns TheFork as at August 2026, and announced on 15 June 2026 an agreement to sell it to American Express, expected to close before the end of 2026 subject to regulatory approvals. A new owner is not a reason to rule it out, but it is worth knowing that the company you sign with may not be the company you renew with.

If you got here looking for Bookatable

Bookatable is one of the two names on this page, just not under its own brand. Tripadvisor's investor release of 3 December 2019 announced that Michelin had agreed to sell Bookatable to TheFork, taking TheFork into the UK, Germany, Austria, Finland and Norway. The Bookatable brand is no longer marketed to UK restaurants, and bookatable.co.uk redirects to thefork.co.uk today rather than serving a booking system of its own.

The commercial shape changed with it. Bookatable ran as a booking platform in its own right; what its UK venues are quoted on now is the marketplace model in the TheFork column above. If that is you, our Seatly vs Bookatable page covers the migration angle, and the comparison on this page is the live version of the choice you are actually making.

The third option — and yes, this bit is our pitch

Flat monthly, published, no share of the bill

Seatly is £59 to £129 a month flat, monthly rolling, cancel anytime, with no commission on any channel, 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, the term is on the website too, 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 TheFork's app, that is TheFork's argument, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

Common questions

Which is cheaper, ResDiary or TheFork?
Nobody can tell you, including TheFork's own website, because TheFork publishes no price. Every plan on its pricing page reads "Ask for pricing", so each UK restaurant is on a negotiated deal. ResDiary is the one you can price before you ring a salesperson — £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. What you can compare is the shape: ResDiary's bill is fixed within a tier, while TheFork adds a percentage of your average bill per guest on every reservation its own network sends you. Only your own booking mix answers the rest.
Do TheFork bookings cost per cover?
Not per cover, and not on every booking — the scope is the part that matters. TheFork's own pricing page charges "Reservations coming from TheFork, Tripadvisor and partners" a "fee based on a percentage of your average bill per guest", and the row directly beneath it marks "Reservations coming from your website, Instagram and Facebook" as Included. So what a marketplace cover costs you is scaled to what you charge rather than fixed at a flat pound figure across every restaurant, and the bookings you generated yourself carry no commission even though they run through TheFork's widget. Checked on TheFork's pricing page 28 August 2026; treat any per-cover figure quoted elsewhere with suspicion, because TheFork publishes none.
What happened to Bookatable?
TheFork bought it. Tripadvisor's investor release of 3 December 2019 announced that Michelin had agreed to sell Bookatable to TheFork, and that the deal expanded TheFork into the UK, Germany, Austria, Finland and Norway. The Bookatable brand is no longer marketed to UK restaurants, which is why bookatable.co.uk now redirects to thefork.co.uk rather than serving a booking system of its own. If you are an ex-Bookatable venue, the live comparison is the one on this page, and our Seatly vs Bookatable write-up covers the migration side of it.
Is there a flat-price white-label option?
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 commission and no per-cover fee 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 Bookatable cover how each compares to Seatly head-to-head, while ResDiary vs OpenTable takes ResDiary against the other marketplace and ResDiary vs Dojo takes it against the payments-led option. 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.

Talk to us See Seatly Pricing

* 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.

Now onboarding

Talk to us

We're onboarding the first restaurants now, one at a time. Leave your details and we'll be in touch for a chat — happy to answer any questions. Founding-customer pricing, no setup fee, no contract.

Just your name, email and role — everything else is optional.

We'll only contact you about Seatly. No spam. Unsubscribe any time.

Prefer to chat? Email us at [email protected]