Bookatable is now TheFork. Here is the flat-fee alternative.
Bookatable was acquired by TheFork and folded into its UK operation. If you remember being a Bookatable partner, your account, bookings, and customer data sit inside TheFork's platform today — a platform that publishes no plan prices, and charges commission as a percentage of your average bill per guest on the bookings its own network sends you. Seatly is a flat-fee, no-commission alternative for UK independents who want bookings on their own website, in their own brand.
Around a 5-minute read.
What happened to Bookatable
Bookatable spent two decades as one of the UK's better-known restaurant booking platforms — a flat-monthly product that competed with OpenTable on the high street and was a default choice for hotels and mid-market independents.
It was then acquired by TheFork — at the time Tripadvisor's restaurant booking arm — in a deal announced in December 2019 that also expanded TheFork into the UK. The Bookatable brand was wound down for UK restaurant partners and existing accounts were migrated onto TheFork's restaurant platform. The bookatable.com and bookatable.co.uk addresses now redirect straight to TheFork's own consumer sites rather than serving a booking system of their own.
The headline change for independents was the commercial model. TheFork operates a marketplace — your restaurant appears on TheFork's consumer-facing app and website, and its pricing page charges a commission on reservations coming from TheFork, Tripadvisor and partner channels, worded as a fee based on a percentage of your average bill per guest. Reservations from your own website, Instagram and Facebook are marked as included, and the plan price itself is not published at all — every plan reads "Ask for pricing". If you were on Bookatable when it was an independent flat-monthly product with a visible price, the platform you are on today is a different shape.
Side-by-side comparison
Bookatable as a standalone product is no longer marketed to new UK partners, so the comparison below is Seatly against TheFork, which is what Bookatable's UK partners are now on. TheFork publishes no plan prices — every plan on its own pricing page reads "Ask for pricing", checked 28 August 2026 — so its column carries no figures. Where a cell says "not published", the answer sits in the contract you would sign. Confirm your own numbers with TheFork before signing anything.
| Seatly | TheFork (ex-Bookatable) | |
|---|---|---|
| Commercial model | Flat monthly subscription | Quote-only subscription plus marketplace commission |
| Monthly fee | £59 to £129 flat | Not published — every plan reads "Ask for pricing" |
| Commission | £0 — no commission or per-cover fee at any tier | A percentage of your average bill per guest, on reservations from TheFork, Tripadvisor and partners; your own website, Instagram and Facebook bookings are included |
| Contract term | Monthly rolling, cancel anytime | Not published — set in the conditions signed at registration |
| Where diners book | Your own website, your branding | TheFork's app and site, plus TheFork's widget on your own website |
| Widget branding | White-label by default* | TheFork-branded by default; branding control is listed on the Performance and Enterprise plans |
| Customer data ownership | Restaurant owns it, export anytime | Guest-database import and export is listed on the Performance and Enterprise plans — ask which plan a quote covers |
| Data residency | London, UK | Not published; the contracting entity is LA FOURCHETTE, based in Paris |
| Target customer | UK independents booking diners direct | Venues benefiting from marketplace discovery |
The price you can read, and the quote you have to ask for
Normally this section would put two monthly totals side by side. With TheFork we can't do that honestly: it publishes no plan price, in any currency — every plan on its own pricing page reads "Ask for pricing" (checked 28 August 2026). What it does publish is the shape of the charge, so that is what we can compare.
TheFork
"Ask for pricing"
every plan, their own pricing page
No plan price published, in any currency
Commission on bookings from TheFork, Tripadvisor and partners — a percentage of your average bill per guest
Bookings from your own website, Instagram and Facebook included
Seatly Professional
£89
per month
Flat fee, same in your busiest month and your quietest
£0 commission, £0 per cover
Cancel any month, no notice period
TheFork's quote will exist — it just sits in the contract you would sign rather than on a public page, so get your own figure directly from TheFork before you commit. TheFork wording checked against its pricing page on 28 August 2026.
The trade-off is knowability as much as cost. A flat fee on a public page is a number you can budget a year ahead — your busiest month costs the same as January. A negotiated plan price plus a commission scaled to your average bill is a number you can only discover by asking, and it moves with how many covers TheFork's channels send you.
What changes when you switch
- 01. Bookings live on your own website. Diners book from your domain in your branding — not redirected to TheFork's app. You keep the relationship with the diner.
- 02. No commission on busy weeks. Your Friday and Saturday service do not get more expensive because you got busier. The fee stays the same whether you do 200 covers or 2,000.
- 03. No marketplace dependency. You stop renting an audience from a third-party app and start building your own customer list, with emails and visit history you actually control.
- 04. No annual lock-in. Monthly rolling, no notice period to cancel. If Seatly isn't right for your venue, you are never trapped to the next renewal.
When TheFork (the ex-Bookatable platform) still wins
Not every restaurant should switch. There are venues where the marketplace model is paying for itself, and a flat-fee white-label like Seatly would mean giving up real inbound traffic.
If your bookings genuinely come from TheFork's consumer app. Tourist-heavy locations, central-London destination venues, or any restaurant where a meaningful share of bookings come from diners who first discovered you on TheFork or Tripadvisor — the commission can be worth paying for that audience.
If your Tripadvisor presence is part of your marketing. TheFork integrates tightly with Tripadvisor listings. If Tripadvisor reviews and rankings drive a non-trivial portion of your booking flow, leaving the ecosystem has a cost you should price in.
For UK neighbourhood independents — bookings coming from regulars, locals, and your own social media and website — the sums look different. TheFork's own pricing marks those self-generated reservations as included, so the commission is not the cost to weigh there; what you are weighing is a negotiated, unpublished plan price against a published flat fee, with your own-site widget wearing TheFork's branding unless your plan includes branding control. That is the segment Seatly is built for.
How to switch from TheFork (or restart from Bookatable)
- 01.
Check your contract
Find your TheFork contract or the email outlining your terms. TheFork publishes no standard term or notice period — both are set in the conditions signed at registration — so your own paperwork is the authority on renewal dates and notice windows.
- 02.
Run Seatly in parallel
Most restaurants embed the Seatly widget on their own website immediately, even before the marketplace contract ends. You take direct bookings on Seatly while TheFork handles the bookings already in their system. The diner experience on your own site improves on day one.
- 03.
Export your customer data
Request a customer and booking export from TheFork. Building, importing and exporting a guest database is listed on TheFork's Performance and Enterprise plans, so check what your plan includes and what your data processing terms let you take with you. Seatly imports the CSV during onboarding so your customer list moves with you.
- 04.
Cancel at renewal
Send written cancellation before your renewal date. By that point your own website is already taking the majority of bookings, so the transition is administrative rather than operational.
Common questions
- What happened to Bookatable?
- Bookatable was acquired by TheFork in a deal announced in December 2019, and was folded into TheFork's UK operation. The Bookatable consumer brand is no longer actively marketed, and bookatable.co.uk now redirects to thefork.co.uk rather than serving a booking system of its own. UK restaurants that were on Bookatable were migrated onto TheFork's restaurant platform, which publishes no plan prices — every plan reads "Ask for pricing" — and charges a commission worded as a percentage of your average bill per guest on reservations coming from TheFork, Tripadvisor and partner channels. Reservations from your own website, Instagram and Facebook are marked as included.
- Is Bookatable still available for new UK restaurants?
- Not as a standalone product. New UK independents looking at Bookatable today are quoted onto TheFork's restaurant platform instead. If you were previously on Bookatable as a restaurant partner, your account, bookings, and customer data sit inside TheFork's system today.
- How does Seatly compare to TheFork (the platform that absorbed Bookatable)?
- Seatly is white-label and flat-fee. The booking widget embeds directly into your own website with your branding, and you pay a published flat monthly subscription from £59 with no commission and no per-cover fees. TheFork is a marketplace — your restaurant appears on TheFork's consumer app and website, its plan prices are quote-only, and it charges a percentage of your average bill per guest on the reservations its own network sends you, with reservations from your own website, Instagram and Facebook included. The real question is whether you are buying software for demand you already have, or paying a negotiated price for marketplace demand.
- Can I move my Bookatable customer data to Seatly?
- Yes. Whatever Bookatable held for your restaurant should now sit inside TheFork's system. Building, importing and exporting a guest database is listed on TheFork's Performance and Enterprise plans, so check what your plan includes and what your data processing terms let you take with you. Seatly imports the CSV during onboarding so you do not start from zero.
- When is the marketplace model (TheFork or OpenTable) still the right choice?
- If a meaningful share of your bookings genuinely come through the marketplace's consumer channels — typical for fine-dining and destination venues in central London, or restaurants relying on tourist discovery — the commission can be worth paying for that inbound traffic. For neighbourhood independents whose diners mostly book direct, TheFork's own pricing marks self-generated reservations as included, so the commission matters less than what the negotiated plan price buys: a widget that wears TheFork's branding by default, and guest-database export on the higher plans.
Comparing more than just Bookatable's successor? Our buyer's guide to UK restaurant booking systems walks through 10 alternatives against the same six criteria — pricing, contracts, data ownership, embedding, GDPR, and feature fit.
Bookatable is not the only platform that has left its restaurants looking for a new home. Quandoo is closing worldwide by the end of 2026 — see our Seatly vs Quandoo replacement guide. If TheFork's commission is the part you want to leave behind, it is worth being precise about what it covers: a percentage of your average bill per guest, charged on reservations coming from TheFork, Tripadvisor and its partner channels, with bookings from your own website, Instagram and Facebook marked as included. The same trade-offs come up against ResDiary , and if you are weighing those two against each other rather than against Seatly, our ResDiary vs TheFork comparison puts them side by side.
Take your bookings back
We're onboarding UK independents into the first cohort now. Tell us about your venue and we'll walk you through what an exit from the marketplace model actually looks like.
* 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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