The Best Restaurant Reservation System for Your Restaurant
October 24, 2026 · 9 min read · Prices checked October 24, 2026
The Verdict
For most independent restaurants, a flat-fee reservation system costs less than OpenTable once marketplace covers add up. Resy ($289 a month, no cover fees) suits a room that fills on its own name; Yelp Guest Manager ($129–$349, no cover fees) suits a casual, walk-in-heavy room; Eat App is the cheapest way off paper. Pay OpenTable's cover fees when you need its diner network to fill seats, and look at SevenRooms if you run a group and want a guest CRM (quote only).
OpenTable
$149–$499
a month, plus $1.00–$1.50 per network cover
Resy · Yelp
$129–$459
a month across both, no cover fees
Eat App
$0
up to 100 guests a month; other plans from $69
Sources: OpenTable's restaurant plans pages (as published; cross-checked against Yelp's comparison), resy.com/join/plans-pricing, business.yelp.com (Yelp Guest Manager), sevenrooms.com/pricing and restaurant.eatapp.co/pricing, checked October 24, 2026. List prices billed monthly, before payment processing fees.
A restaurant reservation system takes bookings online, runs the floor plan at the host stand and keeps a record of every guest. The five platforms below charge in three different ways, so the cheapest one depends on how many of your diners would book anyway. We read each vendor's own pricing pages and ran the yearly cost for one restaurant. If you are down to two, the OpenTable vs Resy comparison goes deeper on both.
Restaurant Reservation Software at a Glance
Five restaurant reservation platforms, with the monthly list price, what each one charges per diner, and the fee or term to read before signing. Prices billed monthly unless noted, from each vendor's own pages on October 24, 2026.
| System | Monthly price | Per-cover fees | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenTable | $149 Basic · $299 Core · $499 Pro | $1.50 per network cover on Basic, $1.00 on Core and Pro; website covers $0.25 each or $49/mo on Basic, free on Core and Pro | 2% service fee on prepaid experiences |
| Resy | $289 Platform or Essential · $459 Platform 360 or Premium | None on any plan | 3% (Essential) or 2% (Premium) fee on prepayments |
| Yelp Guest Manager | $129–$349 | None | Annual contract; early termination fee $600 (Basic) or $1,500 (Plus) |
| SevenRooms | Quote only: Starter, Growth, Premium | No reservation fees | One-time setup fee; transaction fee on pre-sales through its widgets |
| Eat App | Free (100 guests/mo) · $99 Lite · $199 Core · $389 Pro | None; no cover cap on Lite, Core or Pro | Billed yearly: $69, $159, $299 a month |
A cover is one seated diner. OpenTable bills seated diners only. Card processing fees on deposits and prepayments come on top of the fees above; Resy's pricing page says so outright.
How Restaurant Reservation Platforms Charge
Every restaurant booking system here does the same core job: an online booking book and a floor plan for the host. What differs is how you pay, and that decides the yearly bill more than any feature.
Per cover
OpenTable
A monthly plan plus a fee for every seated diner its network sends. Cheap in a quiet month, expensive in a full one.
Flat subscription
Resy, Yelp Guest Manager, Eat App
One price a month however many people book. The bill is predictable, but nobody pays for your seats to be filled.
Quote
SevenRooms
No published price. You get a number after a sales call, plus a one-time setup fee.
OpenTable: The Biggest Diner Network, Billed per Cover
OpenTable lists three restaurant plans: $149 a month for Basic, $299 for Core and $499 for Pro. On top of the subscription, every diner OpenTable's network sends you is a network cover: $1.50 each on Basic (free for the first 30 days) and $1.00 on Core and Pro. Diners who book from your own website cost $0.25 each or a $49 flat monthly fee on Basic, and nothing on Core and Pro. You pay for seated diners only. Prepaid experiences and ticketing carry a 2% service fee.
What the cover fee buys is demand: diners browsing OpenTable for a table tonight. That is worth paying for when you are new, in a hotel or tourist district, or competing for diners who do not know your name yet. It is a poor deal when most of your bookings would have come anyway, because the bill grows with every busy weekend. For the head-to-head with Resy, including a cost estimator by covers per week, read OpenTable vs Resy.
Resy: Flat Monthly Pricing With No Cover Fees
Resy sells four plans in two pairs. Platform ($289 a month) is reservation and table management with POS integrations; Platform 360 ($459) adds an advanced analytics dashboard. Essential ($289) and Premium ($459) run on Tock and add event ticketing and prepaid bookings, with a 3% fee on prepayments on Essential and 2% on Premium; POS integrations on that side come with Premium. Resy charges no per-cover fee on any plan.
A flat bill is the point. A restaurant that fills on reputation pays the same $289 in a slow January as in a packed December. The Tock-powered plans fit rooms that sell tasting menus, wine dinners or ticketed events, where a prepaid seat is worth more than a free booking.
Yelp Guest Manager: Reservations, Waitlist and Listings
Yelp prices Guest Manager at $129–$349 a month with no cover fees. It takes reservations and runs a waitlist, and lists your tables on Yelp, Reserve with Google, Apple Maps, ChatGPT, Facebook and Instagram. Floor maps and seating policies are customizable, and it integrates with Toast and other POS systems.
Read the contract before the welcome offer. New customers can get up to 60 days free and Yelp Ads credit (restaurants with five locations or fewer), and Yelp's annual contracts carry an early termination fee of $600 on the Basic plan and $1,500 on Plus. It suits casual, walk-in-heavy restaurants where the waitlist matters as much as the booking book.
SevenRooms: A Guest CRM for Restaurant Groups
SevenRooms publishes three packages (Starter, Growth and Premium) but no prices; you get a quote. Its pricing page lists the other costs: a one-time setup fee and a transaction fee on pre-sales taken through its booking widgets. It does not charge reservation fees, and the same page offers access to more than 50 million DoorDash and Deliveroo reservation marketplace users with no cover fees. Onboarding is one-to-one, with a custom floor plan, and SevenRooms says most venues go live within a few weeks.
The reason to take the sales call is the guest record. SevenRooms builds a profile for every guest across venues and drives email and text marketing from it, which matters more to a group with several rooms than to a single bistro. Get the setup fee and the contract term in writing next to the monthly quote.
Eat App: A Free Restaurant Reservation System to Start
Eat App has the only free plan here: $0, limited to 100 guests a month, for a small room getting off a paper book. Lite, Core and Pro have no cap on covers. Billed monthly, Lite is $99, Core $199 and Pro $389; billed yearly they drop to $69, $159 and $299 a month. Any plan can be tried free for 14 days.
Eat App takes bookings through Google, your website and other channels, and it lists deposits and prepayments, a QR-code waitlist at the door and shift reports among its features. POS and payments integration is included on Pro. Its pricing page lists no diner marketplace, so Eat App competes on price with Resy and Yelp rather than with OpenTable's network.
Worked Example: 1,200 Reserved Covers a Month
One independent restaurant takes 1,200 reserved covers a month: 480 (40%) come through the platform's own diner network and 720 from its website. List prices billed monthly, before card processing and prepayment fees:
| Plan | Monthly | Yearly |
|---|---|---|
| OpenTable Basic ($149 + 480 × $1.50 + $49 website flat fee) | $918 | $11,016 |
| OpenTable Core ($299 + 480 × $1.00) | $779 | $9,348 |
| OpenTable Pro ($499 + 480 × $1.00) | $979 | $11,748 |
| Resy Platform | $289 | $3,468 |
| Resy Platform 360 | $459 | $5,508 |
| Yelp Guest Manager | $129–$349 | $1,548–$4,188 |
| Eat App Core (billed monthly) | $199 | $2,388 |
| SevenRooms | Quote | Quote + setup fee |
OpenTable Core costs $490 a month more than Resy Platform here, almost all of it the 480 network covers. That is the real question: would those diners have found you anyway? If most would, the flat fee wins by thousands a year. If they are new guests you would not otherwise see, the cover fee is marketing, and you can weigh it against the rest of your marketing budget. Put your own numbers in below.
OpenTable Basic
$11,016/yr
$149 + 480 × $1.50 + website covers
OpenTable Core
$9,348/yr
$299 + 480 × $1.00
Resy Platform
$3,468/yr
Flat, no cover fees
Yelp Guest ManagerLowest
$1,548/yr
Lowest listed price, no cover fees
Eat App Core
$2,388/yr
Billed monthly, no cover cap
List prices billed monthly, checked October 24, 2026. Excludes card processing, prepayment fees, add-ons and promotions. Only OpenTable charges per network cover, so the slider moves only its two lines.
Restaurant Table Management Software: What to Check
A free table booking app can run a small room. Past a few hundred covers a month the host stand needs a full restaurant table management system. Check these six things on any demo or trial before you sign:
| Floor plan and table management | Can the host see every table, its party and its course, and move a booking with one drag? |
| Waitlist | Walk-ins and a text when the table is ready. Yelp and Eat App both sell this as a core feature. |
| No-show protection | Card holds, deposits or prepayment, and the fee the platform takes on each prepaid seat. |
| POS integration | Spend per guest only reaches the guest profile if the POS connects, and some plans leave it out. |
| Where you are bookable | Your own site, Google, Yelp, Apple Maps, the vendor's app. Each channel is a door to your book. |
| Guest data and the contract | Who keeps the guest list if you leave, the term, and the early termination fee. |
Tip: run the trial on a real Friday
Eat App gives 14 days free on any plan. Book a busy shift through the trial, let the host work it, and count the clicks from walk-in to seated before you compare prices. Where the vendor sells on an annual contract, ask for the demo on your own floor plan instead.
Which Reservation System Should You Choose?
Choose OpenTable if
You are new, in a hotel or tourist district, or need diners who do not know your name yet, and an empty seat costs you more than $1.00–$1.50.
Choose Resy if
Your room fills on reputation and you want one flat bill, or you sell ticketed dinners and prepaid tasting menus on the Tock-powered plans.
Choose Yelp Guest Manager if
You run a casual, walk-in-heavy room where the waitlist and Yelp and Google listings matter, and you are fine with an annual contract.
Choose SevenRooms if
You run several venues and want one guest record driving email and text marketing, and you will negotiate the quote and setup fee.
Choose Eat App if
You are moving off a paper book on a tight budget: free up to 100 guests a month, then from $69 a month billed yearly.
Worth a look before you sign: your POS vendor's own add-on. TouchBistro, for one, sells reservations as an extra-cost add-on to its POS (bundles from $69 a month, add-ons quoted on its pricing page), which keeps bookings and checks in one system. Tock is no longer a separate choice: it powers Resy's Essential and Premium plans.
Whichever you choose, add the platform's fee as its own line in your restaurant budget, and put the reservation link on your website, Google profile and every email, so more guests book through the door you own.