Booksy vs Setmore
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentBooksy compared with Setmore
Setmore is a cheap, general-purpose booking tool with a free tier and low-cost paid plans, usable across many industries. It has no consumer marketplace, no marketing engine, and a lighter payments story. Setmore suits a small service team that just needs a calendar and a booking page. Booksy suits a business that wants the marketplace and the retention tooling and will pay per head for it.
Choose Booksy if
Independent barbers, barbershops, and small beauty and grooming businesses who want every feature on one flat price and want to be discoverable in the app their clients already have installed.
Choose Setmore if
Very small service businesses on tight budgets: salons, barbers, tutors, trainers, small clinics, and independent practitioners who want online booking, reminders, and card payments for either nothing or five dollars a head.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Booksy | Setmore |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Scheduling | Scheduling |
| Starting price | $29.99 per month plus tax (free plan available) | $0 (Free), then $5 per user per month billed annually ($12 month to month) (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Single flat monthly subscription with every feature included, plus a per-staff-member fee, plus published card processing rates. The Boost marketplace channel is opt-in and charged as a one-off commission on new clients only. | Freemium, with a capped free plan and a single per-user Pro plan. Annual billing is dramatically cheaper than monthly. Enterprise is a custom quote. |
| Free plan | None. There is one paid plan, month to month, with no free tier. | Up to four staff logins and 200 appointments a month, with a public Booking Page, online and in-person payments, email confirmations and reminders, website widget, mobile apps, and Google Analytics, Mailchimp, and Zapier connectors. Setmore branding is shown. |
| Free trial | 14 days, no credit card required | The free plan serves as the evaluation path; Pro features can be trialled from within the product |
| Best for | Independent barbers, barbershops, and small beauty and grooming businesses who want every feature on one flat price and want to be discoverable in the app their clients already have installed. | Very small service businesses on tight budgets: salons, barbers, tutors, trainers, small clinics, and independent practitioners who want online booking, reminders, and card payments for either nothing or five dollars a head. |
| Setup time | A few hours to a day for a single provider. Service menu, hours, staff, and a marketplace profile with decent photos are the work. Payments onboarding adds identity and bank verification. | An hour or two for a working booking page: add services with durations and prices, add staff and their hours, connect a payment processor, and embed the widget on your site. Most of that time is deciding your policies rather than configuring software. |
| Learning curve | Low. The mobile app is the primary interface and is designed for people who are on their feet with a client in the chair. Owners need an hour on cancellation policy configuration and reporting. | Low. Setmore is deliberately simpler than Acuity or SimplyBook.me, which is both its main appeal and the reason businesses eventually outgrow it. Staff can be trained on the calendar in a single sitting. |
| Platforms | Booksy Biz iOS and Android app, Web dashboard, Consumer Booksy iOS and Android app, Hosted booking page and website widgets, Card reader hardware | Web app, iOS, Android, Windows desktop, macOS desktop, Website widget and plugin, Branded customer app option |
| Compliance | PCI DSS for payments, GDPR, CCPA | HIPAA via the Setmore Health configuration on Pro, PCI handled through Square, Stripe, PayPal, or LawPay |
| Founded | 2014 | 2011 |
| Headquarters | United States, with major operations in Poland | Portland, Oregon, United States |
| Ownership | Venture-backed | Privately held and bootstrapped; no disclosed venture funding |
Strengths and limitations
Booksy
Strengths
- One flat price with no feature tiers, so cancellation policies, no-show fees, marketing blasts, gift cards, and reporting are all included from $29.99.
- Real consumer mindshare in barbering and grooming, where clients search the Booksy app by name rather than searching the web.
- Boost is capped at $100 per new client and charged only once, which is materially cheaper than Fresha's uncapped 20 percent on high-ticket first visits.
- Genuinely mobile-first: the Booksy Biz app is a complete interface, not a companion to a desktop dashboard.
Limitations
- The $20 per additional staff member fee compounds badly. Ten staff is $209.99 a month, which is expensive next to Fresha or Square for the same job.
- Boost at 30 percent has the highest headline commission rate of the marketplace players, even though the cap softens it at the top end.
- Inventory and retail product management is thinner than Fresha's or Vagaro's, so a business with real stock control needs may outgrow it.
- Class-based and membership businesses are poorly served; there is no serious class pack or membership engine of the kind fitness studios need.
Setmore
Strengths
- The most generous free plan for a real service business in this category: four staff logins, 200 appointments a month, card payments, and a website widget at zero cost.
- Pro at $5 per user per month billed annually is the cheapest serious paid tier in the entire dossier, and it removes every meaningful limit.
- Online payments are available on the free plan, which almost no competitor allows, and four processors are supported including LawPay for legal practices.
- A HIPAA-compliant configuration on the $5 Pro plan makes it the cheapest route to compliant scheduling for a small healthcare or therapy practice.
Limitations
- No commerce program: no packages, memberships, subscriptions, or gift certificates, which is exactly the layer that makes a service business predictable revenue rather than per-visit cash.
- SMS reminders are Pro-only, which means the free plan lacks the single most effective no-show tool for the businesses most likely to use it.
- The 200-appointment monthly cap on free arrives faster than owners expect and is easy to hit in a busy month with two staff.
- Pro's headline $5 price is annual-only; month to month costs $12, so flexibility carries a very large premium.
Pricing compared
Booksy
Single flat monthly subscription with every feature included, plus a per-staff-member fee, plus published card processing rates. The Boost marketplace channel is opt-in and charged as a one-off commission on new clients only.
- Booksy Biz$29.99
- Additional staff members$20
- Boost (optional marketplace channel)$0 per month plus 30 percent of a new client's first visit
For one to four people, Booksy is well priced and unusually honest: $29.99 to $89.99 a month with nothing held back behind a tier, and the no-show enforcement that Square charges $49 for is included from the first dollar. Above about six staff the per-head fee starts to hurt, and Fresha at $14.95 per bookable member or Square at a flat $49 per location becomes cheaper on pure software. Boost is best understood as a customer acquisition line, not a software cost, and the $100 cap plus one-off structure makes it genuinely competitive against local advertising. The real value, though, is distribution: for a barber, being in the app clients already search is worth more than any feature comparison.
Setmore
Freemium, with a capped free plan and a single per-user Pro plan. Annual billing is dramatically cheaper than monthly. Enterprise is a custom quote.
- Free$0
- Pro$5
- EnterpriseCustom quote
On price per capability, nothing else here comes close. A six-person business pays $30 a month on Pro for unlimited appointments, SMS reminders, recurring bookings, branding removal, API access, and a HIPAA option. The equivalent in per-seat sales scheduling software would be $60 to $100, and Acuity reserves HIPAA and API access for a $49 tier. The catch is scope: Setmore covers appointments, payments, and reminders competently and stops there, with no packages, memberships, subscriptions, or gift certificates, and no inbound routing at all. Judged as the value floor of the appointment-business category, it is exceptional. Judged as a growth path, you will eventually outgrow it.
Editorial verdict on each
Booksy
Booksy is the most honestly priced product among the salon marketplace platforms and the one with the strongest consumer pull in barbering. One flat $29.99, everything unlocked, no-show fees and marketing included, and a Boost commission that is capped at $100 per new client rather than running uncapped. For an independent barber or a shop with two to four chairs, it is close to the right answer, and the app distribution is a genuine competitive asset you cannot buy elsewhere. The case weakens as you grow: $20 per extra head means a ten-person salon pays over $200 a month for software that is thinner on inventory, memberships, and classes than Fresha or Vagaro, both of which will cost less. Judge it on headcount and on trade. Under five people cutting hair, buy it. Over eight people running a multi-service spa, look at Fresha, Vagaro, or a free Square calendar instead.
Read the full Booksy profileSetmore
Setmore is the value floor of appointment scheduling, and that is a compliment. The free plan is a working business system rather than a demonstration: four staff, 200 appointments a month, card payments, a website widget, and email reminders at zero cost. Pro at $5 per user per month billed annually then removes every cap and throws in SMS reminders, recurring appointments, branding removal, API access, and a HIPAA-compliant configuration, which collectively undercut every competitor in this dossier, several of them by a factor of five. The limits are equally clear. There is no commerce program, so packages, memberships, and gift certificates need Acuity or SimplyBook.me, and there is no routing or CRM layer, so sales teams should not be here at all. Buy it if you run a small service business and want the fundamentals done well for almost nothing, and revisit the decision the day you want to sell a ten-session bundle.
Read the full Setmore profileBooksy profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Setmore last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.