Booksy vs SimplyBook.me
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
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The short answer
Editorial assessmentBooksy compared with SimplyBook.me
SimplyBook.me is priced on booking volume with a modular catalogue of features and serves an unusually wide range of industries, including ones Booksy has never targeted. It is more configurable and far less opinionated, but it has no consumer app driving new clients and a thinner point of sale. Choose SimplyBook.me for an unusual booking workflow; choose Booksy if you cut hair.
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 SimplyBook.me if
Consumer-facing service businesses that need to be discoverable (Reserve with Google, Instagram, Facebook, a real booking website) and that want to assemble exactly the commerce features they use, at a booking volume that fits inside a plan allowance.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Booksy | SimplyBook.me |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Scheduling | Scheduling |
| Starting price | $29.99 per month plus tax (free plan available) | €0 (Free), then €11.90 per month billed annually (Basic; €13.90 monthly) |
| 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 subscription metered on two axes: bookings included per month and how many optional custom features can be active at once, with providers also capped per tier. SMS, WhatsApp, AI voice, extra bookings, and a custom domain are sold separately. |
| Free plan | None. There is one paid plan, month to month, with no free tier. | 50 bookings a month, one service provider, and one custom feature, on the core booking system with a booking website and calendar sync. |
| Free trial | 14 days, no credit card required | 14 days with access to most premium features and 50 bookings, no credit card required |
| 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. | Consumer-facing service businesses that need to be discoverable (Reserve with Google, Instagram, Facebook, a real booking website) and that want to assemble exactly the commerce features they use, at a booking volume that fits inside a plan allowance. |
| 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. | Half a day for a basic setup, and realistically a week for a business using the commerce features properly. The extra time is spent choosing custom features against your plan allowance and configuring the booking website, not fighting the 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. | The steepest in this dossier. The custom feature model is powerful and unfamiliar, the settings surface is large, and the interaction between memberships, packages, coupons, and services rewards reading the documentation rather than guessing. |
| 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, Generated booking website with CMS, iframe, button, and contact widgets, WordPress and Joomla plugins, Reserve with Google, Facebook, and Instagram booking, Mobile apps |
| Compliance | PCI DSS 4.0.1, GDPR | ISO/IEC 27001:2022 (certified by NQA), HIPAA features with a BAA on Standard, Premium, and Enterprise, GDPR, PCI handled through the connected payment processor |
| Founded | 2014 | 2011 |
| Headquarters | United States, with major operations in Poland | Cyprus, with offices in Ukraine and Iceland |
| Ownership | Venture-backed | Part of the team.blue group since 2023 |
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 businesses are less well served; memberships and packages are included, but class capacity and scheduling are not the product's centre of gravity the way they are for fitness-focused platforms.
SimplyBook.me
Strengths
- Reserve with Google, Facebook, and Instagram booking put live availability where consumers actually search, which no other product in this dossier matches.
- The product generates a full booking website with a small CMS, custom pages, reviews, and a directory listing rather than a single booking page.
- The custom feature catalogue is the widest in the category, covering memberships, packages, coupons and gift cards, tickets, add-ons, resources, classes, multiple locations, and client login.
- A permanently free plan at 50 bookings a month rather than a one-week trial, which is a far more honest evaluation path than Acuity offers.
Limitations
- Two independent meters (bookings per month and active custom features) make the pricing hard to predict and hard to compare against flat-rate competitors.
- Booking overages at $4 per 100 mean the bill rises with success, which is the opposite structure from Acuity and Setmore's unlimited-appointment plans.
- SMS, WhatsApp, and AI voice are credit packs at $8 per 100, so no-show reduction carries an explicit and ongoing running cost.
- API access starts at the €49.90 Premium tier and the High Load API is Enterprise-only, making this an expensive developer platform relative to Setmore or Cal.com.
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.
SimplyBook.me
Freemium subscription metered on two axes: bookings included per month and how many optional custom features can be active at once, with providers also capped per tier. SMS, WhatsApp, AI voice, extra bookings, and a custom domain are sold separately.
- Free€0
- Basic€11.90
- Standard€24.90
- Premium€49.90
- EnterpriseCustom quote
The modular model is either excellent or exasperating depending on your feature list. If the three things your business needs happen to be three custom features, Basic at €11.90 is a bargain and undercuts Acuity's entry tier while doing more. If you need memberships, packages, coupons, classes, intake forms, and multiple locations together, you are on Standard at €24.90, which is roughly Acuity Standard's price with a booking cap attached but with far better discovery through Reserve with Google and social booking. The genuine weak spot is metered communications and metered volume: SMS credits and $4-per-100 overage bookings mean the bill moves with success, and a business doing 800 bookings a month is paying to grow. Buy it for reach and configurability, not for predictability.
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 profileSimplyBook.me
SimplyBook.me is the most capable and least predictable product in this category. Nothing else here puts live availability into Google Search results, Instagram, and Facebook simultaneously while also generating a full booking website with a CMS, and nothing else offers memberships, packages, gift cards, tickets, resources, and AI voice booking from the same catalogue. The price of that reach is complexity and metering. You are constrained on two independent axes, bookings per month and active custom features, with $4-per-100 overages and $8-per-100 SMS credits on top, which means the bill rises as the business succeeds. Buy it if discovery is your hardest problem and you are willing to spend a week learning the configuration model. If you want unlimited appointments and a bill that never moves, Acuity is the calmer purchase, and if you simply want the fundamentals for almost nothing, Setmore is the cheaper one.
Read the full SimplyBook.me profileBooksy profile last reviewed 2026-09-27; SimplyBook.me last reviewed 2026-09-27. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.
The best in Scheduling & Booking
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The booking link everyone already recognizes, with the routing, teams, and integrations underneath to stay the standard.
The free tier is the product: design-led booking pages with almost nothing held back.
Open-source scheduling that doubles as booking infrastructure for other products, compounding through its developer ecosystem.
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A group poll goes out in five minutes with no calendar connection required, and participants just see a grid of times and click.
Frequently asked questions
6 questionsWhat is the difference between Booksy and SimplyBook.me?
SimplyBook.me is priced on booking volume with a modular catalogue of features and serves an unusually wide range of industries, including ones Booksy has never targeted. It is more configurable and far less opinionated, but it has no consumer app driving new clients and a thinner point of sale. Choose SimplyBook.me for an unusual booking workflow; choose Booksy if you cut hair.
Is Booksy or SimplyBook.me cheaper?
Booksy starts at $29.99 per month plus tax (free plan available). SimplyBook.me starts at €0 (Free), then €11.90 per month billed annually (Basic; €13.90 monthly). The billing models differ, so the entry price is rarely the whole cost. Booksy 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. SimplyBook.me pricing model: Freemium subscription metered on two axes: bookings included per month and how many optional custom features can be active at once, with providers also capped per tier.
Does Booksy or SimplyBook.me have a free plan?
Booksy has a free plan. None. There is one paid plan, month to month, with no free tier. Trial terms: 14 days, no credit card required. SimplyBook.me has a free plan. 50 bookings a month, one service provider, and one custom feature, on the core booking system with a booking website and calendar sync. Trial terms: 14 days with access to most premium features and 50 bookings, no credit card required.
Who should choose Booksy?
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.
Who should choose SimplyBook.me?
Consumer-facing service businesses that need to be discoverable (Reserve with Google, Instagram, Facebook, a real booking website) and that want to assemble exactly the commerce features they use, at a booking volume that fits inside a plan allowance.
What are the best alternatives to Booksy and SimplyBook.me?
SaaSTracker profiles 23 products in Scheduling & Booking. The Summer 2026 awards in the category went to Calendly (Category Leader), zcal (Best Value), Cal.com (Momentum). Every profile is compiled from primary sources, so a shortlist can be built from pricing, limitations, and fit rather than from star ratings.
