Fresha vs Square Appointments
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
Both sides assessedFresha compared with Square Appointments
Square is free for unlimited staff calendars and takes no commission ever, financed instead by a 2.6 percent in-person card rate. Fresha charges a modest subscription, a lower card rate, and 20 percent on new marketplace clients. If you generate your own demand, Square is cheaper end to end. If you need a channel that brings strangers through the door, Square has nothing comparable and Fresha wins on that single axis.
Square Appointments compared with Fresha
Both run a service business end to end, but the business models are opposites. Square charges $0 to $149 a month per location and takes nothing on your clients. Fresha charges $19.95 to $14.95 per member and adds a 20 percent commission (minimum $6) when a new client finds you through its consumer marketplace. If you generate your own demand, Square is cheaper and cleaner. If you want the marketplace to feed you strangers and will pay for the introduction, Fresha is the argument.
Choose Fresha if
Salons, spas, barbershops, nail bars, and wellness clinics that want a full operating system for the business and are actively trying to fill empty appointment slots with new clients from a consumer marketplace.
Choose Square Appointments if
Solo operators and small service businesses (salons, barbershops, spas, tattoo studios, pet groomers, clinics, personal trainers) who want a free, complete appointment book and are happy to run their card processing through Square, especially ones that also sell retail product at the counter.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Fresha | Square Appointments |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Scheduling | Scheduling |
| Starting price | $19.95 per month (Independent, one bookable calendar) (free plan available) | $0 per month plus 2.6 percent and 15 cents per in-person card transaction (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Per bookable calendar or per bookable team member subscription, plus a one-off percentage commission on new clients acquired through the Fresha consumer marketplace, plus published card processing rates. Priced per market, so local currency figures vary. | Free entry plan subsidised by card processing, with two paid tiers billed per location per month rather than per staff member. Payment processing is charged as a percentage plus a fixed fee on every transaction on every tier. |
| Free plan | None. Fresha retired its long-running free subscription model in 2025 and now requires a paid plan. | The Free plan includes the hosted booking site, unlimited staff calendars, automated reminders, calendar sync, integrations, and full POS checkout, with no monthly subscription at all. |
| Free trial | 7 days | Free trial offered on the Plus and Premium plans |
| Best for | Salons, spas, barbershops, nail bars, and wellness clinics that want a full operating system for the business and are actively trying to fill empty appointment slots with new clients from a consumer marketplace. | Solo operators and small service businesses (salons, barbershops, spas, tattoo studios, pet groomers, clinics, personal trainers) who want a free, complete appointment book and are happy to run their card processing through Square, especially ones that also sell retail product at the counter. |
| Setup time | One to three days for a small salon: service menu, staff, hours, and client import are the bulk of it. Payments onboarding adds identity and bank verification, and a marketplace profile worth publishing needs photos and copy, which takes an afternoon on its own. | Half a day to be taking bookings, longer to be taking money. The calendar and service menu take an hour or two; the merchant account requires identity verification and bank details, which is the slow part and is not optional. |
| Learning curve | Low to moderate. The calendar and checkout are approachable for staff with no software background. Owners need time on the reporting, memberships, and marketing automation, which are where the value beyond a basic diary sits. | Low for the calendar, moderate for the POS. Staff who have used any modern register will be fine. The parts that need thought are the service menu structure, staff permissions, and cancellation policy wording. |
| Platforms | Web dashboard, iOS and Android partner app, iOS and Android consumer marketplace app, Hosted booking page and website embeds | Web dashboard, iOS, Android, Square hardware (Reader, Terminal, Stand, Register), Hosted booking site |
| Compliance | PCI DSS for payments, GDPR, UK and EU data protection obligations as a London-headquartered operator | PCI DSS as a payment processor, GDPR, CCPA |
| Founded | 2015 | 2009 |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom | Oakland, California, United States |
| Ownership | Venture-backed and private-equity-backed | Public company (Block, Inc., NYSE: XYZ) |
Strengths and limitations
Fresha
Strengths
- The consumer marketplace is a genuine demand channel rather than a directory, and no flat-fee competitor offers an equivalent.
- The commission is charged once per new client rather than on every booking, so a marketplace client who becomes a regular is acquired very cheaply.
- Commerce depth is strong for the price: memberships, prepaid packages, gift cards, inventory, and stock control are native rather than add-ons.
- Team pricing at $14.95 per bookable member is competitive, and cheaper per head than the solo plan.
Limitations
- The marketplace lists your competitors alongside you and encourages clients to think of Fresha as the brand they book with, which is a strategic cost as well as a financial one.
- The 20 percent new client fee with a $6 minimum bites hardest on low-priced services, where the commission can be a large share of the ticket.
- The free plan is gone, so the reason many businesses originally chose Fresha no longer exists, and the 2025 change damaged trust with part of the installed base.
- The economics assume Fresha Payments; using an outside processor undercuts deposits, no-show fees, and much of the automation.
Square Appointments
Strengths
- The free plan is genuinely complete: unlimited staff calendars, a hosted booking site, reminders, and checkout with no subscription, which is unmatched by any other multi-staff booking system.
- Per-location rather than per-staff pricing means a large single-site business pays no more than a small one, inverting the usual penalty for growth.
- Booking, payment, client history, retail sales, and reporting live in one system, so the numbers reconcile without exports.
- Google Reserve and Instagram booking capture local demand where it actually originates, not just from a website nobody visits.
Limitations
- You are effectively required to process payments through Square for the economics to make sense, which is a large commitment attached to a calendar decision.
- Resource management, the feature multi-room clinics and studios most need, sits behind the $149 Premium tier.
- Cancellation policies and automatic no-show fees are not on the free plan, so the free tier cannot enforce the discipline that most service businesses buy this software for.
- Per-location billing punishes small multi-site operators: three modest sites on Plus is $147 a month regardless of how few staff each has.
Pricing compared
Fresha
Per bookable calendar or per bookable team member subscription, plus a one-off percentage commission on new clients acquired through the Fresha consumer marketplace, plus published card processing rates. Priced per market, so local currency figures vary.
- Independent$19.95
- Team$14.95
- EnterpriseCustom
As pure software, Fresha at $14.95 to $19.95 a calendar is fair, roughly in line with Vagaro and cheaper than Booksy per head, and the commerce layer (memberships, packages, gift cards, stock) is deeper than Square's. The real question is the marketplace. If you take 20 new marketplace clients a month at an average $70 first visit, you are paying about $280 in commission, which is a lot next to a $49 flat fee at Square, and a bargain if those clients rebook. The commission is a customer acquisition cost, not a software cost, and it should be judged against what you would otherwise spend on local ads. A full book makes Fresha expensive; an empty Tuesday makes it cheap.
Square Appointments
Free entry plan subsidised by card processing, with two paid tiers billed per location per month rather than per staff member. Payment processing is charged as a percentage plus a fixed fee on every transaction on every tier.
- Free$0
- Plus$49
- Premium$149
- Square ProCustom
Judged on subscription alone, the free plan is the best value in this entire category: a complete multi-staff appointment book, a public booking site, reminders, and a POS for zero dollars. Judged honestly, you are paying through the card rate, and 2.6 percent plus 15 cents is competitive but not the cheapest processing available to a small merchant. The calculation is simple: if you were going to process with Square anyway, the software is genuinely free and nothing else here competes. If you have a bank merchant account at 1.9 percent, the free calendar costs you real money every month, and a $30 subscription elsewhere plus your existing processor may well be cheaper. Plus at $49 earns its keep at any business where no-shows are a measurable line item.
Editorial verdict on each
Fresha
Fresha is two purchases wearing one price tag: competent, commerce-heavy salon software, and a marketplace that will introduce you to strangers for 20 percent of their first visit. Judged as software it is good value, with memberships, packages, inventory, and multi-location included at $14.95 per bookable team member and card rates below Square's. Judged as an acquisition channel, the commission is either the cheapest local marketing you will ever buy or a pointless tax, and which one it is depends entirely on whether your Tuesdays are empty. Buy it if you are growing and need demand. Do not buy it if you are full, have a waiting list, and would resent a platform standing between you and your clients, in which case Square Appointments costs nothing and Trafft never takes a cut. The 2025 removal of the free plan is worth remembering as evidence of how the commercial terms can change under you.
Read the full Fresha profileSquare Appointments
Square Appointments is the default answer for a small service business that has not yet solved payments, and a genuinely bad deal for one that has. The free plan is the most complete free offering in scheduling: unlimited staff calendars, a public booking site, reminders, Google and Instagram booking, and a real register, all at zero subscription. Plus at $49 per location earns itself back through enforced cancellation policies almost immediately. But the whole structure is financed by a 2.6 percent card rate, so the correct comparison is not against a $30 subscription, it is against your current processing costs plus a paid calendar. Buy it if you want one system for the book, the till, and the client file, and you are happy for Square to be your merchant account. Look at Vagaro for vertical depth, Fresha or Booksy if you want a marketplace generating new clients, and Acuity if you sell consultations rather than serve people over a counter.
Read the full Square Appointments profileFresha profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Square Appointments last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.