Fresha vs Trafft
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
Both sides assessedFresha compared with Trafft
Trafft is a neutral subscription booking platform from $9.99 a month that plugs into your existing processor and never takes a commission, with strong multi-location and custom-domain support. It has no POS, no inventory, and no marketplace. Trafft suits an operator who wants control and no intermediary; Fresha suits one who will trade a percentage for demand.
Trafft compared with Fresha
Fresha bundles POS, inventory, memberships, and a consumer marketplace at $14.95 per bookable member, and takes 20 percent of new marketplace clients. Trafft is $49.99 flat for fifteen users, takes nothing, and has no marketplace or till. Fresha is the better answer for a salon that needs demand and retail operations; Trafft for a multi-site service business that generates its own demand and wants a predictable bill.
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 Trafft if
Multi-location service businesses and the agencies that run booking on their behalf, especially operators who want a predictable flat bill, their own payment processor, their own domain, and no platform standing between them and their clients.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Fresha | Trafft |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Scheduling | Scheduling |
| Starting price | $19.95 per month (Independent, one bookable calendar) (free plan available) | $0 (Free Forever, 1 user and 100 appointments a month), then $9.99 per month (Mini; $7.99 billed annually) |
| 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. | Flat monthly subscription with tiers defined by included users and locations rather than by booking volume, with a tiered fee for additional users. No commission on bookings and no bundled payment processing. |
| Free plan | None. Fresha retired its long-running free subscription model in 2025 and now requires a paid plan. | Free Forever covers 1 user, 1 location, 100 appointments and 200 automated emails per month, with no credit card required to start. |
| Free trial | 7 days | 14-day trial, after which the account can stay on the free plan; 30-day refund on paid 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. | Multi-location service businesses and the agencies that run booking on their behalf, especially operators who want a predictable flat bill, their own payment processor, their own domain, and no platform standing between them and their clients. |
| 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 two days depending on scope. Employees, services, extras, and locations are straightforward; a custom domain, branded templates, and API or webhook integration add configuration time. |
| 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 to moderate. The concepts map directly onto a service business, and the admin is cleaner than the salon platforms. Custom roles and the API are the only parts that need someone technical. |
| Platforms | Web dashboard, iOS and Android partner app, iOS and Android consumer marketplace app, Hosted booking page and website embeds | Cloud web application, Hosted booking page with eight templates, Embeddable booking form, Custom domain hosting on Professional and above |
| Compliance | PCI DSS for payments (quarterly Security Metrics testing), ISO 27001, ISO 9001, HIPAA, GDPR | GDPR |
| Founded | 2015 | 2021 |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom | Belgrade, Serbia |
| Ownership | Venture-backed and private-equity-backed | Independent and unfunded |
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.
Trafft
Strengths
- Flat pricing with additional users from $4.99, which makes it dramatically cheaper than per-seat competitors at any real headcount.
- Takes no commission on bookings of any kind, and runs no marketplace, so it never sits between you and your clients.
- Works with five payment processors (Stripe, Square, PayPal, Mollie, Authorize.Net), so you keep your existing merchant relationship rather than adopting a new one.
- Custom domain and branding removal on the Business tier at $79.99 make it genuinely white-labellable, which is rare below enterprise pricing and is why agencies use it.
Limitations
- The free plan's 100-appointment monthly cap makes it an evaluation tier rather than a permanent home for any working business.
- The included SMS credits (5 and 10 a month) are nominal, so anyone relying on text reminders is buying message volume separately and should model that cost before comparing prices.
- No point of sale, inventory, memberships, packages, commission tracking, or payroll, so retail-attached businesses will outgrow it.
- No consumer marketplace, so the product generates zero demand; all client acquisition remains your problem.
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.
Trafft
Flat monthly subscription with tiers defined by included users and locations rather than by booking volume, with a tiered fee for additional users. No commission on bookings and no bundled payment processing.
- Free$0
- Mini$9.99
- Growth$24.99
- Professional$49.99
- Business$79.99
For a multi-staff or multi-location business, Trafft is one of the best-value subscriptions in the category, because the price is flat per plan and the marginal user costs a few dollars. Twelve staff fit inside Professional at $49.99 a month against roughly $180 on Fresha and $250 on Booksy for a comparable booking capability. You are also keeping 100 percent of your revenue and your existing processor. The catch is where the developer and white-label features now sit: custom domain, API, webhooks, and WhatsApp are Business-only at $79.99. What you sacrifice is everything adjacent to booking: no till, no inventory, no payroll, no marketplace demand, and no vendor scale. If your business already has payments and marketing solved and only needs a good multi-location booking layer, this is the cheapest competent way to get one.
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 profileTrafft
Trafft is the flat-fee, no-commission, bring-your-own-processor option in a category full of platforms that want a percentage of your business. For a multi-location service operation or an agency running booking for several clients, the arithmetic is decisive: $49.99 a month covers fifteen users and unlimited locations ($79.99 adds a custom domain and API), where Booksy would charge $249.99 and Fresha around $180 for comparable headcount, and neither would let you keep your own Stripe account or hide the vendor's name from your clients. The tradeoffs are equally clear. There is no till, no inventory, no memberships, no marketplace demand, and the company is ten people with no funding. Buy it if booking is the only problem you need solved and you want to solve it once, cheaply, without giving a platform a share. Look at Picktime if the budget is tighter, Vagaro or Fresha if you need the rest of the business in the same system, and Square if you have not solved payments yet.
Read the full Trafft profileFresha profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Trafft last reviewed 2026-09-27. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.
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Frequently asked questions
6 questionsWhat is the difference between Fresha and Trafft?
Trafft is a neutral subscription booking platform from $9.99 a month that plugs into your existing processor and never takes a commission, with strong multi-location and custom-domain support. It has no POS, no inventory, and no marketplace. Trafft suits an operator who wants control and no intermediary; Fresha suits one who will trade a percentage for demand.
Is Fresha or Trafft cheaper?
Fresha starts at $19.95 per month (Independent, one bookable calendar) (free plan available). Trafft starts at $0 (Free Forever, 1 user and 100 appointments a month), then $9.99 per month (Mini; $7.99 billed annually). The billing models differ, so the entry price is rarely the whole cost. Fresha 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. Trafft pricing model: Flat monthly subscription with tiers defined by included users and locations rather than by booking volume, with a tiered fee for additional users. No commission on bookings and no bundled payment processing.
Does Fresha or Trafft have a free plan?
Fresha has a free plan. None. Fresha retired its long-running free subscription model in 2025 and now requires a paid plan. Trial terms: 7 days. Trafft has a free plan. Free Forever covers 1 user, 1 location, 100 appointments and 200 automated emails per month, with no credit card required to start. Trial terms: 14-day trial, after which the account can stay on the free plan; 30-day refund on paid plans.
Who should choose Fresha?
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.
Who should choose Trafft?
Multi-location service businesses and the agencies that run booking on their behalf, especially operators who want a predictable flat bill, their own payment processor, their own domain, and no platform standing between them and their clients.
What are the best alternatives to Fresha and Trafft?
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.
