The advertised price is never the price

Every booking app in this category advertises a number that is not what you pay. Sometimes the gap is a billing term, sometimes a tier, sometimes a percentage that never appears on the pricing page at all. This page puts the real figures side by side, taken from each company's own published pages, with the date they were checked.

CNL Systems is $29 a month, flat, one plan, and takes no percentage of your sales. That number does not move, which is the only reason we can afford to publish everyone else's.

Is Booksy free?

No. Booksy runs a 14-day free trial, and after that the business plan is $29.99 a month plus $20 a month for each additional team member. There is no free tier for a professional account.

The trial is genuine and needs no card. What it is not is a free plan, and the difference matters if you are budgeting past the first fortnight.

How much is Booksy a month?

$29.99 a month for one person, plus $20 a month for each extra team member. A three-person shop is therefore $69.99 a month, not $29.99.

That is the subscription. So how much does Booksy cost all in? More than that. Booksy pricing splits into two parts that sit in different places on their site, and the Booksy fees nobody advertises are the second half.

The second part is Boost, the marketplace promotion. Full breakdown: the Booksy alternative. It takes 30% of a first-time client's visit, with a $10 minimum and a $100 maximum per client. No-shows are excluded, so the fee only lands when the client actually sits down.

On a big ticket the ceiling protects you. On a small one the floor does the damage: at anything under about $33, the $10 minimum takes over and the effective rate climbs past 30%. A $20 trim hands over half.

Card processing is separate again: 2.49% plus $0.10 with a reader, 2.49% plus $0.20 for tap to pay, and 2.69% plus $0.30 keyed or mobile. Fast payout costs 1.5%, and next-day is free.

Does Booksy charge before the appointment?

That is set by the business you are booking with, not by Booksy itself. Booksy's help centre carries an article titled "Why do I have to pay for my appointment in advance," and a separate one explaining the difference between deposits and cancellation fees.

If you are the client, the charge is your salon's policy. If you are the salon, it is a setting. Most booking software including CNL can hold a slot with a deposit, and it is the single most effective thing anyone has found for cutting no-shows.

How much is GlossGenius?

$28, $56 or $168 a month, depending on tier, if you pay month to month. Paying a year up front brings those to $24, $48 and $148.

The marketing leads with $24. That is Standard, billed annually, and Standard is the bottom tier. The GlossGenius pricing page prints "Billed annually, you save 14%" under the $24 and the $48, and "you save 12%" under the $148.

The tier most working pros actually need is Gold, which GlossGenius itself labels "Most popular" (the GlossGenius alternative, in detail). Gold is $56 a month billed monthly. That is more than double the advertised number.

What sits behind Gold, per the compare table: waitlist, room and resource management, forms and waivers, rebooking reminders, and time tracking. All show a crossed-out circle in the Standard column.

Text marketing is the sharpest one. All three tiers get the feature. Only two get an allowance: 500 credits with Gold and 2,500 with Platinum, with no figure at all beside Standard.

Payroll is not in any tier. It is a plan add-on at $40 a month plus $6 per seat, on top of whatever tier you already pay for.

Processing is a flat 2.6% on every tier, and instant payout costs an additional 1.8%. In GlossGenius's own footnote: instant payouts are available anytime, weekends and holidays included, for an additional 1.8% fee.

Is GlossGenius free?

No. There is a free trial, but the cheapest ongoing plan is $28 a month paid monthly, or $24 if you commit to a year.

So how much does GlossGenius cost at the floor? $28 a month, and that buys the most gated tier of the three. $29 buys the whole of CNL.

How much is Vagaro per month?

$30 a month list price for one calendar, currently promoted at $23.99. Additional calendars add roughly $10 a month each, up to $83.99.

Then the pieces are sold separately, and this is where Vagaro pricing gets interesting, because the subscription is only the door. From its own published price list: MySite, the website, is $20 a month. Text marketing is $20 for 1,000 credits. Forms are $10. Drive storage starts at $10.

Stack those on the promoted base and it is $83.99 a month. Add the online shopping cart at $10 and it is $93.99. The branded app is another $100 a month plus a $100 one-time fee, on its own line.

You do not need reviewers' estimates for that number. Vagaro publishes the menu. Full breakdown: the Vagaro alternative.

How much does Square Appointments cost?

$0, $49 or $149 a month. Square Appointments pricing is the only genuinely free entry in this comparison. The $0 tier is real, and it is the honest answer to anyone asking whether a free option exists in this category.

What the free tier costs you sits elsewhere. Your booking page lives on a square.site address rather than your own domain, and the calendar exists to feed the register, because payments are the business Square is actually in. If your shop is genuinely part retail, that is a reasonable trade. If your business is the chair, you are adopting a payments company to get a booking page. Full breakdown: the Square Appointments alternative.

What does CNL cost?

$29 a month. One plan. No percentage of your sales, ever.

Inside that: your own website on your own domain, online booking with deposits, payments online and in person, automatic reminders, your client list, and email campaigns. There is no second tier, so there is nothing being withheld to sell you later.

The pieces other platforms charge for separately:

• The website. Included, not an add-on. Vagaro charges $20 a month for MySite.
• The domain. We register one at cost, about $12 a year for a .com, or connect one you already own free. GlossGenius does not support custom domains at any tier.
• Card processing. Stripe's published rates with no CNL markup. We add nothing.
• Getting paid. No instant-payout fee. Nothing to pay to reach your own money.
• New clients. No marketplace commission. Nobody takes a cut of a first visit.

The optional extra is hardware: a Stripe WisePOS E for tap, dip and swipe at the chair, $249 once, bought direct from Stripe at Stripe's own price. We do not resell it or mark it up.

The short version

The pattern across the category is that the advertised price is the price of a version built to be outgrown. Booksy's subscription is fair and the money is made on Boost. GlossGenius's headline is a bottom tier billed annually. Vagaro's subscription buys a calendar and sells you the business separately.

CNL's number is the same in the ad, on the pricing page, and on your card statement, because there is no second tier and no percentage. That is the whole pitch.

Every competitor figure on this page was checked against that company's own pricing page, help centre or support article. GlossGenius tier prices, feature gating, text credit allowances, the payroll add-on and the instant payout fee were verified directly on glossgenius.com/pricing on August 24, 2026. Booksy's subscription price and free-trial terms were verified on biz.booksy.com on August 24, 2026. Vagaro and Square figures were checked in August 2026. Prices move; check them before you sign anything, including ours.