Fresha's reputation rests on one word, and for more than a decade it was earned: the software really was free. In most of the world that stopped being true during 2025, and the company never announced it. Whether it is true for you right now depends on which country you are reading from — which is a strange sentence to write about a price, and is the reason this page exists.
Two disclosures before the list. We make VoltsBook, one of the alternatives below. And this page is a correction: we previously published that Fresha's plans were free and that its marketplace fee had no published number, having read the pricing page from an Indian IP address and taken that render for the global truth. Both claims were wrong. Every figure below now comes from a dated capture of the named vendor's own pricing page, because those pages serve different prices to different countries and a live fetch only ever tells you about the country you are sitting in.
Fresha really was free, and that mattered
A comparison that opened with "Fresha is expensive now" would skip the most interesting thing about the company. Shedul launched as free salon software, kept the model through its rename to Fresha, and was still advertising it years later: as late as December 2024 the pricing page's own title was "Subscription-free Salon Software and Booking System", and the page told visitors to "stop paying expensive fees and be part of the revolution". That was not a trial, a freemium tier or a teaser. It was the product, and it built a very large installed base of people who had never paid for salon software in their lives.
The unwinding happened in two steps, both visible in the archive. By late 2024 a paid Team tier had appeared at $9.95 per team member per month while one-person businesses stayed free — the page then read "subscription-free for independent professionals, and as you expand we charge for each bookable team member". Then the floor itself went. On 23 August 2025 the pricing page still listed the Independent plan as "Free"; on 18 September 2025 the same page listed it at $19.95 per month, and the sentence about being subscription-free for independent professionals was gone.
There was no blog post, no press release and no changelog entry. If you are a Fresha customer who never noticed, that is why. (Articles elsewhere dating the change to early 2025 are wrong: Fresha's own page still showed a free Independent plan in August of that year.)
What Fresha costs now, in US dollars
Name the currency and the plan or the number means nothing. According to Fresha's pricing page as captured on 19 July 2026, US pricing is Independent at $19.95 per month for a one-person business and Team at $14.95 per bookable team member per month, each with a 7-day trial, with Enterprise quoted on request.
Read the shape of that before the size of it. Team is cheaper per person and charged per person, so a three-chair shop is on $44.85 a month, not $14.95. And the Canadian capture of the very same page on 5 August 2026 listed Independent at CA$29.95 and Team at CA$19.95 per team member — so the numeral 19.95 is the solo price in the United States and the per-person price in Canada. A price quoted without its currency and its plan is worse than no price at all.
Card processing, according to that same 19 July 2026 capture of Fresha's pricing page, runs 2.79% + $0.20 for online payments, 2.29% + $0.20 in person (plus $0.10 per tap-to-pay authorisation), 3.30% + $0.20 for manually keyed cards, and 5.99% + $0.30 for Klarna instalments. Terminals start at $139 per device. Messaging is metered on both plans: 100 texts included each month, then $0.02 per text according to the same page.
The marketplace fee, which is published after all
We said this fee had no published number. That was our error, and it came from the same bad render.
According to Fresha's pricing page captured on 19 July 2026, the marketplace charges a "20% one-time commission" on brand-new clients who discover your business through it, with a "Minimum fee of $6 per client applies". Returning clients are never charged: the page says "No fee ever applies to your returning clients", which is a genuinely fair design and worth saying plainly.
So the arithmetic we told you was impossible is in fact straightforward. A new client's first visit at $120 costs you $24, once, and nothing on any visit after that. Whether that beats the advertising you would otherwise buy is a real question with a computable answer — which is all anyone can ask of a fee.
One number is still missing, and we checked before saying so this time. Fresha's help centre states that the fee is capped but does not name the cap, referring the reader back to the pricing page — which publishes the rate and the minimum and no maximum. The ceiling on a high-ticket first visit is therefore genuinely unpublished. If you sell $2,000 packages, get that figure in writing before you switch the marketplace on.
Check your own country before you believe anyone, including us
Fresha's pricing page serves different currencies, different prices and different fee structures depending on where the visitor is. This is not a currency conversion; the eurozone render does not charge a new-client commission at all.
Here is the spread we could verify, each line from a dated capture of Fresha's own pricing page, with the commission rate as quoted above:
| Reading from | Independent | Team, per bookable team member | New-client marketplace fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | $19.95/month | $14.95/month | Charged, minimum $6 per client |
| Canada | CA$29.95/month | CA$19.95/month | Charged, minimum CA$6 per client |
| Eurozone | €12.95/month | €8.95/month | Listed as free |
| India | Listed as free | Listed as free | Listed as free |
Two captures of that identical URL, 91 minutes apart on 27 May 2026, returned US pricing and Canadian pricing respectively. So "is Fresha free?" has no single answer: in India today it is, and in the United States it has not been since September 2025.
Who should genuinely stay on Fresha
Pick them if being found is your binding problem. The marketplace is their strength, it is real, and no standalone booking tool below can match it — it is a consumer booking audience your Instagram cannot reach. A one-time commission on a client you would otherwise never have met is a rational price for growth, and now that you can see the rate you can decide it deliberately rather than nervously. Their free decade bought something durable too: a mature product and an enormous installed base. And if you are reading from a market where the plans are still listed as free, the honest advice is to enjoy that and to diarise a re-check, because the direction of travel is not subtle.
Booksy — the same marketplace trade, priced per seat
According to Booksy's pricing page, the subscription is $29.99 per month plus tax with extra users at $20 per month each, so a four-person shop is $89.99 before card processing. According to that same Booksy pricing page, Boost — its marketplace discovery program — carries a "one-time 30% fee based on the total cost of a Boost client's first visit", and card processing runs between 2.49% and 2.69% plus a fixed few cents depending on how the card is taken.
Both of the big salon marketplaces charge for introductions, and both publish the rate; the difference is the subscription underneath it and whether you pay per seat. We compared that field separately in our honest guide to Booksy alternatives.
GlossGenius — flat pricing, no marketplace
According to GlossGenius's pricing page, Standard is $28 a month, Gold is $56 for teams up to nine and Platinum is $168 for ten and up, each a little cheaper billed annually, with card processing at a "flat 2.6%" however the card is taken and a 14-day trial without a card. There is no marketplace, which cuts both ways: nobody introduces clients, and nobody charges you for them.
Vagaro — the budget subscription with its own marketplace
According to Vagaro's pricing page, pricing starts at $23.99 a month for one location with one bookable calendar, including 1,000 free emails monthly and a 30-day trial. Vagaro runs a consumer marketplace of its own and its pricing page lists no new-client fee; card-processing rates are not disclosed there either. Get both answers in writing when you evaluate, because processing on your card volume will usually outweigh the subscription.
Acuity Scheduling — the generic workhorse
According to Acuity's pricing page, Starter is $16 a month billed annually ($20 monthly), Standard is $27 ($34) and adds text reminders, packages, memberships and gift certificates, and Premium is $49 ($61). Payments run through your own Stripe, Square or PayPal account and the trial is 7 days. It is capable, stable and deliberately general — nothing about it knows the difference between a salon and a tutoring practice, which is fine until you want your booking page to sell the way your front desk does.
VoltsBook — ours, so read this part hardest
VoltsBook's pricing page lists a Free plan (bookings, calendar, customer records, service catalog), then Solo at $12 a month, Professional at $29 and Business at $79 — flat per plan rather than per seat — with a 14-day all-features trial and no card up front. Those are US dollars, and they are the same figures in every country. The build is the business-of-appointments layer: deposits set per service, no-show machinery (reminders by email and SMS, waiting lists), packages, gift cards and loyalty, invoices, and payments on your own Stripe, PayPal, Square or Mollie account — your processor, your rates, your money landing directly.
What we do not have is the thing Fresha is best at. There is no marketplace and no consumer app, so we will not introduce you to a single client. If discovery is your binding problem, we said above who solves it.
The same field, one table
Software prices below are the US figures from each vendor's own pricing page as cited in the sections above; commission and card-processing rates are quoted there rather than repeated here.
| Platform | Software price (US) | Marketplace / new-client fee | Card processing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fresha | $19.95/mo solo; $14.95 per team member | Charged in some markets, not others (rate above) | Published per-method rates (above) |
| Booksy | $29.99/mo + $20 per extra user | Boost: one-time fee on a first visit (rate above) | Published per-method rates (above) |
| GlossGenius | $28–$168/mo | None — no marketplace | One flat published rate (above) |
| Vagaro | From $23.99/mo | Has a marketplace; no fee listed | Not disclosed on the pricing page |
| Acuity | $16–$49/mo billed annually | None — no marketplace | Your own Stripe/Square/PayPal |
| VoltsBook | Free–$79/mo | None — no marketplace | Your own Stripe/PayPal/Square/Mollie |
How to decide
The deeper method — eight questions, starting with whether you need to be found at all — is in our guide to choosing booking software, and question seven there (can you leave?) deserves special attention with any marketplace: ask where your client list lives and what exports with you, before you need the answer.
Add one question this correction earned: ask what the price is in your country, and get it in writing. A vendor whose published price depends on the reader's IP address is a vendor whose price you cannot cite from a screenshot — and if we can get that wrong in public, a busy salon owner can get it wrong in a planning spreadsheet. And if what actually sent you shopping is no-shows rather than fees, that is a policy problem before it is a platform problem — start with a salon no-show policy you can actually enforce.
Is Fresha free?
Not in most of the world, and it used to be everywhere. According to Fresha's pricing page captured on 19 July 2026, the US Independent plan is $19.95 a month and Team is $14.95 per bookable team member. Some markets still list both plans as free — India does today — so check the page from your own country rather than trusting any figure, including ours.
When did Fresha stop being free?
In the United States, between 23 August and 18 September 2025: the pricing page listed the Independent plan as Free on the first date and at $19.95 per month on the second. A paid Team tier had arrived roughly a year earlier. Fresha published no announcement, changelog or press release, which is why the change went widely unnoticed and why several third-party articles date it wrongly to early 2025.
How much is Fresha's new-client marketplace fee?
According to Fresha's pricing page captured on 19 July 2026, it is a 20% one-time commission on a brand-new client who discovers your business through the marketplace, with a minimum fee of $6 per client and no fee ever on returning clients. The page states no maximum, and Fresha's help centre says the fee is capped without naming the cap — so if you sell high-ticket first visits, ask for that figure in writing.
Why do Fresha's prices look different when I look them up?
Because the page is served by country. The same URL returns $19.95 for the Independent plan in the United States, CA$29.95 in Canada, €12.95 in the eurozone and Free in India — and the eurozone version lists no new-client marketplace commission at all. Compare like with like: name the currency and the plan, because CA$19.95 is a per-team-member rate while $19.95 is the solo rate.
Will I lose my clients if I leave a marketplace platform?
Your regulars rebook with you, not with an app — but only if you hold the relationship: their contact details, their history, and a booking page of your own. Export your client list early and confirm what leaves with you before you need it to.