If you run a clinic, salon, barbershop or therapy practice in the UK, you almost certainly take bookings through one of the big marketplace platforms. Fresha, Treatwell and Booksy dominate the space, and for good reason. They are easy to set up, they put you in front of a large audience and they handle the mechanics of taking an appointment without you needing to think about it.
What most business owners have never sat down and calculated is what that convenience actually costs over a year. Not the subscription, which is usually modest and clearly advertised. The commission on new clients, and the far larger cost that nobody puts on an invoice.
This is an honest look at both, and at when building your own booking system starts to make more financial sense.
What the Platforms Actually Charge
All three of the major UK platforms have converged on a similar model. The subscription is cheap. The money is made on introducing you to new clients.
According to published partner pricing as of mid 2026, the headline figures look like this:
| Platform | New client commission | Repeat bookings |
|---|---|---|
| Treatwell | 35% plus VAT, roughly 42% of the booking | 0% |
| Booksy | 30% plus VAT on optional Boost | 0% |
| Fresha | 20% with a minimum fee per booking | 0% |
Two details are worth pulling out, because they change the maths considerably.
VAT is the hidden multiplier. A commission advertised at 35 percent is closer to 42 percent of the booking value once VAT is applied. On a £60 first appointment, that is around £25 gone before you have paid for your room, your consumables or your time.
New does not always mean new. On some platforms a client can be counted as new again if they have not booked with you for twelve months. So a returning customer who drifted away for a year and came back can trigger a fresh commission charge.
Worth checking: commission structures on all three platforms have changed more than once in the last two years. Always verify current figures on the provider's own pricing page before making a decision based on them.
The Commission Is Not the Real Cost
Here is the part that rarely gets discussed. A one off commission on a first appointment is defensible. It is an acquisition cost, and acquisition costs are a normal part of running a business. If the platform introduces you to a client who then returns eight times, paying 20 or even 40 percent on that first visit is perfectly reasonable.
The real cost is structural, and it is about who owns the relationship.
When a client books through a marketplace, the platform owns the discovery, the client record and the rebooking prompt. The reminder email comes from them. The app on the client's phone is theirs. When that client thinks about booking again, they open the marketplace, where your competitors are listed alongside you, sorted by price and availability.
You are renting your own customer relationships. That is fine while you are growing. It becomes expensive once you have a base worth owning.
- Your client list lives in someone else's database, subject to their terms
- Your rebooking journey routes through a page that lists your competitors
- Your pricing sits next to businesses competing on discount
- You cannot change the booking experience, the branding or the flow
- If the platform changes its fees, you absorb it or you start again
Where Your Google Traffic Goes
There is a search consequence that catches a lot of businesses out.
Marketplace listings rank well. They are large, authoritative domains with thousands of pages and strong link profiles. When someone searches your business by name, there is a reasonable chance the marketplace profile outranks your own website, or that you have no meaningful website at all because the booking page was doing that job.
The effect is that traffic you earned, through your own reputation, your own social content and word of mouth, arrives at a page you do not control and cannot optimise. Every review, every mention and every piece of local coverage builds authority for the platform rather than for your domain.
For a business planning to be around in ten years, that is a slow transfer of value away from an asset you own and towards one you rent.
What Owning Your Booking System Looks Like
A custom booking system is not a calendar with a form bolted on. Built properly, it does everything the marketplace does and several things it cannot.
- Bookings taken directly on your own domain, with no commission on any appointment
- Deposits taken at the point of booking, which is the single most effective way to cut no shows
- Multiple locations, multiple practitioners and per service durations handled properly
- Automated confirmations and reminders by email, SMS or WhatsApp
- Client records, treatment history and consent forms stored in your own database
- Every booking feeding your own reporting rather than a platform dashboard
- Full control over branding, wording and the journey from first click to confirmation
The economics are straightforward. A booking system is a one off build cost plus modest hosting. Marketplace commission is a percentage that scales forever with your success. The more you grow, the more the second model costs and the better the first one looks.
The break even question: add up the commission you paid on new clients over the last twelve months. If that figure is approaching the cost of a custom build, the platform has already paid for a system you would have owned outright.
When a Marketplace Still Makes Sense
We are not going to pretend the marketplaces are a bad deal for everyone, because they are not.
If you are newly opened, have no client base and no local search presence, a marketplace is an efficient way to find your first hundred customers. Paying commission on a first appointment is far cheaper than building an audience from nothing. If you are a single practitioner with a full diary and no ambition to expand, the subscription is small and the system works.
The calculation changes when you have a returning client base, more than one practitioner, more than one location, or a treatment where records, consent and follow up genuinely matter. At that point the marketplace is charging you for something you no longer need, and constraining a business that has outgrown it.
Use the marketplaces for what they are genuinely good at, which is discovery. Do not let them own the relationship afterwards. The strongest position for an established UK clinic or salon is a booking system on your own domain, handling every repeat booking at zero commission, with a marketplace listing running alongside purely as an acquisition channel. That way you pay for new clients once and never pay for the same client twice.
The Hybrid Approach in Practice
The businesses getting this right run both, deliberately.
- Keep the marketplace listing active, because new client discovery has real value
- Build your own booking system on your own domain as the primary route
- Point every social profile, Google Business listing and email signature at your own booking link, not the marketplace one
- Capture the client into your own records on their first visit
- Handle every rebooking through your own system, where it costs you nothing
Done properly, the marketplace becomes a paid acquisition channel with a clear cost per new client, which is a perfectly sensible thing to run. What it stops being is the place where your entire business lives.
Common Questions
How much commission does Treatwell take in the UK?
Treatwell charges 35 percent plus VAT on a new client's first booking through its marketplace, which is roughly 42 percent of the booking value in real terms. Repeat bookings carry no commission.
Is Fresha free?
Not any more. Fresha moved to a paid subscription model and charges a one off commission of around 20 percent, with a minimum fee, when a brand new client discovers you through its marketplace. Anyone booking through your own link carries no commission.
Do I still need my own booking system if I use a marketplace?
Most established businesses benefit from owning their own system and treating the marketplace purely as an acquisition channel. Your own system carries no commission on repeat bookings and keeps your client data under your control.
How long does a custom booking system take to build?
A single location system typically takes two to four weeks. Multi location systems with staff rotas, deposits, consent forms and automated reminders usually take four to eight weeks depending on complexity.
If you are weighing this up for your own business, book a free consultation and we will work through the numbers with you honestly, including telling you if staying on a marketplace is the right answer for now.
Let us build your booking system.
Multi location scheduling, deposits, automated reminders and full client records. On your domain, with no commission on a single appointment.
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