Fresha, Booksy, Treatwell or Cliniko? How to Actually Compare Booking Software

If you run a diary-led business and you've started comparing Fresha, Booksy, Treatwell and Cliniko, here's the short version: they aren't four flavours of the same product. They solve different problems for different kinds of business, and the right choice depends far more on how you want to pay for it — and who you're booking for — than on which app has the nicest calendar view.

Fresha and Booksy are built primarily for hair, beauty and wellness — salons, barbers, spas, brow bars, lash studios. Treatwell is less a booking system and more a marketplace that happens to include one. Cliniko sits in a different world entirely: it's practice management software for allied health clinics — physios, osteopaths, chiropractors, counsellors, dietitians — with clinical notes and treatment records built in, not a hair-salon rebooking flow. Knowing which category you're actually shopping in saves a lot of wasted demo calls.

What each platform is really for

Fresha

Fresha is a full booking, point-of-sale and client-management system aimed squarely at beauty and grooming businesses. Its calling card is that the core software is free to use — the business model instead leans on optional extras: payment processing, marketing tools, and a public marketplace listing that can bring in new clients. It's popular with independent stylists and small salon teams who want a slick, modern booking page without a big upfront software bill.

Booksy

Booksy covers similar ground to Fresha — booking, reminders, a client app, payments — but typically runs on a subscription model rather than leaning on marketplace commission as its main revenue. It's strong in barbering and beauty specifically, with a consumer-facing app that helps clients find and rebook with local providers.

Treatwell

Treatwell is best understood as a marketing channel with software attached, rather than the other way around. Salons and spas list on the Treatwell marketplace to get discovered by new clients searching in their area, and pay for that discovery — usually through a commission on bookings that come via the platform. Many salons run Treatwell alongside their own booking system rather than instead of it, treating it purely as a lead-generation tool.

Cliniko

Cliniko is built for clinical and allied health practices rather than beauty businesses. It handles the things a hairdresser never has to think about — treatment notes, care plans, insurer and referral paperwork, telehealth — alongside scheduling and invoicing. If you're a physiotherapist, therapist or clinic manager comparing tools, Cliniko will feel far more relevant than anything aimed at salons, because it was designed around patient records, not walk-in rebooking.

Side-by-side, at a glance

Platform	Best suited to	Typical pricing shape	Marketplace / discovery built in
Fresha	Salons, barbers, spas, independents	Free core software; paid add-ons and payment processing	Yes
Booksy	Beauty and barbering businesses	Monthly subscription	Yes
Treatwell	Salons and spas wanting new-client leads	Commission on marketplace bookings	Yes, marketplace-first
Cliniko	Clinics, therapists, allied health	Monthly subscription per practitioner	No

None of these is objectively "better" — a physiotherapist choosing between Fresha and Cliniko isn't really making a software decision, they're choosing whether they want clinical record-keeping at all. The more useful question isn't "which is best", it's "which of these was actually built for what I do."

The trade-off that matters more than the feature list

Strip away the branding and most booking platforms fall into one of two pricing shapes:

• Subscription — a flat monthly fee regardless of how much you book. Predictable, easy to budget for, and the cost doesn't rise just because business is good.
• Commission or marketplace fee — free or cheap to join, but a cut is taken per booking or per new client, often through the platform's own directory.

Commission models can feel appealing when you're starting out because there's little upfront cost. The catch worth budgeting for: as your client base grows, so does the bill — and it grows precisely when you're busiest, which is an odd time for your software costs to be climbing too. A £45 treatment with a 20% marketplace commission is £9 gone before you've paid for products, rent or your own time. Run the maths on a full week's diary, not just one appointment, before deciding a "free" system is actually the cheaper option.

What to actually check before you switch

Whichever platforms you're weighing up, the same checklist applies regardless of whether you run a salon, a clinic, a tutoring practice or a therapy room:

• Does the pricing model match your growth plans? If you expect client numbers to rise sharply, be honest about what a percentage-based fee will look like at double your current bookings.
• Does it fit your actual business, not just "appointments in general"? Clinical notes and insurer paperwork are wasted complexity for a salon; a beauty marketplace listing is irrelevant to a private therapy practice.
• Can clients book online without friction? A booking link that's slow, ugly, or buried behind an app download loses bookings before they start.
• Does it handle deposits and cancellation policies properly? This alone can be the difference between a no-show costing you nothing and costing you a wasted hour.
• What happens if you outgrow it? Check how easy it is to export your client list and history — some platforms make this harder than others.
• Is support responsive when something breaks on a Saturday morning? Ask before you sign up, not after your first double-booking.

Where Appoint Me fits in

Appoint Me is launching soon with a simple position on this: one flat, predictable price, no marketplace commission carved out of your takings, and no assumption about what kind of appointment business you run. Whether you're a salon, a barber, a dental or medical practice, a therapist, a tutor, or a wellness studio, the booking flow, deposits, reminders and client history work the same way — because the diary is the diary, whatever's written in it.

That's not a knock on Fresha, Booksy, Treatwell or Cliniko — each does its own job well for the audience it was built for. It's simply worth knowing, before you commit a year of bookings to any platform, whether you're paying for software or paying for a slice of every client who walks through your door.