The best salon software in 2026

Short answer

Fresha is the best salon software for most operators in 2026: 0.89 percent plus 10 cents on an in-person card payment, daily payouts, nothing charged for a new client from its euro-area marketplace, and the most complete deposit and no-show machinery here. Salonify comes second on a flat per-location price and Luxembourg tax handling. If your salon is in Luxembourg, read criterion five first, because it eliminates half this list.

How we ranked salon software

We fixed five measurable criteria before looking at a single product, and every rank below is traceable to them. None of them is a star rating, and we do not publish user ratings at all.

1. Deposit and no-show handling. Deposit, card stored with consent, enforced cancellation window, automatic fee, and rules that target new clients or repeat offenders.
2. Languages of the customer-facing booking page. Not the marketing site, the page your client books on. Cross-border clients need French, German, Dutch and English.
3. Published price per staff member per month at a five-staff salon. Computed from the vendor's list price. No published price scores zero here, not a blank.
4. Payout speed and card payment fees, as published. A rate you only learn in a sales call is a rate you cannot compare.
5. Coverage of the Luxembourg and Benelux market. Does the vendor sell, support and process cards there at all?

Criterion three, computed, because every vendor talks around it:

Note what that table does not say. Treatwell has the cheapest subscription per staff member and finishes fourth, because 35 percent plus VAT of a new marketplace client's first booking is not in the subscription. TIMIFY is second cheapest and finishes eighth, because it cannot charge a no-show fee at all. Cheap is a criterion, not the criterion.

1. Fresha, the best salon software overall

Fresha wins two criteria outright and ties the first. On payments it is not close: 0.89 percent plus 10 cents in person, 1 percent plus 20 cents online, Bancontact at 0.79 percent plus 10 cents, and payouts set to daily by default. Booksy charges 2.6 percent plus VAT in Ireland for the same job. On languages its consumer app is published in 33 of them. On deposits it does everything, fixed or percentage deposits, a no-show fee as a percentage of the appointment, cancellation windows, card on file, automatic cancellation if the deposit goes unpaid within one to seventy-two hours, overrides per service and rules that target new clients or clients with a prior no-show.

What changed in 2026 is that Fresha is no longer free. The entry plan is 14,95 euros a month for one bookable team member and the Team plan is 9,95 euros per bookable team member, so the bill grows with the team. The add-on list is long, Client Loyalty alone is 59,95 euros per location, and SMS is metered at 18 cents after twenty free messages. Belgium and Luxembourg are on neither of Fresha's published Tap to Pay country lists, and its Luxembourg marketplace page returns a 404, so confirm card acceptance in your own country before you commit.

2. Salonify, best for a flat price with Luxembourg tax built in

Disclosure: Salonify is built by TTA Technologies, which also publishes thinking.lu. It is ranked second, and the reason it is not first is specific. Salonify charges 2.9 percent plus 10 cents on a standard EU card against Fresha's 0.89 percent plus 10 cents, and it does not publish a payout schedule at all while Fresha publishes daily. On criterion four, the one that decides what a busy salon actually keeps, Fresha wins and Salonify does not.

What Salonify does win is criterion five and the flat shape of the bill. It is the only vendor in this ranking with Luxembourg VAT rates at 17, 14, 8 and 3 percent pre-configured, French and German receipts and a CSV and PDF export built for a fiduciary. The price is per location, 29 euros for up to two staff, 59 euros for up to ten, 99 euros for unlimited, with the till and card payments included in every plan and no commission on bookings. At ten staff that is 5,90 euros per person, which beats Fresha's per-seat model outright. Deposits take a partial amount with the remainder payable in the salon, the free cancellation window is set in hours, and a percentage is retained on a late cancellation and separately on a no-show.

The honest limits: there is no free plan and no self-service trial since November 2026, a trial is granted by the sales team only. SMS reminders start on the 59 euro Pro plan, Starter sends email only. The consumer marketplace is small, so nobody should buy Salonify to fill empty chairs. Full detail is in the Salonify profile and on salonify.eu.

3. Salonkee, best marketplace reach in Luxembourg and Belgium

Salonkee is the Luxembourg incumbent, and salonkee.lu is a real booking destination rather than a directory page. It publishes its tiers at 59, 89 and 119 euros a month, ahead of Planity and Phorest on transparency, and its no-show mechanics are the best of the regional players: deposits or card on file as an explicit choice, rules that can target a single client group, and cancellation windows of 12, 24, 48 or 72 hours documented in its own terms.

It finishes third because of what is missing. The pricing unit is nowhere stated, per salon, per calendar or per employee, so you cannot cost a six-chair salon. Card transaction fees, terminal cost and payout timing are not published anywhere. Deposits and card on file require the Payments add-on at 35 euros a month on top of the 89 euro SMART tier, so the deposit-capable price is 124 euros a month, not 59. And the subscription term appears nowhere in its own terms and conditions.

4. Treatwell Pro, cheapest subscription and the most expensive clients

Treatwell charges per location with unlimited team members, 29 euros a month in Belgium and 35 in the Netherlands. For a ten-chair salon that is the cheapest software in this ranking by a wide margin, and it is backed by consumer demand in Benelux and France that Fresha and Booksy do not have there.

Then the commission arrives: 35 percent plus VAT of the first booking from every new marketplace client, 25 percent in France, with no minimum fee and no published cap. A client counts as new again after 365 days without a Treatwell booking, so a lapsed regular is charged a second time. Marketplace listing is mandatory on the entry plan, and the Dutch FAQ states plainly that Treatwell does not sync with any other management system, as your exclusive partner. Repeat clients are free, which is the saving grace: if your book is mostly regulars the arithmetic works, and if you are buying reach it does not.

5. Phorest, best deposit enforcement, no price at all

Phorest has the deepest no-show tooling in the category. It stores the client card whether they booked online, by phone, in person or in the salon app, sets deposits per service, raises them for new clients and repeat offenders, and charges late cancellation and no-show fees off the stored card. PhorestPay is live in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland among others, and payouts land in one working day.

It finishes fifth because it fails criterion three completely. Seven tiers, not one price, every plan ending in a request-a-quote button, and no published card rates either, so total cost of ownership is unknowable before a sales call. There is no go-to-market in France, Belgium or Luxembourg. Its own site also publishes two different no-show figures, 69 percent on the features page and 49 percent on the booking page, which does the credibility of both no favours.

6. Planity, the French demand engine

Planity has 60 000 partner salons, says it has 15 million users and six bookings a second, and its till is NF525 certified in France and TSE compliant in Germany, with daily bank transfers on the terminal tier. For a salon in France this is the demand channel, and no French-speaking rival is close.

It ranks sixth because it publishes no price in any of its three markets and no pricing unit either. There is no Dutch booking page, which rules out Flanders, and it does not operate in Luxembourg at all. The Belgian pricing page offers tiers with or without commitment, which sits awkwardly beside the no-commitment line used elsewhere, and the client file is exported only after an email request. The head to head is worth reading in full: Fresha against Planity.

7. Booksy, one tier, every feature, expensive cards

Booksy sells a single all-inclusive plan with no feature paywalls, 35 euros a month in Germany, 44 in Ireland, 59 in France, plus 5 to 10 euros per extra team member. Ordinary marketplace bookings carry no commission, new clients included, it bundles 500 free marketing SMS a month in Ireland and the UK, and it is the only vendor here publishing concrete no-show numbers, 20 percent fewer cancellations with cancellation fees.

It ranks seventh on payments and geography. Irish card processing at 2.6 percent plus VAT is near triple Fresha's in-person rate, fast payouts cost another 1.5 percent, the German pricing page shows no payment processing at all, and the same product costs 59 euros in France and 35 in Germany. There is no Dutch anywhere, and no Belgium or Luxembourg.

8. TIMIFY, the only free tier, and no way to charge a no-show

TIMIFY publishes a complete euro price list with a genuinely free Classic plan, then a ladder from 9 euros a month for one resource to 132 for eight or more, a one month minimum term and a booking widget in 14 locales including French, German and Dutch. For a Luxembourg studio wanting a multilingual calendar, it is the easiest thing here to buy.

It ranks eighth because it fails criterion one outright. There is no card on file, no no-show fee charging and no late-cancellation enforcement; mandatory prepayment through your own Stripe or PayPal account is the only lever. There is also no till, no retail, no stock and no staff commission, because beauty is one of around eleven industry skins on a generic scheduler.

9. Mangomint, the best product you cannot buy

Mangomint is the benchmark for product design and pricing honesty: 120 dollars per location plus 10 dollars per user, every feature unlocked, no contract, published card rates. For a European operator it is unbuyable, because card processing runs in the United States and Canada only, the interface and the booking page are English only, the price list exists only in dollars and the service is hosted in the United States. It is here as a reference point.

10. Shortcuts, solves a real problem in the wrong countries

Shortcuts is the only vendor here that can take a deposit from a client who booked by phone or walked in, and it targets deposit requests at all clients, new clients or serial no-shows. It publishes its card rates and settles the next business day. None of that reaches the eurozone: ShortcutsPay exists in Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada only, the deposit feature is wired to it, the interface is English only, and the vendor deleted its pricing page during a website rebuild.

Who should buy what

A one or two person studio in the eurozone: Fresha, for the card rate and the daily payout. A four to ten chair salon in Luxembourg: Salonify for a flat bill and local tax handling, Salonkee if you need its Luxembourg booking audience. A large salon in Belgium or the Netherlands living on regulars: Treatwell Pro, where unlimited staff for 29 euros is unbeatable and the 35 percent only touches genuinely new clients. A clinic in Germany or the Netherlands with a no-show problem: Phorest, and negotiate hard. A salon in France: Planity for the demand, Booksy for the NF525 till at a published price.

Work out what a move actually costs with our price table, and if no-shows are why you are shopping, the mechanics that cut them will tell you whether your current tool can already do the job. Vendors can get listed.