Fresha against Planity

Short answer

Pick Planity if your salon is in France and the marketplace is the point, because 60 000 partner salons and a stated six bookings a second is demand nobody else in the French-speaking market has. Pick Fresha everywhere else, because it publishes a price and a card rate and Planity publishes neither, and because 0.89 percent plus 10 cents on an in-person card payment is money you keep every single day.

Neither product is ours. We also do not publish user ratings for either, because nobody can verify them.

The one difference that decides most of this

Planity does not publish a price. Not in France, not in Belgium, not in Germany, and it does not publish the pricing unit either, so you cannot work out what a six-chair salon pays before a sales call. Three tiers exist by name, Agenda, Agenda plus Caisse, and Agenda plus Caisse plus TPE, and every one of them ends in a contact form.

Fresha publishes everything. Independent is 14,95 euros a month for one bookable team member, Team is 9,95 euros per bookable team member, Enterprise is custom from twenty people, and the page lists the card rates, the SMS rates and every add-on with a number next to it. For a five-person salon that is 49,75 euros a month, calculated before anyone speaks to you.

That is not a tie you can split. If you cannot compare the price you cannot negotiate it.

Side by side

Where Planity genuinely wins

French demand, by a distance. Sixty thousand partner salons, a stated 15 million users, six appointments booked a second and over 400 million appointments managed. If you are a salon in Lyon or Lille, Planity is not a software purchase, it is a distribution channel, and Fresha has no comparable audience in France.

The fiscal till. Planity's till is certified NF525 in France and TSE compliant in Germany. That is a compliance problem solved, and Fresha does not publish an equivalent certification. For a French salon this alone can decide it.

Included SMS. Planity bundles 300 reminder SMS a month in France and Belgium and 100 in Germany. Fresha gives you twenty and then charges 18 cents a message, and 23 cents for a marketing text. A salon sending 400 reminders a month pays Fresha around 68 euros for the overage and Planity nothing.

Zero commission, stated plainly. No commission on appointments, no setup fee, no maintenance fee. Fresha's new client fee is currently free in the euro area, but the same page shows 20 percent with a six dollar minimum in the United States, which tells you the rate is a market decision rather than a principle.

Where Fresha genuinely wins

The cost of taking money. In person 0.89 percent plus 10 cents, online 1 percent plus 20 cents, Bancontact 0.79 percent plus 10 cents. On 15 000 euros a month of card turnover the difference between that and a typical 2.5 percent rate is roughly 240 euros a month. Planity publishes no rate at all, so you cannot even check.

Deposits and no-shows. Fresha does 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. Planity offers partial or full prepayment and lets the salon choose who must prepay, which is good, but card on file is not documented and the rest of the enforcement layer is thinner.

Geography. Planity operates in three countries. Fresha has offices across a dozen markets and publishes Tap to Pay availability country by country. If you are in the Netherlands, Ireland, Italy, Spain or Poland, Planity is simply not available.

Languages. Fresha's consumer app is published in 33 languages. Planity has French and German consumer sites and no Dutch at all, which rules it out for a Flemish clientele even inside Belgium, one of its three markets.

Getting your data out. Fresha sells a Data Connector add-on at 215 euros per location a month, which is expensive but it exists. Planity has no public API, and its own support article says the client file is exported only after you email contact@planity.com from the registered manager's address; phone requests are refused.

The things both of them do badly

Planity's Belgian pricing page offers its tiers with or without commitment while the French and German pages advertise no commitment, and public reviews describe a cancellation regime requiring notice by registered letter. Fresha changed its terms in 2026 to withdraw the ability to charge a connected client's saved card without per-transaction authorisation, which means some no-show charges now need a client code, and it is not loud about that. Both vendors also publish internally inconsistent scale figures: Fresha says 120 000 businesses on one page and over 140 000 on another, Planity says 60 000 partner salons on its homepage and 50 000 in its newsroom.

Cost worked through for a five-chair salon

Fresha Team at five bookable team members is 49,75 euros a month. Add 400 SMS reminders and you are at roughly 118 euros. Card turnover of 15 000 euros at 0.89 percent plus 10 cents across, say, 500 transactions costs about 184 euros. Total near 302 euros a month, every line of it published in advance.

Planity at an unknown tier price with 300 SMS included costs the subscription plus an unpublished card rate. If the subscription is 90 euros and the card rate is 2 percent plus 10 cents, the same salon pays about 90 plus 350, that is 440 euros. If the subscription is 70 euros and the rate is 1.5 percent, it is about 300 euros. You cannot know, and that is the point.

Which one to buy

Buy Planity if you are a French salon, you want the marketplace to fill your calendar, and you need an NF525 certified till. Accept that you will negotiate blind and that leaving means an email to support rather than an API call.

Buy Fresha if you take significant card turnover, if you are anywhere other than France, Belgium or Germany, if you need a booking page in a language Planity does not offer, or if deposits and automatic no-show fees are the reason you are shopping. Budget separately for SMS, because that is where Fresha gets expensive.

For the rest of the field, including the vendors that serve Luxembourg and Benelux, see our 2026 salon software ranking and the published price table. If no-shows are the real problem, the mechanics that cut them covers deposits, card on file and reminder timing with the numbers. Vendors can get listed.