OpenTable vs. Embedding Your Own Reservation Widget

OpenTable and Resy solve the same problem with opposite pricing models: OpenTable charges a monthly subscription plus a per-cover fee that scales with how many people you seat, while Resy charges a flat monthly rate with no per-cover charge at all. Neither is simply “cheaper” — which one costs less depends entirely on your booking volume and where those bookings come from.

What OpenTable Actually Charges, Plan by Plan

As reported industry-wide in 2026, OpenTable’s pricing runs on three tiers, each combining a subscription with a separate per-cover fee for bookings that come through OpenTable’s own network:

• Basic — around $149/month, plus roughly $1.50 per cover from network bookings (with a short free introductory period), or $0.25 per cover for bookings made directly on your own website.
• Core — around $299/month, with network covers dropping to roughly $1.00 each, and bookings from your own website included at no extra per-cover charge.
• Pro — around $499/month, with the same $1.00 network cover fee as Core.

On top of the plan itself, a roughly 2% service fee applies to deposits, no-show penalties, and prepaid bookings. A restaurant seating 100 covers a month with half coming through OpenTable’s network on the Core plan lands somewhere around $1,600 a month once the per-cover fees are added — not the $299 the subscription page leads with.

What Resy Charges Instead

Resy’s four 2026 plans run $289–$459 a month depending on tier, with no per-cover fee at all — a busy month and a quiet month cost the same subscription. The trade-off shows up instead as a 2–3% fee on prepayments and deposits, depending on the plan, rather than on every seated guest.

Why the “Cheaper” Answer Depends on Your Numbers

A restaurant that fills most of its tables through its own site, direct calls, and repeat guests — rather than through the marketplace’s own discovery traffic — pays for OpenTable’s per-cover network fee on volume it likely would have gotten anyway. That’s the same dynamic covered for delivery marketplaces in online ordering vs. delivery apps: paying a per-transaction fee makes sense for bookings the platform actually brought you, and makes much less sense for a guest who already searched for your name directly.

What Neither Price Comparison Tells You About Attribution

Cost per cover is only half the decision. The other half is what each platform does to your own analytics once a guest actually books — whether the reservation counts as your website’s conversion or disappears into the provider’s own dashboard, which depends on how the widget is integrated, not on which pricing tier you’re on. See embedding a restaurant reservation widget without losing attribution for what to check before you sign up with either provider.

Sources on Pricing

Published 2026 pricing figures reported by TableLink, OpenTable fees explained and Restaurant Booking System, Resy pricing 2026. Plan pricing changes without notice — confirm current terms directly with each provider before signing anything.