Compared
The subscription is the small number.
We wrote this and we sell one of the seven, so read it that way. What we have tried to do is put the commission and the card fees back in, because that is where the money actually goes, and say plainly where somebody else would suit you better.
What you actually pay
A six chair shop, everything in.
Six barbers, because that is the shop we built this for. Subscription prices are before VAT, the way every one of these companies quotes them.
| Subscription, 6 barbers | Commission | Your website | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trimsy | £79 flat | None | Built and hosted, included |
| Booksy | £65 £40, plus £5 each after the first |
Optional, on new clients they send you | Not included |
| Fresha | £59.70 £9.95 a bookable team member |
20% on new marketplace clients, minimum £4 | Not included |
| Treatwell | Varies by plan | 20% to 35% on marketplace bookings | Not included |
| Nearcut | £77.50 £27.50, plus £10 a barber after the first |
None | Not included |
| Setora | £39 flat | None | Not included |
| Squire | From about £40 | None | Not included |
Checked on 3 August 2026 against each company's published pricing. They are free to change it and they do, so check again before you decide anything. Card processing is extra on all seven, ours included, and is charged by the payment processor rather than by us.
We are not the cheapest, and the cheapest is not the point
On subscription alone Setora undercuts us by £40 a month and Fresha undercuts everybody. What that column leaves out is commission, which is not a fee so much as a share of your shop, and a website, which you are either paying somebody else for or doing without.
Whose customer is it?
Commission is the whole argument.
Everything else on this page is worth a few pounds either way. This is worth hundreds a month, and it is the one difference that compounds.
The sum nobody shows you
Twenty new customers a month, twenty five pounds a cut. That is £500 of work, and it is a modest month for a six chair shop.
On a 20% marketplace commission that is £100 a month. On 35% for first visits it is £175 a month. Either number is bigger than every subscription in the table above, including ours, and you pay it again next month on twenty different people.
The subscription is the number they advertise. The commission is the number that decides what you take home.
And it buys you a customer you rent
The trade is real and worth stating fairly: a marketplace does send you people who had never heard of you, and if your chairs are empty on a Tuesday that is worth paying for.
What you are buying is a first visit. What you are not buying is the customer, because they booked inside somebody else's app, next to a list of shops that are not yours, and next time the app decides who they see.
A shop with a full book is paying commission on people who were coming anyway. That is the moment to leave, and most shops leave about a year late.
One at a time
Who should stay where they are.
Six products, and for four of them there is a shop we would tell to stay put.
Booksy
Stay if the marketplace is genuinely filling your chairs
The biggest in the UK and the one most shops are leaving us for. It is a good product. The professional app is properly done, the customer side is familiar to millions of people, and the marketplace really does bring in new faces.
£40 a month, plus £5 for each barber after the first, so a six chair shop is at £65 before VAT, plus card fees and anything you spend on Boost. That is not expensive.
The catch is not the price, it is the address. Your customers book at their address, on a page that also lists the shop down the road, and the reviews you spend years earning belong to a profile you do not own and cannot take with you. If you leave, they stay.
Stay on Booksy if a real share of your bookings are people who found you in the app and would not otherwise have walked in. Leave when you notice you are paying for regulars.
Fresha
Cheapest to start, dearest to grow
The subscription is the lowest here, at £9.95 a bookable team member, and for a solo barber starting out it is hard to argue with.
The number that matters is the other one: 20% on any client Fresha counts as new, with a minimum of £4. Whether somebody counts as new is Fresha's decision, not yours, and shops do report paying it on people they already knew. Card processing runs on top of that.
Stay on Fresha if you are one or two chairs, you want the bill as close to nothing as possible, and you are relaxed about the marketplace owning the relationship.
Treatwell
A marketing channel that happens to include software
Treatwell is not really a booking system with a marketplace attached. It is a marketplace, and the commission is priced accordingly: 20% to 35% of the appointment, with 35% plus VAT reported on new customer first visits as of June 2026.
On a £25 cut, 35% is £8.75 before you have paid your barber. It works for treatments with a big margin and a customer who shops around. A barbershop is neither, which is why it is much more common in salons than in barbers.
Stay on Treatwell if you genuinely cannot fill the diary and you would rather give away a third of a haircut than have an empty chair. That is a real situation and there is no shame in it.
Nearcut
Close to us in spirit, priced per barber
UK, barber only, no marketplace and no commission. The philosophy is much the same as ours and it has been going longer, which is worth something on its own.
The difference is the shape of the bill: £27.50 for the first barber and £10 for each one after. A solo barber pays a third of what we charge. A six chair shop pays £77.50, which is within pennies of us, and a ten chair shop pays more.
Stay on Nearcut if you are one or two chairs and expect to stay that size. Come to us if you are growing, or if you want the website as well.
Setora
The closest thing to us, and £40 a month cheaper
Flat rate per shop rather than per barber, no commission, UK, barber focused. If you have read our pricing page and theirs you will have noticed we are making the same argument.
They make it for £39 a month and we make it for £79. We are not going to pretend that gap does not exist. What it buys is the thing they do not do: we build and host your website, we do the migration ourselves rather than handing you an importer, and there is a person in Hertfordshire who answers the phone.
Stay on Setora if you already have a website you are happy with and you are comfortable setting software up yourself. You will save £480 a year and you will not be getting a worse diary.
Squire
Built for bigger shops than most of ours
Barber only, no salons, and the most complete of the lot at the top end: proper point of sale, payroll, inventory, multi site reporting. Priced from about £40 a month with the upper tiers running several times that.
It is an American product and the higher tiers are built for chains rather than for a six chair shop in Hertfordshire. If you are running four sites and need payroll in the same system, we are not the answer and they might be.
Stay on Squire if you are multi site and using the parts of it that we do not build.
Honestly
Where Trimsy falls short.
Four reasons to pick somebody else, written by us, kept up to date as they stop being true.
We are new
Booksy has been running for over a decade and Nearcut for years. We have one shop live and we are hand building the next few ourselves. If you want a company with a support rota and a status page, that is a fair thing to want and it is not us yet.
We cost more than Setora
£79 against £39, for a diary that does much the same job. The website and the setup are what the difference pays for. If you do not need those, you are paying £480 a year for something you are not using and you should not.
No marketplace, and that cuts both ways
Nobody discovers you on Trimsy, because there is nothing to be discovered on. Your bookings come from people who already know you, from Google, and from your own front door. A brand new shop with no following will feel that.
No till, no stock, no payroll
We do bookings, the diary, reminders and no show charges, and real payment happens at your counter the way it always has. If you want to run the whole business through one screen, Squire and Vagaro do that and we do not.
If one of these has stopped being true and this page still says it, tell us and we will fix it. It is dated 3 August 2026.
Side by side
The things shops actually ask about.
| Trimsy | Marketplace apps | Flat rate rivals | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where people book | Your own website | Their app and directory | A booking page of your own |
| Rival shops on the page | None | Shown alongside you | None |
| Commission | 0% | 20% to 35% on new clients | 0% |
| Cost as you add barbers | Flat | Rises per staff member | Flat or per barber, depending |
| A website of your own | Built and hosted, free | Not included | Not included |
| Who moves your data across | We do it for you | You, or an importer | You, or an importer |
| Who holds the customer list | You, exportable any time | The platform | You |
| Where reviews live | Your Google profile | Their profile, not portable | Your Google profile |
| Card on file for no shows | Yes, you decide each time | Yes | Usually |
| Staff app with push | Yes, installable, no app store | Yes, native app | Varies |
| Free trial | 14 days, set up for you | Usually | Usually 14 days |
| Contract | None, cancel any month | Varies | None, usually |
"Marketplace apps" here means Booksy, Fresha and Treatwell, which differ from each other in the detail. "Flat rate rivals" means Nearcut, Setora and Squire. Where a column says "varies" it is because the honest answer depends on which of them and which plan.
Questions that actually get asked
Switching.
Can I try it without leaving what I am on?
Yes, and it is what we recommend. Your old system keeps running while we build yours. You go live when you are ready and not before, and the 14 free days start on that day rather than on the day you first got in touch.
Do my reviews come with me?
No. Reviews left on a marketplace stay on that marketplace, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something. This is the single biggest real cost of switching and it is worth being honest about: a shop with hundreds of five star reviews is giving up a genuine asset.
What we do about it is start you on Google reviews months before you move, so that by the time the old page goes quiet you own the reviews that show up when somebody searches your name.
What happens to the bookings in my diary?
We bring them across before you go live, with your services, prices, barbers, hours and customer list. You retype nothing. If your current system will not export, we can usually get the data out another way, and we will tell you honestly if we cannot.
Will I lose the customers the marketplace sent me?
Some of them, and pretending otherwise would be daft. A customer who thinks of you as a search result rather than as their barber may well book somebody else next time. The ones who come for you will follow you, and after the move they book with you directly and you never pay for them again.
You are comparing yourself. Why would I believe the numbers?
Do not take them on trust. Every figure here is the other company's own published price and every one of them is a thirty second check on their website. If you find one wrong, tell us and we will correct it, because a page like this is worth nothing the moment it is caught exaggerating.
Switching
Nobody switches software on a Tuesday afternoon.
So we do it for you, in the background, while the shop carries on as normal. Fourteen days free from the day you go live, no card, and your data is yours to take back out if it is not for you.