If you run a Thai salon, clinic, padel court, or yoga studio and you're choosing a booking platform in 2026, three names will come up: Booksy, Fresha, and Bookku. They look superficially similar — branded booking page, calendar, customer database — but the pricing models are wildly different, and the fit for Thai shops varies a lot. This post is the honest comparison.
Up front, the disclosure: we build Bookku. We are biased. We will tell you exactly where Booksy and Fresha are better than us, and where they will quietly cost you more than you expect.
The headline number — what each one costs you in year one
Assume a typical Thai service shop: ฿200,000/month in revenue, 80 online bookings/month, ฿2,500 average ticket. Here is what each platform's pricing model adds up to over 12 months:
| Booksy | Fresha | Bookku | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly subscription | ~$30/mo (~฿1,050) | ฿0 | ฿590 |
| Per-online-booking fee | ~$1.50 each (~฿55) | ฿0 | ฿0 |
| Payment processing | ~2.5–3% via cards | ~2.5–3.5% on online payments (mandatory once enabled) | ~free via PromptPay |
| Year-1 total | ~฿65,000 | ~฿72,000 (if processing online payments) | ~฿7,080 |
That gap is real and it widens at scale. Fresha's "free" plan is the most misleading number in the booking-platform world: it is genuinely free if you only accept cash, but the moment you enable online payments — which is the entire point of a modern booking platform — the commission kicks in.
Booksy — strengths and where it bites
What Booksy does well
- Marketplace traffic. Booksy has its own consumer app, and customers in some markets actively browse it. In Brazil, Poland and the US this is a real funnel; in Thailand, less so.
- Mature feature set. Recurring appointments, package sales, gift cards, marketing automations — Booksy has been at this since 2013.
- Excellent calendar UX. Drag-to-reschedule, multi-staff view, recurring closures. Very polished.
Where Booksy bites Thai shops specifically
- USD-denominated pricing. Booksy prices its plans in dollars. THB depreciates, your subscription gets more expensive.
- Per-online-booking fees on top of the subscription. Most shops don't realise this until month 3 when the invoice shows up.
- No native PromptPay. You can wire it in via Stripe Thailand, but you eat the 2.5–3% card-rail fee even though PromptPay would have been free.
- English-only support outside business hours. If something breaks at 9pm on a Sunday in Bangkok, you wait.
- Thai is a translation layer, not a first-class language. Some labels are still in English in the admin.
Fresha — strengths and where it bites
What Fresha does well
- Genuinely free if you only need a calendar. No subscription. No card needed. The most generous free tier in the industry.
- Beautiful product. The UI is probably the best in the booking-platform world right now.
- Marketplace traffic in beauty-heavy markets. Strong in the UK, growing in Australia. Weaker in Thailand.
Where Fresha bites Thai shops specifically
- The free plan is a wedge, not a real plan. The moment you enable online payments (which you will, because that's the no-show fix), Fresha takes a commission on every transaction. Read the fine print before you assume "free."
- No PromptPay. Same problem as Booksy. Card rails only, which means commission + customer abandonment.
- Mandatory online-payments fee structure. Once you turn on "Online Payments," you can't selectively bypass it for some customers. Fresha takes its cut on every online payment, end of story.
- Marketing automations gated behind paid plans. SMS reminders, post-visit review requests etc. start adding line items.
- No native Thai e-Tax Invoice generation. You'll be PDFing receipts manually.
Bookku — built from Bangkok for Thai SMBs
What Bookku does well
- Flat ฿590/mo, no commission. The subscription is the whole bill. PromptPay deposits, EasySlip auto-verify, Thai e-Tax Invoice — all in.
- PromptPay native. Per-service deposits, branded QR with the right amount, auto-verified slips. Zero card-rail fees.
- Thai-first language. Every customer-facing screen, every email, every chat reply is Thai-native, not translated.
- PDPA-compliant out of the box. Section 30 export, Section 33 erasure, 5-year retention. Built for Thai law, not retrofitted.
- One iframe to embed on your existing site. Most shops in Thailand already have a basic Wix/Wordpress site; Bookku drops in as one iframe so you don't replace anything.
Where Bookku bites — be honest
- No consumer marketplace. Bookku does not bring you new customers. You bring your own (LINE, Instagram, walk-ins). If your business depends on platform-supplied discovery, Booksy is the better fit.
- Younger product than Booksy/Fresha. Some advanced features (multi-branch reporting, class-passes) are on the 2026 roadmap, not in production today. Always check the changelog at /changelog.html before you assume.
- One-founder support. If something breaks at 3am, you'll hear back from us in the morning, not in 5 minutes. We make up for it by shipping fast: ~40 commits/day to the platform.
Decision rules — pick the one that fits your shop
Use this to short-circuit the analysis:
- Pick Booksy if you need a marketplace funnel and your business is large enough that the per-booking fees are not a meaningful drag. International chains, multi-location salons with a marketing team.
- Pick Fresha if you only accept cash, you want the prettiest admin UI, and you don't mind the moment-of-truth payment commission you'll eventually opt into. Independent stylists, salons with strong walk-in traffic.
- Pick Bookku if you want flat pricing, PromptPay deposits, Thai-language support, PDPA compliance, and you bring your own customers (LINE, Instagram, referrals). Most Thai independent clinics, padel courts, yoga studios, and homestays land here.
If you are already on Booksy or Fresha, switching is mostly painless: export your customer list as CSV, import it into Bookku, and your booking history starts fresh. We can also import via direct CSV upload from either platform. Email us if you want help with the migration — for now we handle it personally.
Try it side-by-side
The fastest way to settle this is to spend an afternoon clicking through each. All three offer free trials. Bookku's is 14 days, no credit card. Set up your branded page in under an hour, do a real booking against a real PromptPay deposit, and decide whether the numbers in the table above match your shop's reality.
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