Best Booking Software in Australia

Two salons in the same street, both with six chairs, both taking bookings online. One pays $29 a month for its booking software. The other pays $252. Neither is being ripped off, and both chose a reputable product. The only thing that differs is how the vendor decided to count.

That is the part almost nobody compares. Feature lists across booking software have largely converged: they all do online booking, reminders, a calendar, deposits. What still differs enormously is the billing model, and on a six-person business that choice is worth more than every feature difference put together.

This compares the booking systems an Australian small business actually shortlists, with prices read from each vendor's own pricing page in August 2026, and it is honest about which ones beat OneBookPlus at what. If you already know you want the flat-fee model, booking software for Australian small business is the page that explains ours.

How the pricing models differ

There are three ways booking software charges you, and they scale very differently.

Per bookable staff member. You pay for every person who can be booked. Fresha and Timely work this way. Costs rise in a straight line with your team, whether or not those people ever touch the software.

Per login. You pay for people who actually sign in. Someone who gets booked but never logs in costs nothing.

Flat per business or per location. One price regardless of headcount. Square Appointments and SimplyBook.me work this way.

None of these is dishonest. But a per-head model and a flat model produce wildly different bills at the same business, and the gap widens exactly as you grow.

What each one costs, at the same business

Every figure below is the list price from the vendor's own page, checked in August 2026. Australian-dollar products are compared against each other. The ones that bill in US dollars are kept separate further down, because converting them would invent a number the vendor never published.

This is the fair version of the comparison: every staff member needs their own login.

All figures are AUD per month on monthly billing. Timely and Fresha are exclusive of GST. Square and SimplyBook.me are flat, so their columns do not move.

At one person, everything sits in a $28 to $45 band and the price is close to irrelevant. Pick on features.

At six people, the same month costs $69 or $252. That is $2,196 a year between two products that both take bookings perfectly well.

OneBookPlus runs quoting, invoicing, bookings, jobs and GST-ready accounting in one Australian app. See what that looks like for salons and beauty.

The distinction that decides your bill

Here is the part worth understanding before you sign up to anything.

Fresha and Timely charge per bookable staff member. OneBookPlus charges per login. Those sound similar and are not.

A six-chair salon where five stylists are booked all day but only the owner ever opens the software has six bookable staff and one login. Rostered and bookable staff who never sign in are free and unlimited on every OneBookPlus plan.

That is 8.7 times the price for the same six-chair salon, a difference of $2,676 a year.

To be straight about it: if all six people genuinely need their own login, OneBookPlus is $69 on Growth, not $29, and the honest gap narrows to 3.7 times. The plans cap logins at 3, 5 and 10, and extra $9 seats can only be added on Growth. So the saving is real but it depends on how your business actually works, not on a trick.

Several of these bill Australians in US dollars

Calendly, Acuity Scheduling and Setmore all publish in USD. That matters for three reasons: your bill moves with the exchange rate, your card may add a foreign transaction fee, and the price you budget in January is not the price you pay in June.

These are quoted exactly as published. We have deliberately not converted them to Australian dollars, because the rate on the day you read this is not the rate on the day you pay.

Fresha is no longer free

Fresha built its reputation on free software, monetised through marketplace commission and card processing. That is no longer the model.

As at August 2026 Fresha charges A$44.95 a month for a single practitioner on Independent, or A$29.95 per bookable team member on Team. There is no free plan, only a seven-day trial.

The marketplace commission still applies on top: 20% of the first booking for a new client who finds you through the Fresha marketplace, with a minimum of A$8 per client. It never applies to clients who return, or to clients who find you through your own website, Google or social media. Card processing is charged separately, from 1.29% + A$0.26 in person to 1.59% + A$0.28 online.

If you last looked at Fresha when it was free, look again before you budget. Timely, by contrast, states "no new client fees" on every tier.

The feature comparison

Price is only half the decision, so here is what each vendor's own pricing or plan-comparison page says it includes, read in August 2026.

Read the blanks carefully. A blank does not mean the product cannot do it. It means the vendor does not list it on the page this table was built from. Vendors document at very different depths, and several of these are available on higher tiers than the one named.

Three things fall out of that table.

The salon products are genuinely deeper at salon work. Fresha and Timely both do consultation forms, client photos, retail and stock, and memberships or packages. If you run a treatment-based business and those matter, they are doing something a general platform is not.

We do not have everything. OneBookPlus has no consultation or intake forms at all, our waitlist exists only in the hospitality module rather than across bookings generally, and we have no equivalent of Fresha's marketplace for finding you new clients. If consultation forms are central to how you work, Fresha or Timely is the better tool and you should buy it.

The right-hand columns are the ones nobody else fills. Invoices, GST and BAS reporting are where the scheduling products stop. Fresha does quotes and invoices, which is more than most, but no product in this list files your BAS or produces the reports your accountant asks for in July.

Which one to actually pick

Genuinely useful comparisons say when not to buy from the author, so:

Pick Calendly if what you need is meeting scheduling, not business booking. Nothing here beats it for "find a time in my calendar" with clients or colleagues. It does not invoice, does not do payments properly, and is not a business system. That is fine, because it is not trying to be.

Pick Square Appointments if card-present payments are the centre of your business and you want the hardware. The free tier plus 1.6% in person is genuinely strong, the flat A$40 Plus tier does not punish you for growing, and the terminal ecosystem is the best of this group. You will still need something else for accounting.

Pick Acuity if you want deep scheduling logic, intake forms and appointment types, and you are comfortable being billed in USD.

Pick Fresha or Timely if you run a salon, spa or clinic and want software built specifically around that. Both are more specialised at treatment records, consultation forms and salon retail than a general platform is. Fresha's marketplace also brings new clients, which is worth real money if you are trying to fill a chair. Just price it at your actual headcount before you commit.

Pick SimplyBook.me if you want the cheapest flat price and are happy to assemble the features you need from its module system.

Pick OneBookPlus if the booking is only half the problem. The gap in every product above is the same: they take the booking, then you still need something else to raise a tax-compliant invoice, chase it when it is late, and produce numbers your accountant can use at the end of the year. OneBookPlus is $0 to $69 a month for the whole business, with bookings, invoicing, payments and the books on the same records, and bookable staff who do not sign in cost nothing.

The gap nobody's feature list mentions

Look back at that list. Calendly, Acuity, Setmore, Square Appointments, Fresha, Timely and SimplyBook.me are all good at getting an appointment into a calendar.

Not one of them is an accounting system. Fresha does list quotes and invoices, and Square produces receipts, so this is not a clean sweep. But none of them files a BAS, produces a profit and loss, or gives your accountant a set of books. A booking is a promise of money. An invoice is the claim on it, and the books are where it has to land. If those live in three different products, someone re-keys the same job three times, and the reconciling happens in June when nobody can remember what happened in October.

That is the real cost most of these comparisons miss, and it is usually larger than the subscription difference.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best booking software for a small business in Australia?

It depends on how you are charged, not on features, because the features have largely converged. For a solo operator almost anything in this list works and the price band is $28 to $45 a month. For a team of five or more, the billing model dominates: per-bookable-staff products like Fresha (A$29.95 per member) and Timely (from A$42 per staff) reach A$150 to A$252 a month at six people, while flat-priced products like Square Appointments (A$40), SimplyBook.me (A$28) and OneBookPlus ($29 to $69) do not move with headcount.

Is Fresha still free in 2026?

No. As at August 2026 Fresha charges A$44.95 a month for a single practitioner on the Independent plan, or A$29.95 per bookable team member on the Team plan, with a seven-day trial and no free tier. A 20% one-time commission (minimum A$8) still applies to new clients who find you through the Fresha marketplace, and card processing is charged separately.

How much does Timely cost in Australia?

Timely publishes three plans in Australian dollars, exclusive of GST, priced per bookable staff member per month: Build A$42, Elevate A$65 and Innovate A$79. Because it is per staff, a three-person salon on Build pays A$126 a month and a six-person salon pays A$252. Timely states that no new client fees apply on any tier.

What is the cheapest online booking system?

The free tiers. Setmore is free for up to 4 users and 200 appointments a month, Square Appointments has a free single-location tier where you pay only processing fees, SimplyBook.me and Calendly both have free plans, and OneBookPlus has a free tier for one user. Free tiers are genuinely usable for solo operators; the real question is what you pay at the size you are heading towards, not the size you are now.

Do I pay for staff who never log in?

With Fresha and Timely, yes, because both charge per bookable staff member. With OneBookPlus, no: the plan tiers cap logins at 3, 5 and 10, and rostered or bookable staff who never sign in are free and unlimited on every plan. This is the single largest cost difference in this comparison for salons, clinics and cleaning businesses where most of the team is booked but only one or two people do the admin.

Which booking systems charge Australians in US dollars?

Calendly, Acuity Scheduling and Setmore all publish in USD. Your monthly cost therefore moves with the exchange rate and your card may add a foreign transaction fee on top. Square Appointments, Fresha, Timely, SimplyBook.me and OneBookPlus all publish Australian-dollar prices.

Does booking software handle invoicing and GST?

Partly. Fresha lists quotes and invoices on its own feature list, and Square produces receipts, so some of them do more than schedule. But none of these products files a BAS, produces a profit and loss or a balance sheet, or hands your accountant a set of books at year end. If you need bookings and the books together you either integrate two products or use one that does both.

How much does Square Appointments cost in Australia?

Square Appointments has a free tier for a single location, then Plus at A$40 per location per month and Premium at A$90 per location per month. Pricing is flat per location rather than per staff member, so it does not rise as you hire. Card processing is charged separately at 1.6% for in-person payments and 2.2% online.

Sources and method

Every price was read from the vendor's own pricing page in August 2026. Pages that build their pricing in the browser (Fresha and Timely) were rendered in a real browser rather than fetched as static HTML, because a static fetch returns an empty page and would have produced no figure at all.

• Calendly: calendly.com/pricing. Free, Standard US$10/seat/month and Teams US$16/seat/month on yearly billing, Enterprise from US$15k/year.
• Acuity Scheduling: acuityscheduling.com/pricing. Starter US$20 (US$16 yearly), Standard US$34 (US$27), Premium US$61 (US$49), covering 1, 6 and 36 calendars. No free plan, 7-day trial.
• Square Appointments: squareup.com/au/en/appointments/pricing. Free single location, Plus A$40 and Premium A$90 per location per month, with processing at 1.6% in person and 2.2% online.
• Setmore: setmore.com/pricing. Free for up to 4 users and 200 appointments a month; Pro US$12 per user monthly, or US$5 billed annually.
• Fresha: fresha.com/pricing. Independent A$44.95/month, Team A$29.95 per bookable team member, Enterprise custom above 20 members. Marketplace new-client fee 20% one-time, minimum A$8. Processing from 1.29% + A$0.26. Rates exclusive of GST.
• Timely: gettimely.com/pricing with the region selector set to Australia. Build A$42, Elevate A$65, Innovate A$79 per staff per month, exclusive of GST.
• SimplyBook.me: simplybook.me/en/pricing. Free, then Basic A$14, Standard A$28 and Premium A$80 per month on monthly billing, or A$11.67, A$23.33 and A$66.67 per month billed annually. The annual figures are the ones printed on the plan cards; the monthly figures are stated in the same page's plan descriptions.
• OneBookPlus: Free, Starter $29, Plus $49, Growth $69 per month in AUD, with login allowances of 1, 3, 5 and 10 and extra logins at $9 a month on Growth.

On currency. USD prices are reproduced exactly as published and deliberately not converted. Any Australian-dollar figure you see quoted for Calendly, Acuity or Setmore elsewhere is somebody's conversion at an unrecorded rate on an unrecorded day.

On the feature table. Every cell is taken from that vendor's own pricing or plan-comparison page, read in August 2026, and where a feature is gated the tier name is given instead of a tick. A blank means the vendor does not list the feature on that page, NOT that the product lacks it: vendors document at very different depths and some publish features only in help centres or sales calls. The OneBookPlus column was checked against our own schema rather than our marketing, which is why it records no consultation forms and a hospitality-only waitlist.

On the modelling. The staff tables multiply each vendor's published per-head rate by headcount and apply OneBookPlus's published login caps. They compare subscription cost only. They do not include card processing, SMS charges, paid add-ons or setup fees, all of which differ by vendor and by how you use them.

What this is not. We build OneBookPlus, so treat the recommendation accordingly and check the vendors' own pricing pages before deciding. Prices change, plan names change, and every figure here carries the date it was read for exactly that reason.

The two closest comparisons

For a salon or clinic the shortlist usually comes down to two products this post names. Both have their own side-by-side: OneBookPlus compared with Fresha and OneBookPlus compared with Timely.