Best restaurant booking systems in Australia (2026)

The Australian shortlist got shorter in 2026, and the rest of it is harder to price than it looks. Quandoo stopped taking bookings on 1 October 2026 and switches its platform off on 31 December 2026, so it is no longer a system an Australian venue can choose. Of the other ten platforms an Australian venue is likely to be comparing, three publish a price you can read today in Australian dollars — Hostme, Resos and TableNest. Four publish a price in somebody else’s currency: OpenTable, Resy, Tablein and Tock, and Tock is no longer sold on its own at all. Three publish no price we could find: Eveve, ResDiary and Now Book It, and on ResDiary we hold no dated check. The only Now Book It figure we will stand behind is an invoice — A$219 a month all-in for a single Australian venue in July 2026, on a 90-day cancellation notice, and that venue is TableNest’s founder’s own. TableNest — full disclosure, this is us — is the flat-fee option built for small Australian venues, with no marketplace commission and no annual contract; it runs several venues under one login too, each billed as its own subscription on whatever plan that venue needs. For most independents the real question is not which marketplace to join; it is whether you need one at all.

Which booking systems can an Australian restaurant still sign up to in 2026?

More than the three this post used to name — but the list gets short fast once you ask who will tell you the price before you book a call.

Quandoo is out. Quandoo is winding down worldwide, Australia included. Diners could book through it until 30 September 2026; from 1 October 2026 the platform takes no new or existing bookings, and on 31 December 2026 the website, app and back office are switched off. Confirmed reservations are being honoured, and Quandoo has said it will help partners export their data — but nothing you set up there now will outlive the year. If you are still on it, the job is migration, not evaluation: the dates and a week-by-week move are in is Quandoo closing?, and the Quandoo switch page handles the customer-list migration.

Open to new Australian venues, on the evidence we hold: Hostme, Now Book It, Resos and TableNest — four, because that is how many we can evidence, not how many there are. Hostme publishes a pricing page specifically for Australia; Resos publishes an Australian dollar schedule through its own currency selector and says it works worldwide; Now Book It invoiced an Australian venue in July 2026, and we hold the invoice; TableNest is us. ResDiary and Tablein may well sell here and we have no reason to think otherwise — we simply hold nothing that shows it, so we do not say it.

Priced somewhere else. OpenTable, Resy and Tock publish US dollar plans and nothing Australian — and OpenTable’s plans page says, directly under the plan names, “Only available in the US”, so those plans are not a thing an Australian venue can buy. Tablein publishes in euros. Eveve publishes no figure we could find: checked 26 September 2026, a scan of its home page and its restaurants page found no currency figure of any kind. We make no claim about where any of these five sells, because we hold no evidence either way; what we can say is what each publishes, and none of it is an Australian price. None of that makes them wrong for you; it does mean the only way to compare them against an Australian price is to get a written quote in Australian dollars, GST stated.

How much does a restaurant booking system cost in Australia?

Harder to answer than it should be, because the incumbents publish nothing. Here is every platform we hold a sourced figure for, and what each one leaves blank.

Every competitor figure above carries the source and date beside it, and none of them is converted into another currency. Where a cell says the vendor’s live page is gone, the figure is from an archived copy and is marked as such, with the date that copy was captured — Quandoo’s row is the one that is. A quoted price with no source and no date is a price that was true once. Where a cell says “not published”, it means we could not find the vendor stating it on their own site on the date that row gives, not that the vendor does not do it. ResDiary’s row gives no date at all, because we hold no dated check of it.

Now Book It publishes no pricing — there is no rate card to quote, so the only figure we will stand behind is one we were actually charged. A Now Book It invoice dated July 2026 puts one Australian venue at A$219 a month all-in — a subscription line of AUD 199 before GST, plus GST and the payment-processing fee. That venue is TableNest's founder's own, and he was a Now Book It customer — so read this as our own case study, not an independent customer's. The same invoice bills a 90-day cancellation notice, covering two months after the venue had already stopped using the platform. One venue's invoice is not everyone's price, so confirm current terms with Now Book It directly. The full working is on the TableNest vs Now Book It comparison.

Check the GST basis before you compare anything. That AUD 199 subscription line is quoted before GST; TableNest's Australian prices already include it. Put an ex-GST number beside a GST-inclusive one and the comparison is wrong by a tenth before you start. Ask every vendor whether their figure includes GST, and compare all-in. Hostme’s Australian pricing page is the one we checked that states no tax basis at all; for the rest we hold nothing either way, which is why it is a question to ask every time rather than a box to tick once.

ResDiary we are not going to put a number on. We hold no current rate card and no invoice for it, and a figure we cannot re-read from the vendor is a figure that goes stale without telling you. Ask for a quote, and ask whether it includes GST.

TableNest publishes its prices. Full disclosure: this is us. TableNest was built specifically for small Australian hospitality venues — restaurants, cafes, bars, wineries, and cellar doors. The philosophy is simple: online bookings, SMS reminders, and a clean dashboard. No marketplace commissions, no annual contracts, no feature bloat.

Plans start at $29/month (AUD) with SMS messages (confirmations + reminders) included in Australia. Setup takes about 10 minutes, and online bookings open once a card is on file. You embed the booking widget on your own website — customers book there, not on a third-party marketplace.

Which Australian booking systems publish their prices?

Three of the eleven in the table above: Hostme, Resos and TableNest. Hostme publishes a separate Australian page, Resos publishes an AUD schedule through its own currency selector, and TableNest publishes four flat tiers with GST already in the figure. OpenTable, Resy, Tablein and Tock publish prices, but not Australian ones. Neither Eveve nor Now Book It publishes a price we could find, and we hold no dated check of ResDiary. The eleventh is Quandoo, which published Australian prices until its live pricing page came down as it closes.

That split is the most useful thing on this page, because it tells you how long shopping will take. Three vendors you can compare this afternoon. Four you can compare only after converting a foreign price and asking what the Australian one is. Three where the first real number arrives at the end of a sales call — and one of those three, Now Book It, is the market’s most-recommended name. The eleventh, Quandoo, is not a shopping decision at all — it stopped taking bookings on 1 October 2026.

Which booking systems charge per cover?

Two of the eleven still do, and on the figures we hold only OpenTable charges one on a booking taken through your own website. It bills USD 1 for a cover seated through its network on its two upper plans, or USD 1.50 on the entry plan after its first 30 days, and USD 0.25 for an own-website cover on that entry plan, which the upper two include. Hostme bills AUD 2.5 a cover, but only on its TripAdvisor and Michelin Guide integrations.

Quandoo charged AUD 3.50 for every guest who booked through its network, app or portal, which is the model that is leaving the Australian market with it. Everything else in the table charges a flat fee, meters you on bookings or reservations, or takes a percentage of prepayments — Tock’s two plans take 3% and 2%. The question worth asking a salesperson is not “do you charge commission” but “what, exactly, is the unit you meter”: covers, bookings, reservations, messages or prepaid dollars. Every platform has one, and it decides what a busy month costs you.

Which Australian booking systems have no lock-in contract?

On what each vendor publishes: TableNest has no contract and no notice period, and Tablein states no minimum term. Those are the only two. Now Book It is the exception that costs money — its participant agreement runs a 12-month initial term, auto-renews annually, and requires at least 90 days’ written notice; the one invoice we hold bills that notice by name. Everybody else, Hostme included, publishes nothing about contract length, which is not the same as having none.

A notice period is the part of a booking-system bill that nobody reads until they want out, and it is the part that is hardest to argue with afterwards. On the Now Book It invoice we hold, the notice covered two months after the venue had already stopped using the platform. Before you sign anything, ask for the cancellation clause in writing and work out the date you would have to give notice by — how to cancel NowBookIt walks through that calculation.

Which Australian booking systems cover SMS in the monthly fee?

Three of the eleven publish an answer for Australia, and two of those three bill it per message. Hostme charges AUD 0.08 for each text on its Australian plan cards. Resos sells messaging as a paid add-on at AUD 0.09 a message, on top of the plan. TableNest — full disclosure, this is us — puts a monthly message count on each Australian tier instead, with no per-message charge until you pass it.

Nobody else in the table publishes Australian messaging terms at all, so it is worth asking what a confirmation plus a 24-hour reminder actually costs. That is two messages on every platform that counts them, and at a few cents each across a few hundred bookings a month it is a real line, not a rounding error. Ask whether email confirmations are counted too; on TableNest they are not.

What do Now Book It and ResDiary do well?

Now Book It

Australian-built, and the one name most venues on a shortlist have already heard. Table management, CRM features and POS integrations are its strengths, and a local build usually means workflows and support hours that fit Australian service. The watch-outs are the two above: no published price, and a 12-month agreement that auto-renews annually on a 90-day written-notice period. Work out your deadline before you need it, not after — how to cancel NowBookIt walks through the dates.

Best for: mid-to-large restaurants that will use the table-management depth. Watch out for: the notice period, and a feature set that can feel overbuilt for a 30-seat cafe.

ResDiary

ResDiary is a UK-based platform. It offers yield management, pre-ordering, and detailed analytics — a serious tool for serious operators, and nothing at the small-venue end of the market replaces it. The complexity and cost reflect that. We hold no evidence of how much it sells in Australia, so this page does not tell you.

Best for: fine dining, and groups that will genuinely use yield management across their sites. Watch out for: complexity a single dining room will never use. Running several venues is, on its own, no longer a reason to come up here — TableNest puts multiple venues under one login as well. Yield management and pre-ordering are what ResDiary has that we do not.

Which booking system is best for a small Australian venue?

For a single venue that already has its own customers, the best booking system is the cheapest one your staff will actually use — which in practice means a flat-fee booking widget on your own website, not a seat on a marketplace.

TableNest

TableNest is the flat-fee option here, built for independent Australian operators running one venue or several: bookings, reminders, run sheet, customer list. The price is published rather than quoted, and there is no marketplace to join and no per-cover line underneath it. More than one venue sits under a single login with a switcher, staff access and roles are set per venue so someone can work at one site or several, and each venue is its own subscription — on whatever plan that venue needs, rather than one plan stretched across the group — arranged by talking to us rather than self-serve.

One venue that made this move, in her own words:

“We moved to TableNest as our previous booking system was charging us a premium monthly charge for features that we didn’t need for our business. The transition was seamless and it offers everything our old booking system had for a fraction of the price.”

— Alison Withers, Badger Creek Blueberry Winery & St Ronan’s Cider

Best for: small venues that want affordable, simple online bookings — one site or several. Trade-off: no marketplace discovery — customers find you through your own website, Google, or social media. If marketplace diners are a real share of your covers, that is a real gap to weigh.

How do I choose between them?

Three questions, in this order:

1. Do you actually need marketplace exposure? Quandoo's closure settles this one for a lot of venues — the cheap Australian marketplace seat is going away. If a platform genuinely brings you diners you could not reach yourself, that is worth paying for, so check it has an Australian audience before you do. If your customers already know you, which is most small venues, you need a booking widget on your own site and nothing more.
2. What are you paying now, all in? Add the monthly fee, the GST, any per-cover or per-network-guest charge and any setup fee, then divide by the bookings you actually took. A $29-69/month (AUD) flat fee with no commissions is hard to beat for a small venue — but you only know that once you have your own number.
3. How complex is your operation? Groups that need yield management across their sites should look at ResDiary or Now Book It — that depth is real and we do not have it. But running several venues is a different question from needing yield management: TableNest puts multiple venues under one login, each as its own subscription on whatever plan that venue needs. Either way, start with the simpler option and move up when something actually breaks.

The verdict

Choosing today: Quandoo is not a choice. Now Book It and ResDiary are the right answer for venues that will use their depth. Hostme and Resos are the two international platforms that will at least quote you in Australian dollars before you call. A flat fee is the right answer for everyone else. What costs Australian venues money is rarely picking the wrong platform — it is paying marketplace or per-cover fees on diners who would have found them anyway, on an agreement with a notice period nobody read until they wanted out.

Start with TableNest, or see how it works for restaurants, cafes, wineries, and bars.