Compare Booksy
Comparison · Updated
Booksy is a booking app built around a marketplace that can take a cut of your new clients; ChairSlay takes 0% of your work and your payments go straight to your own Stripe or Square.
What Booksy is
Booksy is a consumer-app-first booking tool with the largest beauty-specific discovery marketplace in the US, genuinely strong with barbers and in dense urban markets, where a client searching for a fade or a cut can actually find you. The Booksy Biz plan starts at $29.99/mo with $20/mo per additional staff member, and all features sit in one tier. The catch is the optional Boost program: turn it on and Booksy has charged around 30% of the first-visit service value for each new client it sends you from that marketplace. Repeat bookings from the same client are commission-free, so the math turns on your repeat rate.
Switching difficultyMedium
All numbers as published on each vendor's site.
ChairSlay
Booksy
Pricing as listed on each vendor's pricing page in June 2026; verify current terms. Your numbers will vary.
What each platform actually does.
Platform take on your services
↳ Repeat visits from a Boost client are commission-free; the cut is first-visit only.
New-client / marketplace 'boost' fee
Where your money lands
Deposits + card on file (no-show protection)
Set your own price + duration per client, private to you
Your book is yours — one-click export (incl. photos + formula notes)
Your booking link follows you
What it costs, plainly
Honest — where they're better
Every booking tool has to make money somewhere, and where it makes it tells you who it’s built for. Booksy makes money two ways: a per-staff subscription, and a marketplace. The subscription is honest and cheap: $29.99/mo, plus $20 for each extra person. The marketplace is where it gets interesting. Booksy runs the largest beauty-specific consumer app in the US, and an optional program called Boost buys you prioritized placement in it. Turn Boost on and Booksy has charged around 30% of the first-visit service value for every new client it sends you, capped, by reports, at $100 per client, with a $10 floor. After that first visit, the same client is commission-free.
So Booksy’s business is, in part, taking a cut of the clients it introduces you to. That’s not a scandal; it’s a customer-acquisition deal, and for an empty chair it can be a good one. But it means the incentive runs through your new clients. ChairSlay makes money exactly one way: a flat $39/mo. We take 0% of your service revenue, and we have no marketplace to sell you placement in, because we’re not trying to sit between you and the people who book you.
Here’s the part pros mix up, so let’s be exact. There are two different fees in this business. One is the card-processing fee: the ~2.9% + 30¢ your card processor charges to run a transaction. You pay that everywhere, including with ChairSlay; it’s not ours and we don’t mark it up. The other is the platform take: the cut the software company keeps on top of that. ChairSlay’s platform take is 0%. Booksy’s is 0% on standard bookings too, but the Boost program changes that: around 30% off the top of a new marketplace client’s first visit.
Two more differences worth naming plainly. With ChairSlay, your payments go straight to your own Stripe or Square account; we never hold your money, never sit between you and a payout. Booksy processes through its own system; third-party processors aren’t supported, and if you want your money in 30 minutes instead of next business day, that fast payout costs 1.5%. And the fee that stings most isn’t the subscription. It’s paying ~30% on a client, then watching them rebook, when the introduction was a one-time thing. Check Booksy’s current terms before you decide; the rate and the cap have moved before.
Discovery, full stop. The Booksy app has real reach, and it is strongest exactly where a lot of independent pros work: barbershops and dense urban markets. A client who opens the app looking for a cut can find you, leave a review, and rebook, all inside Booksy. ChairSlay doesn’t do that. We don’t have a marketplace and we don’t send you strangers; you bring your own book and we help you keep it. If you’re a new chair with no following yet, that Booksy traffic is worth something real, and Boost is an effective way to fill slots you couldn’t fill otherwise. The honest catch is the one above: the economics only work when your repeat rate is high enough to earn back the ~30% you paid to meet that client.
Your book is yours, and getting it out of Booksy is doable. Your client list and booking history export cleanly, and there’s no annual contract holding you in. Two things to plan for. Photos and formula or service notes don’t always travel as smoothly as the contact list, so give yourself time to carry those across. And your marketplace listing, the reviews and the discovery, is the thing you’d actually be giving up, which is a business call, not a file transfer.
You don’t have to make it all-or-nothing on day one. A common path: run ChairSlay for the clients you already own (deposits and card on file to protect your long appointments, rebooking reminders so a regular books the next fade or fill before they leave the chair, your own price and time stored per client and never shown on your public page) and leave Booksy on for marketplace discovery. When the Boost cut on new clients stops earning its keep, you turn it off. Either way, your booking link is portable and yours, at whatever chair, booth, or suite you’re working out of next.
ChairSlay takes 0% of your services and pays you straight to your own Stripe or Square. Your book, your prices, and your booking link stay yours. The first 100 pros to subscribe lock $24/mo for life.