Search “best software for estheticians” and the page is almost entirely booking-platform blogs (GlossGenius, Booksy, TimeTailor, SpaSphere) rather than G2, Capterra, or a big media roundup, the kind of SERP where nobody neutral has actually laid the numbers side by side. That matters more than usual here, because most of these platforms are built and priced for a multi-chair salon with a front desk, and a solo esthetician renting a single room ends up paying for staff-management features they’ll never use. One listed platform is genuinely free with no staff cap at all. Another still gets described as “free” in roundups that haven’t been updated since it changed its entire pricing model in late 2025.
The short version: TimeTailor’s core booking system is free with unlimited staff logins, but its online payments feature charges the client (not you) 3.9% per transaction, and add-ons like no-show protection ($12/month per user) and reporting ($9/month per expert) are billed separately. Fresha is widely described online as free forever, but it ended that model on November 1, 2025, and now charges $19.95/month for a solo Independent plan or roughly $14.95 per team member on its Team plan (figures reported consistently by several independent pricing trackers; Fresha’s own US pricing page redirected to Japanese yen pricing from our access point, so confirm the USD number directly before signing up). Booksy is $29.99/month flat but adds $20/month for every additional staff member, the steepest per-seat add-on of the five. Vagaro’s sticker price is $30/month for one calendar ($23.99/month as an introductory rate), plus $10/month per additional calendar. GlossGenius starts at $28/month (Standard) with a flat 2.6% card-processing rate and no extra fee for tap-to-pay, but forms, waivers, and room management aren’t included until the $56/month Gold tier.
Quick Comparison
| Tool | Solo Entry Price | Additional Staff | Card Processing | Free Trial |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TimeTailor | $0/mo (manual bookings, unlimited staff) | Free | Via Stripe; online booking module costs the client 3.9%, not you | No card required to sign up |
| Fresha | ~$19.95/mo (Independent), per third-party trackers | ~$14.95/mo per team member (Team plan) | Not confirmed on official US page from our access point | 7 days (per third-party trackers) |
| GlossGenius | $28/mo (Standard), $24/mo billed annually | Included up to Gold’s “teams of less than 10” tier ($56/mo) | Flat 2.6%, no extra tap-to-pay fee | 14 days, no card required |
| Vagaro | $30/mo (1 calendar); $23.99/mo introductory rate | $10/mo per additional calendar | Not disclosed on pricing page | 30 days (most features) |
| Booksy | $29.99/mo (1 staff member) | $20/mo per additional staff member | 2.69% + $0.30 (keyed) or 2.49% + $0.10 (card reader) | Not stated on pricing page |
All five companies’ own pricing pages checked directly on September 2, 2026, except where noted for Fresha.
TimeTailor: Genuinely Free for a Solo Operator, If You Don’t Need Online Payments Yet
TimeTailor’s free plan isn’t a stripped-down trial. Its own pricing page lists unlimited manually-entered bookings and unlimited staff logins at $0/month, along with client management with full history, daily payouts to your bank account, and salon branding. For a solo esthetician or a single booth renter who takes bookings by text or phone and enters them manually, that’s a real zero-dollar booking system with no staff cap to bump into later, which none of the other four platforms here offer at any price.
The trade-off shows up the moment a client wants to book and pay online without a phone call. TimeTailor’s Online Booking add-on is priced differently from everyone else in this comparison: instead of charging you a processing percentage, its own pricing page states the 3.9% online-payment fee is “paid by the Client,” meaning it’s added to what the client pays rather than deducted from your payout. No-Show Protection is a separate $12/month per user add-on, Advanced Reporting is $9/month per bookable expert, and a professional website is $15/month. None of these are required to use the core system, so a true solo esthetician taking cash or a card reader payment in person and booking clients by text can run TimeTailor at $0/month indefinitely.
- Who should NOT rely on TimeTailor’s free tier alone: anyone who wants clients to book and pay online without you doing anything: that requires the paid Online Booking add-on, and you should read exactly how the 3.9% client fee is presented at checkout before assuming it’s invisible to your clients.
- Who it’s right for: a true solo esthetician or booth renter who doesn’t need multiple staff calendars (even though TimeTailor doesn’t cap them) and is comfortable taking payment in person while using TimeTailor purely for scheduling and client records.
Fresha: Still Called “Free” in Roundups That Haven’t Been Updated Since November 2025
Fresha built its reputation on being free. For years, “Fresha is free, it makes money on card processing” was accurate advice, and a lot of “best software for estheticians” content still repeats it. That stopped being true on November 1, 2025, when Fresha rolled out mandatory subscription plans and ended the free-forever model, a change confirmed by multiple independent pricing trackers (Pabau, RZRV, SubSeat) that each cite the same date. The reported US pricing is $19.95/month for a solo Independent plan or roughly $14.95 per team member per month on the Team plan, with Enterprise custom-priced above 20 team members.
We could not confirm those exact USD figures directly on Fresha’s own pricing page: fetching it from our access point auto-redirected to Japanese yen pricing (¥1,550/month Independent, ¥1,030/month per team member) instead of the US page, and the page did not load its pricing content through automated tools even when we tried a /for-business/pricing and /en-us path directly. The yen and dollar figures are roughly consistent with each other at current exchange rates, and several independent US-focused trackers converge on the same $19.95/$14.95 numbers, but treat this as third-party-reported rather than self-confirmed, and check the live USD price for your account before subscribing. On top of the subscription, Fresha charges a 20% fee (minimum $6) on new clients who book through its marketplace, plus separate card-processing fees, costs that existed even in the free-forever era but now stack on top of a monthly software bill that didn’t exist before.
- Who should NOT assume Fresha is free: anyone relying on older blog posts, forum threads, or “best of” lists published before November 2025: the free-forever model that made Fresha the default recommendation in those posts no longer exists.
- Who it’s right for: someone who already planned to pay a monthly fee for booking software and wants to compare Fresha’s reported $19.95/month against GlossGenius or Booksy’s confirmed $28-30/month starting prices, ideally after confirming the current USD number directly with Fresha.
GlossGenius: Flat 2.6% Processing, But Forms and Room Management Wait Until Gold
GlossGenius’s Standard plan is $28/month ($24/month billed annually) and includes a custom booking website, email and text marketing (500 text credits), inventory and retail management, and packages and memberships. Card processing is a flat 2.6% with no extra fee for tap-to-pay or keyed entry, one of the simpler processing structures in this group, though an optional instant-payout feature adds 1.8%. The 14-day free trial requires no credit card.
What Standard doesn’t include is more relevant to a solo esthetician than it first looks: client intake forms and waivers, Google Booking integration, automated waitlists, and room or resource management are all reserved for the $56/month Gold tier ($48/month annual), which GlossGenius’s own pricing page positions for “teams of less than 10.” For a solo esthetician doing skin consultations, intake and consent forms are close to a baseline requirement, not a nice-to-have, which pushes the realistic entry price for many solo practices closer to $56/month than the $28/month headline. Platinum, at $168/month ($148/month annual), adds team goal-setting, customizable commissions, and Google Marketing Analytics aimed at multi-provider shops.
- Who should NOT budget for the $28/month Standard price and stop there: any esthetician who needs digital intake forms or waivers for skin consultations, which is most of them; that pushes the real starting price to Gold at $56/month.
- Who it’s right for: an esthetician who already has a paper or separate digital intake process and mainly wants booking, retail, and marketing tools at the lower price point, or anyone ready to pay for Gold’s forms and room-management features from day one.
Vagaro: $10 per Additional Calendar Adds Up Fast for a Growing Room
Vagaro’s US pricing page advertises $23.99/month as an introductory rate for the first six months on a single bookable calendar, reverting to a $30/month regular price afterward, per Vagaro’s own support documentation and multiple independent pricing guides. A 30-day free trial includes most features except email marketing, text marketing, and the branded client app. Vagaro doesn’t disclose its card-processing rate on its main pricing page; third-party estimates put it in the 2.2%-3.5% range depending on how payment is taken, which is wide enough that you should get a direct quote before assuming a number.
Each additional staff calendar is $10/month, a lower per-seat cost than Booksy’s $20/month but still a real line item: an esthetician who starts solo and later brings on a second esthetician or a nail tech to share the room goes from $30/month to $40/month for that one addition, and it compounds from there. Vagaro’s page also promotes “1,000 free emails monthly” and a free card reader with its merchant services, both of which reduce the effective cost if you were going to pay for those separately anyway.
- Who should NOT assume the $23.99/month price is permanent: that’s an introductory rate for the first six months; budget for $30/month afterward, and for $10/month more per additional calendar the moment you’re not working entirely alone.
- Who it’s right for: a solo esthetician who wants a well-established, widely-used platform (useful if you’ll eventually want to hire and don’t want to migrate systems) and doesn’t mind the price stepping up after the introductory period.
Booksy: The Steepest Per-Staff Fee in This Comparison
Booksy’s core plan is $29.99/month plus tax, and its own pricing page is explicit that this covers “no hidden or extra fees” for one staff member: 24/7 online booking, built-in marketing tools, unlimited bookings, and 2,000 free SMS messages a month. Card processing runs 2.69% + $0.30 for mobile/keyed payments, 2.49% + $0.10 with Booksy’s card reader, or 2.49% + $0.20 for tap-to-pay, with free next-business-day payouts (a 1.5% fee applies for a 30-minute fast payout instead).
The number worth stopping on is the cost of adding staff: $20/month for each additional team member, double Vagaro’s $10/month per calendar and with no equivalent in GlossGenius’s tiered-plan model. A solo esthetician who brings on one additional esthetician to share a suite goes from $29.99/month to roughly $50/month for that single addition, the steepest jump of any platform here for the same move. Booksy’s optional Boost marketing add-on is free to activate but takes 30% of a new client’s first-visit total, worth factoring in if you plan to use it to fill a slow week.
- Who should NOT default to Booksy once they’re not solo anymore: anyone planning to add even one staff member soon; at $20/month per additional person, a three-person room costs meaningfully more here than on Vagaro or GlossGenius for the same headcount.
- Who it’s right for: an esthetician working entirely alone who values Booksy’s built-in marketplace visibility and 2,000 free monthly SMS messages and has no near-term plan to add staff.
Who Should NOT Buy Any of These Five
An esthetician who works a handful of clients a month out of a shared suite and already has a simple booking link (Calendly or similar) plus a payment app doesn’t need a dedicated salon platform yet; the marketing tools, retail/inventory features, and staff-management options in all five platforms above are built for a business that’s past that stage. On the other end, a multi-location med-spa or a franchise needs centralized multi-site reporting and role-based permissions that go beyond a single-room comparison like this one. That’s a conversation for each vendor’s enterprise sales team.
Solo service businesses in other niches face a similar version of this same “which tier actually fits one person” question. Our guide to software for therapists and counselors covers the same pattern of a cheap entry tier that caps out faster than a real solo caseload needs.
FAQ
What software do most estheticians use? GlossGenius, Fresha, Vagaro, and Booksy come up most consistently across booking-platform comparison blogs and TikTok creator content in this space, alongside TimeTailor and Mangomint as niche-specific alternatives.
Is there free software for estheticians? TimeTailor’s core plan is free with unlimited manually-entered bookings and unlimited staff logins, as long as you don’t need its paid online-payments or no-show-protection add-ons. Fresha is frequently described as free online, but it ended its free-forever model on November 1, 2025, and now charges a monthly subscription.
What’s the cheapest booking software for a solo esthetician? On confirmed official pricing, GlossGenius’s Standard plan ($28/month, $24/month annual) is the cheapest paid, full-featured option, though it doesn’t include client intake forms until the $56/month Gold tier. TimeTailor is cheaper still (free) if you don’t need online client payments yet.
How much does it cost to add a second esthetician to my account? It varies more than the base price suggests: $10/month on Vagaro, $20/month on Booksy, and effectively a full tier jump on GlossGenius (Standard’s team size isn’t stated on its own pricing page, but Gold, at $56/month, is explicitly positioned for “teams of less than 10”).
Do these platforms charge a fee for card payments? Yes, all of them except TimeTailor’s specific online-booking module (where the fee is passed to the client, not you). GlossGenius charges a flat 2.6%. Booksy runs 2.49%-2.69% plus a small per-transaction fee depending on how the client pays. Vagaro and Fresha don’t disclose exact processing rates on their main pricing pages.
Bottom Line: Which Should You Choose?
- True solo, no staff, comfortable taking payment in person: TimeTailor, free, with paid add-ons only for what you actually use.
- Want the simplest flat processing rate and can live without forms until Gold: GlossGenius Standard at $28/month.
- Planning to add one staff member soon and want the lowest per-seat cost: Vagaro, $30/month plus $10/month per additional calendar.
- Want built-in marketplace visibility and will stay solo: Booksy at $29.99/month, but move to a different platform’s math once you’re adding staff, given its $20/month per-seat cost.
- Already budgeting for a paid platform and want to compare against the others: Fresha, reportedly $19.95/month for a solo plan, but confirm the current USD price directly since it ended its free-forever model in November 2025.
Running a tattoo studio instead? See our tattoo shop software comparison, where consent-form pricing is the main catch.