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Online Reservations in 2026: OpenTable vs Resy vs Custom Systems Compared

Reservation platforms quietly take between $1 and $10 per cover in fees, lock you into their ecosystem, and own the relationship with the customer who booked through them. For high-volume restaurants in the US, this adds up to $30,000 to $150,000 per year. The decision of which reservation system to use, or whether to build your own, is one of the most underestimated financial decisions in restaurant operations. This is a real comparison of the three serious options in 2026.

Salomon Web Services · May 27, 2026 · 11 min read
Server presenting a tablet with the reservations system to dining guests

Most restaurant owners think of reservation platforms as a utility. You sign up, you pay the monthly fee, you get bookings. The reality is that reservation platforms are one of the more expensive ongoing costs in operations, and the differences between them have material impact on the business.

The three serious options for a US restaurant in 2026 are OpenTable, Resy (now owned by American Express), and a custom-built reservation system on your own website. There are smaller platforms like Tock, Yelp Reservations, and SevenRooms that fit specific niches, but the strategic decision usually comes down to one of these three categories.

This article compares them honestly, including what the platforms do not advertise.

OpenTable: the largest, the most expensive, the most established

OpenTable has been the default for nearly two decades. Most US diners over 30 instinctively check OpenTable first. The platform has the largest reach and the highest brand recognition.

What you pay:

What you actually get:

The honest math:

For a restaurant doing 200 reservations per month, half from OpenTable’s app (100 covers × $1 = $100), the monthly cost is roughly $349 ($249 base + $100 in cover fees). At 1,000 reservations per month, with 500 from OpenTable’s app, the monthly cost is $749. At 3,000 covers per month with half from the platform, you are paying $1,749 every month.

That is real money. Over a year, a busy restaurant pays OpenTable $20,000 to $40,000. For a restaurant group with multiple locations, six figures annually is normal.

The hidden cost:

OpenTable owns the customer relationship for bookings made through their platform. The guest’s email, phone, and dining history belong to OpenTable, not to you. You can see the guest in your dashboard, but you cannot legally market to them outside the platform. If you want to invite that guest to a special event, you have to do it through OpenTable’s marketing tools (which cost extra) or pray they booked direct.

Resy: the modern challenger, owned by Amex

Resy started as the cool kid alternative to OpenTable. After being acquired by American Express in 2019, it has become the platform of choice for higher-end and trendier restaurants, especially in coastal urban markets.

What you pay:

What you actually get:

The honest math:

For a typical restaurant doing 1,000 reservations per month, Resy’s standard plan with $0.25 per cover comes out to around $440 per month (assuming 500 are platform-sourced). That is cheaper than OpenTable’s equivalent volume.

For a high-end restaurant doing 3,000 reservations per month, Resy at the highest tier ($899) with no per-cover fees comes out to around $899 per month. OpenTable at the same volume would be $1,749. The difference is $10,000 per year in favor of Resy.

The hidden cost:

Same as OpenTable. Customer data lives with Resy. You can see who booked, but you cannot own the relationship. Resy is slightly more restaurant-friendly than OpenTable about data sharing, but the fundamental dynamic is identical.

Resy also has less reach than OpenTable. Outside major US cities, Resy’s discovery traffic is much smaller. A restaurant in Cleveland or Phoenix gets fewer bookings from the Resy app than one in New York. The discovery value of being on the platform is uneven by geography.

Custom-built reservations on your own website

The third option is to build (or have built) a reservation system that lives on your own website, owned by you, with the customer data flowing directly to your CRM. This is what most restaurant chains and high-volume independents in the US have started doing in the last three years.

What you pay:

What you actually get:

The honest math:

For the 1,000 reservations per month example, a custom system costs roughly $200 to $300 per month all-in (hosting + payment processing). After the upfront build cost is amortized over 18 months, the total cost is meaningfully lower than either OpenTable or Resy.

For the 3,000 reservations per month example, a custom system costs around $400 per month. Compared to OpenTable at $1,749, that is more than $16,000 per year in savings. Compared to Resy at $899, it is $6,000 per year. And you own the customer data.

The honest tradeoff:

You lose the discovery traffic from the platform apps. A restaurant that gets 30 to 50 percent of its reservations from the OpenTable or Resy app would lose those if it goes fully custom and removes itself from the platforms. For a restaurant in a city where those apps are dominant, that is a real cost.

The smart play that most operators end up with is to run both. Keep a presence on OpenTable or Resy at the cheapest possible tier, just to capture the discovery traffic. Build a custom system on your own site for direct bookings, where the customer experience is faster, branded, and free.

The decision framework

The right choice depends on three factors:

1. Your reservation volume. Below 500 reservations per month, the math usually favors a platform. The build cost of custom does not amortize fast enough. Above 1,500 per month, custom almost always wins financially.

2. Your market. In NYC, LA, SF, Miami, Chicago, Resy and OpenTable both bring meaningful discovery traffic. In smaller markets, the platforms bring less and a custom site loses less by skipping them.

3. Your customer relationship strategy. If you treat regulars as your most valuable asset and you want to email them directly about new menus, events, or special offers, you need the customer data. That means custom, or a hybrid.

The wrong question to ask is “which platform is best”. The right question is “what role do reservations play in my business, and what is the right infrastructure for that role”.

The hybrid approach that quietly dominates

The pattern that has emerged among successful US restaurants in the last two years:

The result is the best of both. You stay discoverable on the platforms for new customers. You build a direct relationship with the customers who become regulars. The cost structure improves every month as more bookings migrate direct.

This is harder to set up than just signing up for OpenTable. It pays off in 18 months and keeps paying off forever after that.

Where to start

If you are running a restaurant in the US and currently on OpenTable or Resy at full price, the highest-leverage thing to do is open your reservation reports and answer two questions:

  1. What percentage of your reservations originate from the platform’s app vs through your own website widget?
  2. What is your platform cost per actual incremental booking (not per total booking, since many would have come direct anyway)?

If the answer to question 1 is below 30 percent and the cost in question 2 is more than $5 per truly incremental booking, you are subsidizing a platform that is not bringing you much. The hybrid model would save you money immediately.

If the answer is above 60 percent platform-originated and the cost per incremental booking is under $2, the platform is doing real work for you and the priority is making sure your custom direct flow is also strong, not eliminating the platform.

Most US restaurants land in the middle. They are paying meaningful fees for value the platform is partially delivering. The optimization is usually not to abandon the platform but to build a parallel direct channel that captures the bookings the platform would otherwise tax.

The platforms will keep raising fees. The cost of building custom keeps coming down. The math gets more favorable for direct every year. The restaurants that build the direct channel now will have a structural cost advantage over those that wait.

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