OpenTable vs Resy: Which Reservation Platform Fits Your Restaurant?

Most OpenTable vs Resy comparisons focus on brand and diner demographics. The structural difference that actually shows up on your P&L is how each one bills.

**OpenTable charges per cover on network reservations.** Basic is $149 per month plus $1.50 for every diner seated from an OpenTable network reservation. Core ($299/mo) and Pro ($499/mo) drop that to $1.00 per network cover. Critically, on Core and Pro, reservations booked on your own website or over the phone carry no cover fee at all — only diners who came through OpenTable’s network do. On Basic, your own website’s reservations cost $0.25 per cover unless you take the $49 per month flat option.

**Resy is reported to charge a flat monthly subscription** with no per-cover fees on any plan. Resy does not publish these rates, so we are not going to quote a figure we cannot source to the vendor.

What this means practically: under a per-cover model, growth is taxed. Every additional network cover has a marginal cost. Under a flat model, the marginal cost of the next network cover is zero, so the busier you get the better the deal looks. There is a crossover volume where flat pricing wins, and it moves depending on the plan you would otherwise be on and how many of your covers actually originate from the network rather than your own channels.

That last variable is the one restaurants most often fail to measure, and it changes the answer more than the plan choice does.

Before running the crossover math, find out what share of your reservations come from the network versus from diners who already knew your name.

A network cover is genuine value — that diner might never have found you otherwise, and paying $1.00–$1.50 for a new guest is usually a bargain against any other acquisition channel.

A cover from a diner who already intended to eat at your restaurant, searched your name, landed on a booking widget, and got counted as a network reservation is a different story. You did the work of earning that guest, and the platform collected on the last click.

This is exactly why OpenTable’s Core and Pro plans do not charge for reservations made on your own website — the fee is tied to discovery, not to booking. The lever for a restaurant is therefore not really "which platform" but "how many of the diners who already know me are reaching my own site first."

That is a search visibility question. When someone searches your restaurant name, your cuisine plus your city, or "best restaurant in [your city]," what they find first determines whether that cover arrives with a fee attached. For most independent restaurants the aggregators — Yelp, Tripadvisor, and the reservation platforms themselves — occupy that real estate by default, which is a solvable problem and the subject of our restaurant marketing benchmarks.

Reach is the honest argument for paying platform fees at all.

**OpenTable** is described in press coverage as the larger network by venue count and remains the default for a large share of American diners. If your goal is maximum exposure to people who have never heard of you, it has the broadest surface.

**Resy** made a significant move in 2026. American Express agreed in February to acquire Tock from Squarespace, and on August 11, 2026 Tock’s restaurants, wineries, and experiences went live on Resy — pushing the combined network past 25,000 venues. From September 15, 2026, eligible purchases at hundreds of U.S. Tock venues also qualify for the Resy Credit, which is a real demand driver: it puts a spending incentive in front of cardmembers specifically for booking through Resy.

Resy’s audience skews toward Amex cardmembers, which for many higher-check restaurants is a favorable filter rather than a limitation. It also now supports the prepaid and tiered-experience formats Tock was built around, which matters for tasting menus, wineries, and ticketed events.

The consolidation has a downside worth naming: there are now two large networks rather than three. Fewer independent competitors generally means less downward pressure on what venues pay, and fewer places to go when terms change.

Reservation platforms change plans, fees, and terms regularly, and quoted rates vary by market, venue size, and negotiation. Confirm current pricing and contract terms directly with the vendor before signing rather than relying on any third-party summary, including this one.