OpenTable vs Resy: which reservation platform should US restaurants pick in 2026?

OpenTable vs Resy is the classic showdown of US restaurant reservations: the marketplace giant with the biggest diner network in the country against the Amex-owned brand that made "getting a table" a status symbol in New York and Los Angeles. Both will run your reservation book competently. Where they differ, and differ a lot, is how they charge you, who ends up owning your guest relationships, and what kind of restaurant each one actually pays off for.

This comparison uses each company's own published pricing, retrieved on 14 August 2026, and it ends with an option neither sales team will mention: not signing up for either. Full disclosure: this blog is published by ViteUneTable, a restaurant reservation system with a free plan and 0% commission, so we have an obvious horse in this race. That is exactly why every number below is dated and linked to its source.

The short answer

• Pick OpenTable if your dining room genuinely fills through discovery: tourists, business travelers, app-first diners in a big city. You pay for that network on every seated cover it sends you.
• Pick Resy if you compete in the upscale or food-forward segment where the Resy brand itself attracts diners, and you prefer a flat subscription with no per-cover fees.
• Pick neither if most of your guests already find you through Google, Instagram, your website or word of mouth. Then both platforms are expensive ways to capture bookings you would have received anyway, and a free, commission-free system does the same core job for €0.

Now the details.

Pricing: per-cover fees vs a flat subscription

The two platforms charge in fundamentally different ways, and this single difference drives most of the decision.

What OpenTable costs

OpenTable publishes its US price grid (retrieved on 14 August 2026 from OpenTable's plan pages):

The per-cover fee applies to diners who arrive through the OpenTable site, app or affiliate network, and only to seated diners: cancellations and no-shows are not billed. On Basic, even reservations from your own website cost $0.25 per cover (or a $49 monthly flat fee) on top of the subscription. Note also that since late 2025 OpenTable has been adding a 2% service fee on money collected through the platform, deposits and no-show penalty charges included, as reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer in January 2026.

What Resy costs

Resy publishes flat prices with no per-cover fees (retrieved on 14 August 2026 from Resy's plans and pricing page):

Run the numbers for your own room

A concrete example makes the difference obvious. Take a restaurant seating 400 OpenTable network covers a month on Core: $299 x 12 = $3,588 of subscription, plus 400 x $1.00 x 12 = $4,800 of cover fees, so about $8,388 a year. The same restaurant on Resy Platform pays $289 x 12 = $3,468 a year, whatever its volume.

Flip the assumptions and the ranking flips too: a room that gets only a handful of network covers pays OpenTable Basic $149 a month where Resy starts at $289. The honest rule of thumb: OpenTable gets more expensive the more its network works for you; Resy costs the same whether its app sends you 500 diners or 5.

Diner network: reach vs cachet

This is what you are really buying from either platform, so weigh it carefully.

OpenTable claims the largest diner network in the industry, built since 1998 and strongest in North America. It is owned by Booking Holdings (Booking.com, Priceline, Kayak), which acquired it for $2.6 billion in 2014: discovery at scale is the whole business model. If travelers and app-first diners are a real share of your covers, OpenTable's reach is unmatched.

Resy plays a different game. Owned by American Express since 2019, it cultivates a smaller but affluent, food-obsessed audience: being "on Resy" is a signal in itself in New York, LA and most large US food cities, and notify features on hard-to-get tables create genuine demand. The Amex connection funnels cardmembers with dining benefits toward Resy restaurants. In 2024 American Express also acquired Tock from Squarespace, in a deal reported by CNBC at $400 million, folding Tock's prepayment tools into Resy's upper tiers.

The blunt version: OpenTable is breadth, Resy is brand. A steakhouse near a convention center will feel OpenTable's network every week; a 45-seat tasting-menu spot in Brooklyn gets more from Resy's cachet than from raw reach.

No-show tools: both are armed, at a price

Both platforms handle the no-show problem seriously.

• OpenTable includes credit card holds and deposits in its plans, and per-cover fees are not charged on no-shows or cancellations. The 2% service fee on money collected through the platform does apply to deposits, prepaid experiences and no-show penalty charges.
• Resy puts card holds, deposits and full prepaid ticketing on its Tock-powered Essential and Premium tiers, with a 3% (Essential) or 2% (Premium) fee on prepayments, plus standard payment processing.

Functionally these are the same defense: a card imprint or deposit that makes an empty table cost the guest something. If you want to understand the mechanics, legality and guest psychology of card holds before choosing any platform, our guide to credit card holds for restaurant reservations covers them in depth.

Guest data: who owns the relationship?

Here the two platforms are more alike than different. In both cases, a diner who books through the marketplace or app creates an account with the platform, not just with you. Their dining history and preferences enrich the platform's database, and the platform can market other restaurants to that same diner next week. OpenTable's incentives point toward keeping diners inside the OpenTable network; Resy's point toward Amex cardmember engagement.

Both platforms do give restaurants guest profiles and visit history inside their dashboards, and both let you export your data. But the discovery diner fundamentally belongs to the app that discovered them. Reservations that come through your own website widget or your Google Business Profile are the ones where the relationship, and the data, stay entirely yours. Whichever system you run, the strategic move is the same: grow the share of bookings that arrive through channels you own.

Contracts and commitment

• OpenTable: the standard contract runs one year and renews automatically; the plan-page FAQ asks for notice at least 30 days before the renewal date to avoid rolling over for another year (terms retrieved on 14 August 2026 from OpenTable's plan pages).
• Resy: pricing is monthly and Resy does not advertise a mandatory annual term on its public pricing page; confirm the current contract terms with their sales team before signing, since final terms live in the agreement, not on the pricing page.

Either way, read the exit clause before the sales demo dazzles you. The time to negotiate notice periods is before you sign, not eleven months in.

OpenTable vs Resy vs neither: the full comparison

Or neither: the commission-free third option

Here is the question the OpenTable vs Resy debate quietly skips: do you need a diner marketplace at all?

Pull up your reservation sources for last month. For many independent restaurants, the large majority of bookings come from Google Search and Maps, the restaurant's own website, Instagram bios and returning regulars. Those guests were coming anyway. Paying $3,468 to $8,000+ a year, per-cover fees or not, to process bookings you already earned is the most expensive way to run a reservation book.

That is the case ViteUneTable is built for. The free plan takes unlimited online reservations 24/7 through your own booking link and website widget, with automatic confirmation emails, no time limit, no commission and no commitment. When a feature earns its keep, the packs stay flat: the Standard pack at €29 excl. VAT per month adds automatic email reminders, Reserve with Google, your menu, a calendar view and custom booking questions; the Standard + Anti No-Show pack at €49 excl. VAT per month adds bank card holds, the same no-show defense the big platforms sell, without a percentage taken on anything.

Let's be honest about the trade-off: ViteUneTable has no US diner app, prices are in euros, and nobody discovers your restaurant by browsing it. If discovery is genuinely your bottleneck, OpenTable's network or Resy's cachet may be worth their price, and our deeper dives on each platform (alternative to OpenTable, alternative to Resy) run those numbers scenario by scenario. But if your tables fill through channels you already own, a free system that never charges per cover keeps the entire margin in your pocket, and you can run it in parallel with either platform to see where your bookings really come from before paying anyone.

Frequently asked questions

Is Resy cheaper than OpenTable?

It depends on volume. Resy's flat plans run $289 to $459 per month with no per-cover fees; OpenTable runs $149 to $499 per month plus $1.00 to $1.50 for each seated diner from its network (both price lists retrieved on 14 August 2026 from the companies' own pages). A low-volume room can pay less on OpenTable Basic; a busy room seating hundreds of network covers a month usually pays less on Resy.

Do OpenTable and Resy charge commissions per reservation?

Resy charges no per-cover fees: the subscription is the whole software bill, apart from 2% to 3% fees on prepayments on its Tock-powered tiers. OpenTable charges $1.00 to $1.50 per seated cover that arrives through its network, and on the Basic plan even website reservations cost $0.25 per cover. Neither bills per-cover fees on no-shows or cancellations.

Who owns OpenTable and Resy?

OpenTable has belonged to Booking Holdings (Booking.com, Priceline, Kayak) since 2014. Resy has belonged to American Express since 2019, and Amex also acquired Tock in 2024, whose technology now powers Resy's Essential and Premium tiers.

Which is better for a small neighborhood restaurant?

Often neither. If your guests find you through Google, your website and word of mouth, both platforms mostly process bookings you already earned. A commission-free system like ViteUneTable does that job on a free plan with no time limit, and adds reminders, Reserve with Google and card holds through flat packs at €29 or €49 excl. VAT per month only if you need them.

Can I use OpenTable or Resy together with another reservation system?

Yes, and running two systems in parallel for a month is the cheapest experiment in the industry. Keep the platform listing live while pointing your own website and Google Business Profile at a direct booking system, then compare where reservations actually originate. The data usually settles the OpenTable vs Resy debate better than any comparison article.

Do both platforms offer credit card holds for no-shows?

Yes. OpenTable includes card holds and deposits in its plans, with a 2% service fee on money collected through the platform since early 2026. Resy offers them on its Tock-powered Essential ($289, 3% prepayment fee) and Premium ($459, 2% prepayment fee) tiers.