Restaurant booking systems in Australia: the honest 2026 comparison

The Australian booking market has been turned upside down. TheFork, the platform many venues still remember as Dimmi, pulled out of Australia on 31 March 2024 after roughly 15 years, and thefork.com.au now redirects overseas. Quandoo followed: its Australian site announced a planned closure, with the platform available only until 30 September 2026 and a complete shutdown by 31 December 2026. Two marketplaces gone in under three years leaves thousands of venues shopping for a new booking system at the same time.

This guide compares the systems that actually matter for an Australian venue, with prices in Australian dollars wherever a vendor publishes them (spoiler: most do not). ViteUneTable is our own product, so we include it with its real strengths and its real limits, and we are just as upfront about everyone else's.

What to check before choosing a booking system in Australia

Five questions separate a good deal from an expensive surprise:

1. Is the price public, and is it in AUD? Only one major player in Australia publishes its local prices. Everyone else sells by quote or publishes figures that may be in US dollars. Get the number, the currency and the GST treatment in writing.
2. Are there per-cover fees? Marketplace platforms charge for every diner their network sends you, on top of the subscription. On a busy Saturday those fees can outgrow the software bill itself.
3. What happens to your guest data if the vendor disappears? Quandoo's closure is the cautionary tale: venues that built their guest database inside a marketplace now have to export it and start again. Whatever you choose, confirm you can export your bookings and guest list at any time.
4. What are the no-show tools? Reminders, credit card holds and a clear cancellation policy matter more than the size of any fee. Australian diners are sensitive on this point: a Money.com.au survey run by Pureprofile in May 2026 found 51 per cent of Australians consider cancellation fees excessive, and the average fee they consider fair is A$15 per person. Our guide to no-show fees in Australia covers what is legal and what diners will accept.
5. Does it connect to Google? A large share of diners book straight from Search and Maps. Reserve with Google is available in Australia, but only through integrated providers, and some vendors charge for it while others include it.

The marketplace shake-up: TheFork gone, Quandoo closing

For years, Australian venues had three global marketplaces competing for their bookings. The count is now one.

TheFork acquired Sydney-born Dimmi in 2015, rebranded it in 2019, then shut down its Australian operations on 31 March 2024, citing the pandemic's impact on the global economy. Quandoo announced its own closure in 2026: bookings only until 30 September 2026, full shutdown by 31 December 2026. If you are one of the venues affected, our guide to Quandoo alternatives walks through the migration, starting with exporting your guest data before the lights go out.

The lesson is bigger than either brand. A marketplace can leave the country and take its diner network with it. A booking system whose bookings come from your own website, your Google Business Profile and your socials is not exposed to that risk.

OpenTable: the last global marketplace standing

OpenTable is now the only global consumer marketplace left in Australia, present in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. If your strategy is buying visibility from a diner network, it is the only game in town, and that reach is real.

Let's be honest about the cost side: it is hard to pin down. OpenTable's Australian pricing pages do not load for most automated tools, and the company does not publish a simple local rate card. According to Eat App's April 2026 breakdown of OpenTable's pricing, the Basic plan runs $149 a month plus $1.50 for every cover booked through the OpenTable network, with Core at $299 and Pro at $499 a month plus $1 per network cover. Those are third-party figures quoted in US-style dollars; confirm the exact amounts, and the billing currency, with OpenTable Australia before signing. The per-cover model is the structural point to understand: every guest the network sends you has a price on their head, including regulars who would have booked directly. If that maths worries you, we wrote a full guide to OpenTable alternatives.

ResDiary: the only public AUD price list

ResDiary, owned by The Access Group since July 2023, deserves credit for something rare in this market: a public Australian price list. Verified in September 2026: ResDiary Connect at A$115/month + GST for up to 150 bookings a month, Express at A$170 + GST for up to 500, and Pro at A$220 + GST for unlimited bookings, plus a A$129 setup fee. All plans are commission-free with no per-cover fees, and Reserve with Google is included.

The honest caveats: the booking caps on the lower tiers mean a growing venue climbs the price ladder quickly, and the platform's depth comes with a setup and learning curve that a small cafe may never use. Our ResDiary alternatives guide covers the trade-offs in detail.

Now Book It: the local volume leader

Now Book It is Australian-built and almost certainly the local volume leader; the company claims more than 11,000 venues on its platform (a vendor figure from nowbookit.com). Its pitch lines up with what Australian operators want to hear: a flat subscription and, in its own words, "never pay per booking fees, ever". It covers table management, functions and gift cards, and integrates widely with local POS systems.

The catch is transparency: Now Book It does not publish its prices. Its own help centre states that costs "can vary based on your venue's specific needs and setup", so every venue negotiates its own quote through a demo. That is not a red flag in itself, plenty of good software sells this way, but it makes comparison shopping harder and it means the figure you pay depends partly on how well you negotiate.

Obee: the Melbourne independent

Obee is a Melbourne-born booking and table management system with a loyal following among independent venues. It sells three tiers at a flat monthly fee with no lock-in contract and no per-cover fees, and Reserve with Google is free to use with Obee. Pricing is quote-based rather than published.

One line item to budget for: when you take payments through the platform (deposits, card holds, prepaid events), a 0.8 per cent service fee applies to transactions, on top of Pin Payments' processing fees. For a venue that leans heavily on deposits for functions, that percentage deserves a place in your spreadsheet.

SevenRooms: the premium CRM play

SevenRooms is the guest-data heavyweight, with a Sydney office and, since 2025, a new owner: it is now a DoorDash company. For hotel groups and multi-venue operators who live on guest profiles, marketing automation and personalised service, it is genuinely strong, which is why large Australian groups run it.

It publishes no prices and sells by demo and contract, which tells you the budget bracket. And the DoorDash acquisition raises the same question the Quandoo and TheFork exits did: when your guest database lives inside a platform whose owner changes, the terms can change with it. For a single independent venue, SevenRooms is usually more platform than you need; if you are evaluating it, our SevenRooms alternatives guide lays out the options.

me&u Reservations: the newest entrant

me&u, the Australian order-and-pay company formed with Mr Yum, entered the bookings market in August 2026 with a reservations platform that bundles table bookings, a voice AI for phone enquiries and functions management, already live at Sydney's Aria. Its CEO explicitly framed the launch around the consolidation wave: incumbents "being snapped up by financial services companies and delivery giants presents an opportunity".

It is too new to judge and publishes no prices, but it is worth watching, especially for venues already running me&u for ordering. Ask hard questions about data export and contract length, exactly as you would with anyone else.

ViteUneTable: the only unlimited free version

ViteUneTable is our own system, so here is the pitch and the fine print in the same breath.

The pitch: the free version is genuinely unlimited. Unlimited bookings, unlimited covers, your own booking page, table management, 0 per cent commission forever, no per-booking fee, no lock-in, and your guest data stays yours, exportable at any time. Nobody else on the Australian market offers a free plan at all: the closest message is Now Book It's "no per booking fees" on a paid subscription. Paid features come as flat packs: the Standard pack at 29 € a month excluding VAT adds email reminders and Reserve with Google, and the Standard + Anti No-Show pack at 49 € adds credit card holds for the bookings where a no-show really hurts, which is most of the battle in cutting no-shows.

Let's be honest about the fine print: we are a European company, newer to the Australian market than the local names above, our billing is in euros rather than Australian dollars, and we do not bring a consumer marketplace of diners the way OpenTable does. If discovery traffic is the one thing you need, we are the wrong pick. If you want to take bookings from your own website and Google without a meter running on every cover, the free version costs exactly nothing to try.

The comparison at a glance

Prices move; every figure above is either from the vendor's own site or attributed to the named third party, as of September 2026. Check before signing.

Frequently asked questions

Which restaurant booking system is free in Australia?

None of the local players offers a free plan: ResDiary starts at A$115/month + GST, and Now Book It, Obee, SevenRooms and me&u all sell paid subscriptions by quote. ViteUneTable's free version is the exception: unlimited bookings and covers, 0 per cent commission, no per-booking fee, with paid packs only for optional extras.

What happened to TheFork and Quandoo in Australia?

TheFork, formerly Dimmi, ceased Australian operations on 31 March 2024 after about 15 years; its .com.au site now redirects to the international platform. Quandoo announced a planned closure of its business: its platform takes bookings only until 30 September 2026 and shuts down entirely by 31 December 2026. OpenTable is the last global marketplace operating in Australia.

Which booking systems publish their Australian prices?

ResDiary is the only major player with a public AUD price list: Connect A$115, Express A$170 and Pro A$220 a month plus GST, with a A$129 setup fee. OpenTable, Now Book It, Obee, SevenRooms and me&u all require a quote or publish figures without confirmed Australian pricing.

Do Australian booking systems charge per cover?

The local SaaS players (ResDiary, Now Book It, Obee) and ViteUneTable do not charge per-cover fees. OpenTable does, on bookings that come through its consumer network: per Eat App's April 2026 analysis, $1 to $1.50 per network cover on top of the monthly plan. Obee adds a 0.8 per cent service fee on payment transactions processed through the platform.

Can Australian venues take bookings directly from Google?

Yes. Reserve with Google works in Australia through integrated providers, so diners can book from your Google Business Profile in Search and Maps. ResDiary includes it in all plans, Obee offers it free, and ViteUneTable includes it in the Standard pack.

Is a marketplace or a direct booking system better for an Australian venue?

A marketplace sells you discovery: new diners, at a per-cover price, on a platform that can change terms or leave the market, as TheFork and Quandoo did. A direct booking system takes bookings from your own website and Google at a flat cost (or free, in ViteUneTable's case), and the guest data belongs to you. Many established venues find their bookings are mostly regulars and Google searches, which a marketplace charges them for anyway.