OpenTable vs Resy for Restaurant Owners: Fees and Reviews Compared

Most comparisons of OpenTable and Resy are written for diners deciding where to book a table. This one isn't. If you're the restaurant paying the bill, the questions that matter are different: what you're charged per cover versus per month, what happens when a guest doesn't show up, how reviews actually surface, and what each platform plugs into. Pricing for both platforms changes, so every number below is flagged for you to re-confirm with the vendor before you rely on it.

There's also a reality worth naming up front: whichever one you pick, you now have reviews sitting on that platform too, separate from Google, Yelp, and TripAdvisor. Owners running both OpenTable and Resy at different locations, or switching between them, end up needing a way to manage OpenTable and Resy reviews next to Google instead of treating each as its own isolated inbox.

Pricing and fees: a flat subscription versus a per-cover model

The single biggest structural difference between the two platforms is how they charge. OpenTable publishes tiered plans on its own restaurant solutions pricing page, combining a monthly subscription with a per-cover fee for diners who book through OpenTable's network (its website, app, or affiliate sites). As of this writing, that's reported as:

• Basic: $149/month plus $1.50 per network cover
• Core: $299/month plus $1.00 per network cover
• Pro: $499/month plus $1.00 per network cover

Reservations a guest books directly through your own website aren't free on every tier. On the Basic plan, website reservations reportedly carry either a $0.25 per-cover charge or a flat $49/month alternative, while Core and Pro are reported to include website reservations at no extra charge. On top of plan and cover fees, OpenTable began applying a 2% service fee to transactions like deposits, prepaid experiences, and no-show charges starting in January 2026, a change covered by local business press at the time. A restaurant can absorb that 2% itself or, in the US, pass it to the guest.

What this means in practice: a restaurant doing meaningful volume through OpenTable's own network pays considerably more than the advertised monthly sticker price once cover fees are added up. A restaurant mostly filling tables through its own site, phone, and walk-ins pays much closer to the base plan price, which is exactly why the per-cover structure matters more than the headline number when you're actually comparing cost.

The tier you're on also changes more than just the per-cover rate. Reported plan breakdowns put core table and guest management on the Basic tier, with the lower per-cover fee on Core and Pro positioned as the trade-off for a higher monthly base. Features like advanced guest CRM data, marketing tools, and reporting depth are generally reserved for the higher tiers rather than available flat across all three. If you're comparing plans, read the fine print on what's actually included at each tier, not just the sticker price and the cover fee — the two aren't always moving in the direction you'd assume.

Resy's fee structure looks different on paper: industry write-ups describe flat monthly plans with no per-cover or per-reservation fee at all, charging instead for prepayments and deposits, reportedly in the 2–3% range. Standard card-processing fees apply on top, as they do everywhere. The honest caveat is bigger than any specific number here: Resy, which is owned by American Express, does not publish restaurant pricing on its own site the way OpenTable does. The plan names and monthly figures that circulate online (commonly cited in the roughly $249–$459/month range) are third-party estimates from comparison sites, not numbers Resy has published itself, and different sources report different figures for the same plan names. Treat any specific Resy number you read — including the ones above — as a starting point for a sales conversation, not a quote. If a current, exact number matters for your decision, request it directly from Resy's restaurant sales team rather than from a comparison article.

One more pricing wrinkle worth knowing before you sign anything: American Express announced in February 2026 that it's merging its Tock reservation platform into Resy, folding Tock's restaurant catalog — including a large number of fine-dining and tasting-menu venues — into Resy's platform during 2026. If you were evaluating Tock as a third option, that option is going away as a separate product, though its restaurant-management software is expected to keep running as part of Resy.

How reviews surface on each platform

This is the part most fee comparisons skip, and it's directly relevant if you're trying to manage your reputation rather than just your booking calendar.

OpenTable reviews are public and tied to a completed, verified reservation — a diner has to have actually booked and shown up before they're invited to review, and OpenTable labels these "Verified Diner" reviews on the restaurant's public profile. Every review is visible to anyone browsing that restaurant on OpenTable, star rating and written comment both, and strong profiles can earn OpenTable's "Diners' Choice" recognition, which is itself a public signal on the listing.

Resy works differently, and it's worth understanding before you assume it behaves like OpenTable. After a reservation, Resy emails the guest asking them to rate the visit on a five-star scale, optionally breaking the rating down by food, service, and vibe, with a comment field. But individual reviews and the specific comments are visible only to the restaurant, inside its Resy dashboard — not to other diners. What the public sees on Resy is the restaurant's aggregate star rating, not the underlying written reviews. For an owner, that means Resy functions more like a private feedback channel with a public scoreboard attached, while OpenTable functions like a public review site with reservation verification built in.

Neither platform is a substitute for Google, Yelp, or TripAdvisor, where most diners researching a new restaurant actually land first — and neither OpenTable's verified reviews nor Resy's private ratings show up anywhere near those searches. If you're already checking Google and Yelp daily, adding OpenTable's public reviews and Resy's private dashboard as two more places to log into is how reputation monitoring quietly becomes a part-time job, one login at a time.

That split matters most for the negative end of the scale. A one-star review sitting publicly on OpenTable needs the same kind of timely, specific response a one-star Google review needs — the audience reading it is deciding whether to book, in real time. A low rating inside Resy's private dashboard is lower-stakes publicly, since other diners never see the written comment, but it's still the clearest signal you'll get about what actually went wrong on a given night, assuming someone on your team is actually checking the dashboard rather than letting ratings accumulate unread.

How a no-show is handled

OpenTable's standard protection is a credit card hold: the guest's card isn't charged at booking, but their card information is securely collected so the restaurant can charge a no-show or late-cancellation fee after the fact if the restaurant has that policy turned on. Any no-show or deposit charge processed this way is now also subject to OpenTable's 2% service fee mentioned above, which the restaurant can pass to the guest or absorb. The actual no-show fee amount — commonly somewhere in the $15–$50 per-person range in practice — is set by the individual restaurant, not OpenTable.

Resy's approach is also restaurant-configured rather than platform-wide: you set a cancellation policy on the reservation (a cutoff window, plus either a flat cancellation fee or a prepayment requirement), and Resy displays that policy to the guest before they book. A no-show or a cancellation made after the cutoff can trigger the cancellation fee or forfeit the prepayment, depending on what the restaurant configured. Reported fee amounts for Resy restaurants that charge one run from roughly $10 to more than $50, and reporting citing Resy's own data has put the share of US restaurants on the platform charging some form of cancellation fee at around 17% overall, higher in major dining markets like New York.

Functionally, the two aren't that different for an owner: both let you attach a real financial consequence to a no-show, both put the burden of setting that policy on you rather than defaulting to one platform-wide number, and both display the policy to the guest up front rather than surprising them after the fact.

Integrations and features

OpenTable's POS integrations are the deeper of the two for most mainstream setups: it connects natively with Toast and with Upserve (Lightspeed Restaurant), syncing table status, check totals, and OpenTable deposits directly against the open check. For POS systems outside that native pair, including Square in some configurations, OpenTable typically connects through a third-party integration layer rather than a direct one.

Resy's integrations lean toward its ownership by American Express: a partnership with Toast lets servers see guest profile data — preferences, notable dates — on handheld POS devices table-side, and Resy ties into Amex's cardholder perks, including dining credits that have, at times, given certain cardholders a few hundred dollars a year to spend at Resy restaurants. With Tock folding into Resy during 2026, Resy's restaurant count is set to roughly double, closing some of the catalog gap with OpenTable, which has historically listed the larger network of the two.

Neither platform integrates directly with every POS or CRM a restaurant might run, and neither is a reputation management tool — both treat reviews as a byproduct of the booking flow, not a core feature, which is consistent with what you'd expect from a reservations company rather than a review platform.

Marketing and CRM tooling differs too, in ways that matter more for multi-location groups than for a single room. OpenTable's network effect comes from its diner app and affiliate sites surfacing your restaurant to people who weren't specifically searching for you, which is a real acquisition channel, not just a booking widget. Resy leans on the American Express relationship for the same job — a guest with a Resy dining credit has a direct financial reason to pick a Resy restaurant over one that isn't on the platform, which functions less like organic discovery and more like a targeted promotion aimed at a specific cardholder base.

Which one actually fits

If most of your bookings already come through your own site and phone, the per-cover structure matters less, and OpenTable's larger diner network and public review visibility can be worth the base plan cost on its own. If you're running a reservation-hungry, higher-end room where American Express cardholders and a predictable flat fee matter more than public review volume, Resy's model fits that shape better — assuming the actual quote you get lines up with your covers and your margin, which only a real sales conversation with Resy will confirm.

Either way, whichever platform's reservation link you put on your Google Business Profile, the reviews customers leave on OpenTable, Resy, Google, Yelp, and TripAdvisor don't manage themselves. Tailwind's Reviews product pulls them into one place so you're not logging into four different dashboards to find out someone left a one-star review on a Tuesday.

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