Fresha Isn't Free Anymore. Here's What Canadian Salons Actually Pay.

Ask ten salon owners in Ontario which booking software is free and nine will say Fresha. They're describing a product that no longer exists.

Fresha built its reputation on a model that was genuinely radical: no subscription, no per-seat fee, revenue instead from payment processing and a commission on new clients it sent you. Then, in 2025, it introduced paid subscriptions. The free tier is gone. If your mental picture of Fresha is “the one that doesn't charge you,” that picture is roughly a year out of date — and it's still the picture most of the industry is working from.

That matters, because the software line on a salon P&L is one of the few costs an owner can actually change this month. It's worth knowing what you're paying.

The three-line bill

Fresha's cost isn't one number. It's three, and only the first one is printed on the pricing page.

Line one: the subscription. As of mid-2026, Fresha's published pricing runs roughly $19.95 per month for a solo Individual plan, or about $14.95 per bookable team member per month on the Team plan. The important word there is bookable. If you have four stylists taking appointments, you're paying four times, not once.

Line two: the new-client fee. When someone discovers you through Fresha's consumer marketplace and books for the first time, Fresha takes 20% of that first booking, with a minimum of about $6. It's charged once per new client, not forever, and it doesn't apply to clients who come through your own website, your Instagram bio, or a Google search that lands on your own booking link.

Line three: card processing. Every card payment carries a percentage plus a fixed fee, and the rate varies by country and by whether the payment is in person or online.

There's a fourth line for most salons — SMS. Appointment reminders and marketing texts are billed per message on most platforms, Fresha included, and a busy four-chair salon sends more of them than owners tend to estimate.

The math on a real salon

Take a four-stylist salon in the GTA. Roughly 320 appointments a month, average ticket $95, and say twelve genuinely new clients a month arriving through the marketplace.

Subscription     4 bookable members × ~$14.95       = ~$59.80
New-client fee   12 × $95 × 20%                     = ~$228.00
Card processing  320 × $95 = $30,400 at ~2.5%+$0.20 = ~$824.00
SMS              ~900 messages                      = ~$45.00
                                                      ─────────
                                                       ~$1,157

The subscription — the number on the pricing page — is five percent of the bill.

That's not a scandal. It's a business model, and a defensible one: Fresha keeps the sticker price low and monetizes growth. But it means the honest question isn't “what does Fresha cost?” It's “what does Fresha cost me, at my volume, with my mix of marketplace and direct bookings?” Two salons on identical plans can be $800 apart.

The attribution problem

The most common complaint you'll find in owner forums has nothing to do with the headline rate. It's attribution.

If a client of eight years hears you've moved to a new booking system, searches your salon name, lands on the marketplace instead of your own link, and books — she may be recorded as a new marketplace client. You pay 20% of her visit to be introduced to someone who has been sitting in your chair since 2018.

The defence is unglamorous and it works: import your existing client list before you switch the marketplace listing on, and point every channel you control — Instagram bio, Google Business Profile, your website, the sign at the front desk — at your own booking link rather than a marketplace profile. Every client who books direct is a client whose first visit isn't shared.

This is worth doing regardless of platform, because it's really a question about who owns the relationship. A marketplace is an acquisition channel. Treating it as your primary booking channel means renting access to your own regulars.

Where the Canadian part bites

Almost every published Fresha rate you'll find is in US dollars or pounds sterling, because that's where the comparison sites are written. Canadian card processing rates, Canadian SMS pricing, and Canadian currency conversion are their own thing, and anyone quoting you a single global Fresha number is guessing at two of the three lines.

If you're evaluating, do this: open the pricing page from your own browser, in Canada, logged out. Screenshot it. That's the only version of the number that applies to you.

Then check whether you're paying in CAD or being converted from USD. A 3% conversion spread on $1,100 a month is $396 a year that never appears on any invoice as a line item.

When Fresha still makes sense

There's a real case for it, and pretending otherwise would be insulting.

If you're new, or you've just moved neighbourhoods, or you're a solo stylist building a book from scratch, a consumer marketplace with genuine local traffic is worth paying for. Twenty percent of a first visit is a client acquisition cost, and it's a cheaper one than most paid advertising. A client who comes back six times has cost you 3% of her lifetime value.

The model stops making sense at the point where your own channels are doing the work. If most of your bookings already come from regulars, Instagram, and your Google profile, you're paying marketplace-era economics for software your own audience is feeding for free.

The tell is simple. Pull your last three months. What percentage of bookings originated in the marketplace versus your own link? If it's under 15% and falling, the marketplace is no longer an acquisition channel — it's a toll booth on traffic you generated.

Figures are drawn from Fresha's published pricing and third-party pricing analyses current to mid-2026. Rates vary by region and change without much notice — verify current pricing from your own location before making a decision.

Related reading: NeonO vs Fresha · NeonO pricing · Switching and client-list imports