Fresha vs Square: How Each One Bills a Salon in 2026

How Square Appointments bills a salon

Plans and what Square Free leaves out

Square Appointments has three self-serve plans, each priced per location: Square Free at $0 a month, Square Plus at $49 and Square Premium at $149. Businesses that process over $250,000 a year can ask Square about custom pricing. Every plan lets you add as many staff calendars as you need; Square's page puts it plainly: "There is no employee limit."

Square Free is a working plan, not a demo. Its US feature grid includes the online booking website, text and email appointment reminders, prepayments and appointment deposits. What it leaves out matters for a busy salon: cancellation and no-show fees, multi-staff appointment booking, a waitlist, appointment confirmations, Google Calendar sync and multi-location management all start on Plus. Plus and Premium each come with a 30-day free trial, and Square says you can cancel or switch plans anytime.

Card rates by Square plan

Square's processing fees fall as the plan price rises. The gap is widest online, where Plus and Premium charge 0.4 percentage points less than Free; in person, each step up saves 0.1 point. Manually entered cards cost the same on every plan.

Table 2. Square Appointments US processing fees by plan, read October 2, 2026. The $100 rows are our arithmetic from those rates.

Costs outside the Square subscription

Appointment reminders are included, but text message marketing is not available on Square Free. Plus includes 500 marketing texts a month, then 3 cents each, and Premium includes 2,500, then 1.5 cents. Gift card loads carry a 2.5% fee on Free and Plus and none on Premium. Square sells hardware starting at $59 and runs Square Payroll from $35 a month plus $6 per person paid.

How Fresha bills a salon

Independent and Team plans

Fresha's pricing page lists two self-serve plans and no free plan. Independent is built for one-person businesses. Team is for businesses with multiple bookable team members and is priced per bookable team member each month, so the subscription rises each time you add a stylist who takes bookings. An Enterprise tier on custom rates covers high-volume businesses. Fresha's FAQ says there is no minimum commitment or long-term contract, and its plan cards list a free trial.

According to the same FAQ, Team adds tools Independent does not have: a multi-user calendar, commission tracking and timesheets for clocking in and out, plus larger messaging allowances and enhanced support.

Some comparison pages that rank for this search still say Fresha has no subscription fee or a free-forever plan. Fresha's own pricing page, read on October 2, 2026, lists paid plans only.

The marketplace fee on new clients

Fresha runs a consumer marketplace where clients search for and book salons. Its pricing page applies a one-time fee to brand-new clients who discover your business through that marketplace and no fee to returning clients. Its FAQ adds that you are not charged for new clients who find you through your own website, Instagram profile or Facebook profile.

That makes the fee a cost of acquisition rather than a running charge. A salon that already fills its book from referrals and social media may rarely trigger it; a new salon that relies on marketplace discovery should expect it on many first visits and budget for it before choosing.

Payments, messages and add-ons

Fresha prints its own card rates for online payments, in-person payments, manually entered cards and Klarna buy-now-pay-later, plus a charge per Tap to Pay authorization, and sells terminal devices priced per device. Its FAQ says payment processing is optional, but it ties upfront deposits and no-show protection to Fresha's own payment system.

Automated email notifications are free. Text and WhatsApp notifications and marketing emails come with a monthly allowance and then a per-message price, and on the Team plan both allowances are counted per team member. Optional add-ons are billed per location (Client Loyalty and Google Rating Boost), per team member (Team Connect) or per bookable team member (Insights).

We print none of these Fresha amounts. The page we were served showed Canadian dollars, and converting them would not give you Fresha's US price. Open Fresha's pricing page from the US before you compare.

Which one costs less for your team?

Square's side of the bill can be priced from its US page today. Fresha's side depends on how many bookable team members you have and on the figures you read on Fresha's US page. Work through both halves below.

Square: a worked month at three salon sizes

Table 3 and Figure 2 price three hypothetical salons on Square. Each has a $75 average card payment, with 80% of payments taken in person and 20% online. Staff count does not change Square's price; only locations and card volume do.

Table 3. Subscription plus card fees on Square Appointments, US rates read October 2, 2026. Hypothetical salons, $75 average card payment, 80% in person (2.6%, 2.5% or 2.4% + 15 cents) and 20% online (3.3% or 2.9% + 30 cents).

The arithmetic shows when Plus pays for itself. At this 80/20 mix, Plus takes 0.16 percentage points less of every card dollar than Free (0.1 point less in person and 0.4 point less online), so its $49 is recovered at about $30,625 of card payments a month per location. Below that line Free costs less; above it Plus does. Unless a location takes more than that in card payments, the case for Plus is its features, such as no-show fees, multi-staff booking or a second location, rather than its rates. Premium saves a further 0.1 point in person only, so it needs about $125,000 of card payments a month per location at the same 80/20 mix ($100,000 of it in person) to cover its extra $100. Its other case is features: Square's US grid lists the future bookings report, service cost tracking and the team performance report on Premium only.

Fresha: price your own team in four steps

1. Open Fresha's pricing page from the US and note the Independent price, or the Team price per bookable team member.

2. Multiply the Team price by the number of team members who take bookings. Fresha says it charges for each bookable team member.

3. Add Fresha's card fees: its in-person rate times your in-person card sales, its online rate times your online card sales, and the fixed fee on each payment.

4. Add the one-time fee for each brand-new client you expect from the Fresha marketplace, any messages beyond the monthly allowance and any add-ons you plan to use.

Where Fresha's subscription passes Square's

Square Free has no subscription, so any paid Fresha plan starts above it before card fees. Against Square Plus, divide $49 by Fresha's US Team price per bookable member: once your bookable team is larger than that result, Fresha's subscription alone costs more than Plus at one location. Against Premium, divide $149 the same way. Card fees and marketplace fees still decide the total, so finish steps 3 and 4 before you choose.

No-show fees, deposits and reminders

Both vendors sell protection against no-shows, but they package it differently. On Square, prepayments, appointment deposits and text and email reminders come on every plan, including Free. Charging a cancellation or no-show fee needs Plus or Premium; Square describes the feature as requiring a credit card at booking and charging the card on file for late cancellations or no-shows.

Fresha lists upfront payments and no-show and cancellation fees among its payment features, and its FAQ links deposits and no-show protection to Fresha's own payment system. If you plan to keep another processor, check which of these protections you would lose before you commit. For wording a policy clients accept, see our guide on how to set a no-show charge.

Features beyond the booking calendar

Square Appointments sits inside Square's wider commerce system. Its pricing page sells hardware starting at $59 and lists Square Payroll, invoices, an online store and inventory and catalog tools, and its grid puts class booking and packages on Plus and Premium. For bringing in clients, the grid lists a Book Now button for your Instagram account, Facebook page and Google Business Profile on every plan, and the US pricing page lists no fee on new clients.

Fresha's plan comparison lists point of sale, retail and inventory, gift cards, packages, memberships, group bookings, quotes and invoices, and a business mobile app. Its FAQ says you can bring client details and product inventory over from your old system, with paid data-migration help for larger businesses. If you sell retail products or run a front desk with card terminals, both vendors offer their own hardware and stock tools. If you mainly need bookings, reminders and payments, compare the billing unit first, because both feature lists are long.

Which should you choose?

• Choose Square Appointments if you expect to hire. Staff calendars are unlimited on every plan, and the price changes only when you add a location. Square Free also suits a solo stylist who wants reminders and deposits without a subscription.

• Choose Fresha if its marketplace brings you new clients you would not reach otherwise and you accept a one-time fee on each brand-new marketplace client. Its Independent plan is built for one-person businesses.

• Compare closely if no-show fees matter: on Square they start at $49 a month per location, and on Fresha they come with Fresha's payment processing.

• Look further if neither billing unit fits: our Fresha alternatives guide and our guide to Square Appointments alternatives price other options.

For each of these vendors against another rival, see Vagaro vs Fresha, Fresha vs Booksy, Booksy vs Square and GlossGenius vs Square.

Where Twizzlo fits

Twizzlo is online booking and scheduling software for appointment-based businesses, and it bills per business rather than per location or per team member. It has two plans. Free is $0 a month for up to 150 bookings, with no SMS, and is free forever, not a trial. Business Pro is $29.99 a month per business, with unlimited bookings, 50 SMS a month and then $0.03 each, and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Both plans include unlimited staff and locations. Online payments carry your Stripe processing rate plus a 1.5% Twizzlo platform fee.

Twizzlo takes online payments and tips through Stripe at booking or checkout, supports prepaid bookings at the full service price and lets staff record manual payments. No-show fees are a setting the business controls, and whether to keep or refund a skipped prepaid booking is the business's decision. Twizzlo does not run a consumer marketplace, so it fits businesses that already bring in their own clients. Twizzlo's features page does not list packages, gift cards or memberships, so a salon that sells them should weigh the vendors above, whose pricing pages list some or all of them. Support is available 24/7 at support@twizzlo.com, and Twizzlo's pricing page has the full plan details.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and methodology

Method: plan prices, plan features and card rates were read on each vendor's own pricing page on October 2, 2026, without an account or login. Square's page is its US edition, in US dollars. Fresha's pricing page served its Canadian edition, so no Fresha price, percentage or allowance appears in this article. Table 3 and Figure 2 are a worked example for hypothetical salons; the arithmetic multiplies each published rate by the card volume, adds the fixed fee on each payment and adds the subscription. No product was tested hands-on. Comparison pages that rank for this search were read the same day for context only and are not used as price sources. Our editorial policy explains how we research and compare software.

• Square Appointments pricing page (US): plan prices per location, the feature grid by plan, card rates, text allowances, the trial, hardware, payroll and support hours, read October 2, 2026.

• Fresha pricing page: plans, billing per bookable team member, the marketplace new-client fee, own-channel bookings, payments, communications, add-ons, support and the FAQ (Canadian edition; no figure used), read October 2, 2026.

• Twizzlo's pricing and features pages (twizzlo.com/pricing/ and twizzlo.com/features/): Twizzlo plans, the 1.5% platform fee and payment features, read October 2, 2026.

• Comparison pages ranking for this search, read for context only and not linked: CostBench (Fresha vs Square Appointments), PaymentProviders.io (Square vs Fresha) and Square's Australian Square vs Fresha page, read October 2, 2026.

Both vendors change prices and plan features. Every figure above carries its October 2, 2026 read date; check each pricing page before you sign up or switch.