Favouritetable Alternative

The Favouritetable
Alternative
Built Around Sessions.

Favouritetable has been running UK restaurant diaries since 2010 and plenty of venues are perfectly happy on it. BookingNinja is the newer option: the same direct bookings on your own site with no per-cover fees, built around sessions and guest types instead of table slots, with events, memberships and gift cards in the box. We configure the whole thing for you in about a day.

Start For Free

No credit card required. No contracts. Cancel anytime.

No Per-Cover Fees
Flat pricing, even on your busiest nights
Free Forever Plan
All features, no card needed
Family-Run Support
Real people, not a call centre
Why Switch

A Proven Diary. What Is It Not Doing?

Favouritetable has handled reservations, pre-orders and payments well for a long time, and it takes no commission on its subscription plans. The gap is not service. It is booking model: what you can sell, and how you can price it.

Sessions, Not Diary Slots

A diary answers which table and when. BookingNinja starts from the sitting, so a session carries its own capacity, pricing, deposit rules and cut-off times. You sell a 7pm supper club the same way you sell a Tuesday lunch.

Adults, Children, Concessions

Guest types each carry their own price and their own deposit. A party of four can be two adults at full price and two children at half, charged correctly before anyone walks in.

Events, Memberships, Gift Cards

Ticketed events, recurring member plans and branded gift cards live in the same system as your covers. Favouritetable's published feature set covers reservations, pre-orders and ordering, so it is worth asking them where these would sit.

We Build It, You Check It

You should not have to rebuild years of setup by hand. Tell us how you trade and we configure the sessions, tables, guest types, deposits and booking page, usually about a day's work at our end.

Side by Side

BookingNinja vs Favouritetable

Both are UK companies selling direct bookings with no marketplace in the middle, and neither charges commission on its monthly plans. What differs is the booking model and how much arrives in one subscription.

Session-based capacity

BookingNinja
Favouritetable

Guest types with per-guest pricing

BookingNinja
Favouritetable

Deposit set per guest type

BookingNinja
Favouritetable

Ticketed events with per-guest tickets

BookingNinja
Favouritetable

Memberships & recurring billing

BookingNinja
Favouritetable

Gift cards

BookingNinja
Favouritetable

Deposits, prepayment & no-show card capture

BookingNinja
Favouritetable

Floor plans, table management & waitlists

BookingNinja
Favouritetable

Order & pay at table

BookingNinja
Favouritetable

Branded native mobile app

BookingNinja
Favouritetable

Favouritetable publishes its prices openly, from a capped free tier up to £199 a month plus VAT, and markets no commission, no per-cover fees and no tie-ins on those plans. Its optional pay-as-you-go plan is the exception at £2 per cover, and its card processing rate is not published, so ask for that figure before you compare totals. This comparison uses publicly available information and is accurate to the best of our knowledge. Anything marked unavailable was simply not found in Favouritetable's public materials, so check with them.

Guest choosing their guest types and table on a phone during the BookingNinja booking flow
Beyond the Diary

Sessions and
Guest Types.

A diary asks which table, at what time, for how many. That holds up until you want to sell a tasting menu at a set price per head, a kids party where adults and children pay different rates, or a supper club with 40 seats and no fixed table plan. BookingNinja starts from the session, and the guest picks their guest types on their phone before they ever see a table.

Sessions with their own rules
Capacity, pricing, deposits and cut-off times set per sitting rather than per table.
Priced per guest type
Adults, children, concessions and add-ons each carry a price and a deposit of their own.
Ticketed events
Sell a New Year sitting or a wine night by the ticket, with capacity counted by head.
Guests choose their table
Diners pick where they sit from your real floor plan while they are booking.
Membership plans and gift card sales history side by side in the BookingNinja admin
One Subscription

One System,
Not Five Products.

Favouritetable sells its takeaway and delivery ordering as a separate £99 a month product on top of the reservation plan. On BookingNinja, memberships, gift cards, order at table and your reporting are the same subscription and the same guest record. The member who buys a gift card and adds a second bottle at the table is one person in your data, not three.

Memberships
Recurring plans billed automatically, with member perks and booking discounts.
Gift cards
Branded cards sold and redeemed straight from your own booking page.
Order at table
Guests scan, order and pay from the table. Favouritetable does this too, and ours is included.
One set of numbers
Covers, revenue, no-shows and booking sources across bookings, memberships and orders.

When Staying on Favouritetable Is the Right Call

Plenty of venues have run on Favouritetable for a decade and have no reason to move. A few things genuinely point their way.

  • Pre-ordering is the heart of your business. Group and party pre-orders are Favouritetable's flagship, and years of work have gone into them. If most of your covers arrive with the menu already chosen, that tooling is hard to beat.
  • You want your own app in the app stores. Favouritetable ships branded iOS and Android apps. BookingNinja runs in the browser, which suits most venues but not every one.
  • You take takeaway and delivery orders. Favouritetable has a separate online ordering product for collection and delivery, plus till links to TISSL and Lightspeed. BookingNinja stops at bookings and order at table.

We are the same shape of company: UK, founder-led, direct, with nobody taking a cut of your guests. Favouritetable got there first and has served a lot of restaurants well. The question worth asking is whether your business has changed since you signed up. If you now run events, sittings, memberships or anything priced per head, that is the work BookingNinja was built for.

FAQ

Favouritetable Alternative Questions, Answered

What does BookingNinja do that my Favouritetable diary does not?
It sells things a table diary struggles with. Sessions have their own capacity and rules, guest types let you price adults, children and concessions separately, events can be sold as per-guest tickets, and memberships and gift cards sit alongside your covers. Favouritetable's public feature set covers reservations, pre-ordering and ordering rather than these, so ask them how they would handle a per-head event before you decide.
Do I lose deposits and no-show protection if I move?
No. Favouritetable takes deposits, full prepayment and card details for no-show charges, and so do we. The difference is granularity: on BookingNinja the rules are set per session and the deposit can be set per guest type, so a child's place can carry a smaller deposit than an adult's. It is included on every plan.
Can BookingNinja handle floor plans and waitlists properly?
Yes, and none of it is an upgrade. You draw your actual room across multiple floors, tables assign themselves by best fit and priority, large parties get table joins, walk-ins get seated from the plan, and a waitlist runs on the busy nights. During service the plan shows who is sitting, who is due and who has finished.
How does the pricing actually compare?
Neither of us charges commission on a monthly plan, so the honest answer is that it depends on your card volume. BookingNinja is a flat monthly fee with no per-cover fees and no contract, then standard Stripe processing plus a small platform fee of around 1%, varying by plan. Favouritetable publishes its subscription prices but not its card rate, and it also offers a pay-as-you-go plan at £2 per cover, so get both numbers before comparing.
Is there a free plan?
Yes, and it stays free. The Free Forever tier costs nothing a month, includes every feature, and covers up to 50 bookings a month that carry no payment. After those, a booking has to include a payment, and the customer pays a small fee at checkout of 2% or 50p, whichever is higher. It also does not ask to be your only booking provider, which Favouritetable's free tier does.
How much work is switching after years on Favouritetable?
Less than you would think. You can be taking bookings on your own BookingNinja page the same week: tell us how you trade and we build the sessions, tables, guest types, deposits and booking page for you, roughly a day of work at our end. Ask Favouritetable for an export of your guest list so your regulars and their notes come across with you.
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Ready to Outgrow
the Diary?

Live this week. Flat monthly pricing, no per-cover fees, nothing to sign, no card needed to start.

Start For Free

Free Forever plan: 50 no-payment bookings a month. Upgrade anytime.