TheFork Alternative

A TheFork
Alternative
For Your Own Covers.

TheFork charges nothing on bookings your own website and social pages bring in. The fee starts when a cover arrives through its marketplace or Tripadvisor, worked out as a percentage of your average bill per guest. What matters is which door your covers walk through, and what happens as that split shifts.

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

Two Doors, Two Sets of Economics

One door is free on TheFork. The other bills a percentage of your average bill per guest every time it opens, including for the regular it introduced you to two years ago.

It Comes Down to the Split

If most of your covers already arrive through your own site, you are paying an unpublished subscription for a marketplace you hardly use. If most arrive through the marketplace, your fees climb with every good service. Neither end of that scale feels great.

A Percentage of the Bill

TheFork's marketplace fee is set against your average bill per guest, so the table that orders well costs you more than the one that has a starter and leaves. BookingNinja is the same monthly figure whether the room is half empty or turning three times.

Regulars Stop Costing You

A diner who found you on the marketplace and keeps rebooking there keeps generating a fee. Book them on your own BookingNinja page and the second visit costs the same as the fiftieth, which is nothing extra.

No Discounting for Position

Owners writing publicly about TheFork often raise the pressure to run heavy menu discounts to stay visible in the marketplace. That is their view rather than TheFork's stated policy, but nothing about BookingNinja asks you to cut your prices to get bookings.

More Than Tables of Four

Ticketed sessions, guest types priced individually, party bookings with a deposit per head, memberships and order at table all sit in the same system as the reservation book.

You Know Who You Are Emailing

We are UK based and founder led. I build your venue with you, usually inside a working day, and the person who answers your email is the person who wrote the code.

Side by Side

BookingNinja vs TheFork

Both run a reservation book. They part company on which bookings carry a fee and who holds the guest afterwards.

Monthly price published up front

BookingNinja
TheFork
Quote only

Way to start without paying

BookingNinja
Free Forever plan
TheFork

Fee on marketplace covers, as a percentage of average bill per guest

BookingNinja
TheFork

Own-website and social bookings free of per-cover fees

BookingNinja
TheFork

Diner marketplace plus Tripadvisor distribution

BookingNinja
TheFork

Diner-facing loyalty points scheme

BookingNinja
TheFork

Floor plan and table management

BookingNinja
TheFork

Deposits, prepayment and card-guarantee no-show cover

BookingNinja
TheFork

Gift cards

BookingNinja
TheFork

Ticketed sessions with per-guest-type pricing

BookingNinja
TheFork

Memberships with recurring billing

BookingNinja
TheFork

Order at table from your own menu

BookingNinja
TheFork
Pay at table

TheFork does not charge commission on bookings from your own website, Instagram or Facebook. Its fee applies to bookings from the marketplace, Tripadvisor and partner channels, and is set as a percentage of your average bill per guest rather than a fixed amount per head. Its subscription is quoted case by case and is not published anywhere, so we list no figures for it. BookingNinja's monthly price is published, and card payments carry the usual Stripe processing charge plus a small platform fee of around 1%. Written from public information and correct as far as we can tell; check with TheFork for anything that has changed.

Guest choosing their table on their phone on the venue's own BookingNinja booking page
Own-Channel Covers

The Door That
Costs You Nothing.

TheFork itself treats your own website and social bookings as commission free, which tells you where it thinks the value sits. BookingNinja makes that channel the entire product. The name, the email address, the marketing consent and the visit history land in your account and stay there.

A guest list you can use
Names, emails, spend and visit history in one place, ready for your own campaigns.
Rebooking is free, every time
The fiftieth visit costs you no more than the first, because nothing is charged per cover.
Your name above the door
The booking page runs on your domain in your colours, with no rival restaurants listed beside it.
Follow-ups that come from you
Review requests, offers and quiet-Tuesday nudges go out under your name, from your own list.
BookingNinja floor plan editor with tables, areas and covers laid out on a map of the room
Service and Table Plan

Draw the Room Once,
Then Run Service On It.

TheFork Manager has a floor plan and a good one, so this is not where we claim some enormous gap. What we can say is that ours is on every plan rather than behind a quote, and it is the screen your team works from all night.

Your actual room
Draw the floor, place the tables and areas, set covers per table.
Best fit, then your call
Tables are picked by party size and priority, joins cover the big bookings, and you can move anything by hand.
Walk-ins and waitlist
Seat a walk-in straight from the plan and keep a waitlist running on the nights that need one.
Look ahead
Jump to next Saturday and see the room as it will be before you write the rota.

When TheFork Is the Right Call

It is a serious product with a real audience behind it, and there are jobs it does that we do not.

  • You need strangers to find you. TheFork runs Europe's largest diner marketplace and its listings also reach Tripadvisor's audience, so it puts your restaurant in front of people who have never heard of you. There is no BookingNinja marketplace of any kind. We work the channels you already own, which means we will never hand you a guest you did not bring in yourself.
  • You want offers to move quiet services. Yums points and marketplace discounts can fill a Tuesday in a way that a direct-only booking page was never designed to.

Running both is a perfectly sensible answer, and plenty of restaurants do: the marketplace for discovery, BookingNinja for everyone who already knows the way. We are not going to ask you to switch off something that is working.

FAQ

TheFork Alternative Questions, Answered

Would I actually save money?
Start with your channel split. TheFork bills nothing on the bookings your own site and social pages generate, so the fee only lands on covers from its marketplace, Tripadvisor and partner channels, and it is a percentage of your average bill per guest rather than a set amount per head. On top of that sits a subscription quoted privately rather than published. BookingNinja is a published monthly price with nothing charged per cover, plus standard card processing on payments you take. If a decent share of your covers already come direct, a flat fee usually wins, but run it against your own booking report rather than taking my word for it.
What happens as more of my covers come from the marketplace?
Your TheFork bill grows with them, twice over. More marketplace covers means more fees, and because the fee is a percentage of the average bill per guest, the tables that spend well are the expensive ones. A flat monthly fee behaves the opposite way: the busier the room gets, the less each cover has cost you to take.
Do I have to leave TheFork to use BookingNinja?
No, and lots of venues do not. Keep the marketplace for the diners it genuinely finds you, and put your website, your Instagram bio link and your repeat trade through BookingNinja. The two books can run alongside each other.
Can I bring my guest list with me?
Yes. Export your diners out of TheFork and bring them across. You can be taking bookings on your own page the same day you decide, and we do the venue build for you, normally inside a working day.
Does BookingNinja handle the floor properly?
Yes. Floor plans, live table statuses through service, automatic table assignment, joins for large parties, walk-ins and a waitlist are all in there, on every plan rather than a higher tier.
What about deposits and no-shows?
Both platforms take this seriously, and TheFork has a card guarantee, pre-authorisation and its own diner deactivation policy behind the marketplace. On BookingNinja you get deposits, full prepayment and card capture on every plan, set per session or per guest type, with nothing charged per booking on top.
What does it cost to start?
Free Forever is £0 a month with every feature switched on and up to 50 bookings a month that take no payment. After that a booking has to carry a payment, and the guest is charged a small booking fee at checkout of 2% or 50p, whichever is the larger. Paid plans are a flat monthly price with no contract and nothing per cover.
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Ready to Own
Your Own Door?

Live in about a day. A published monthly price, nothing charged per cover, no contract, and no card needed to open an account.

Start For Free

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