Tock Alternative

The Tock
Alternative
Built for the UK.

Tock turned the tasting menu into a ticket, and it is very good at that. Most UK venues want prepaid events on some nights and normal table service on the rest. BookingNinja does both on your own website, in GBP, with a UK team behind it.

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

Prepay When It Helps, Not by Default

Tock's model starts from the ticket. Ours starts from the booking, and you decide which nights carry money upfront. The chef's table can be paid in full while Tuesday dinner stays a free reservation.

Ticketed Nights, Free Nights

Sell a tasting menu or an event as a prepaid ticket, then run a standard no-payment booking the next evening. Payment rules sit on the session, so one venue can do both without two systems.

The Guest List Stays Here

Bookings arrive through your own site. Names, emails, consent and history sit in your account, not in a diner-facing network that lists the restaurant down the road next to you.

Priced in Pounds, In Public

Our plans are on the website in GBP. Tock quotes UK pricing through sales and publishes no figures, so you cannot compare until you have been through a call.

More Than the Meal Itself

Memberships, gift cards, party bookings and QR ordering at the table are part of the same account. Tock To Go handles takeout and delivery; in-venue ordering is our side of the line.

You Ring Us, We Answer

We build your venue for you in about a day, and the person who replies is the person who wrote the code. Support is Tock's lowest score on Capterra UK at 2.3 out of 5.

Side by Side

BookingNinja vs Tock

Both handle prepaid dining and both run a flat monthly model. The differences are the marketplace, the everyday reservation, and where you sit when something goes wrong.

Prepaid tasting menus and ticketed seatings

BookingNinja
Tock

Deposits, full prepayment and card holds

BookingNinja
Tock

Free bookings with nothing taken upfront

BookingNinja
Tock

Payment rules set per session and per guest type

BookingNinja
Tock
Experiences only

Dynamic pricing for premium seatings

BookingNinja
Tock

Published price list in GBP

BookingNinja
Tock

Flat monthly rate, no per-cover fee

BookingNinja
Tock

Consumer discovery marketplace

BookingNinja
Tock

Floor plan with automatic table assignment

BookingNinja
Tock

Venue-run memberships

BookingNinja
Tock
Not evidenced

Gift cards

BookingNinja
Tock
Not evidenced

QR ordering at the table

BookingNinja
Tock
Takeout and delivery

Tock does not publish UK prices. Its pricing pages block automated access and route you to sales, and the figures floating around online are third-party and in US dollars, so we will not repeat them as fact. Tock's own pitch is a flat monthly rate with no per-cover fees. Where a row says "not evidenced", we could not find the feature documented rather than confirm it is missing. Accurate to the best of our knowledge; check with Tock for the current position.

Guest choosing their table on a BookingNinja booking page on a phone
Guest Profiles

Your Website,
Your Guest List.

A guest who books through your BookingNinja page belongs to you. Their contact details, their marketing consent and everything they have booked before sit in your account. There is no diner-facing site collecting that relationship on the way through.

A guest list you own
Names, emails, consent and booking history held by you, exportable whenever you want them.
Nobody advertising over your shoulder
On exploretock.com and across the Amex dining network, a diner searching for you also sees your neighbours. On your own page they see one restaurant.
Book from any phone
Guests pick their session, guest types and table on your branded page, on mobile or desktop.
Own the follow-up
Review requests, offers and rebooking nudges go out from your own list, built in.
Live floor plan during service showing seated tables, upcoming bookings and tonight's booking list
Pacing & Seating

See the Whole
Room, Live.

Tock built a proper multi-room floor plan with automatic assignment and pacing, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Ours does the same job and doubles as the screen your team actually works from during service: who is sat, who is due, who has paid the bill.

Your real floor plan
Draw the room, drop in tables and areas, and let guests pick a table when they book.
Automatic table assignment
Best-fit table by party size and priority, with joins for the big tables, override any time.
Walk-ins and waitlist
Seat walk-ins straight from the floor plan and run a waitlist on the nights you are full.
Any service at a glance
Flip to next Saturday to see the room as it will be, then plan the covers around it.
Membership plans and gift card sales history side by side in the BookingNinja admin
Beyond Table Tickets

One System,
Not Five Add-Ons.

A prepaid seating is one thing a restaurant sells. The wine club, the Christmas vouchers, the private hire deposit and the drinks the table orders at 9pm are the rest of it. All of that runs from the same account here.

Deposits set by you
Full payment, part payment or a card held against no-shows, per session and per guest type.
Venue-run memberships
Recurring plans, member perks and booking discounts, billed automatically to your regulars.
Gift cards
Sell them, redeem them and see the balance next to the booking they get spent on.
Order at table
Guests scan, order and pay from their seat, and the order goes to your kitchen.

When Tock Might Be the Better Fit

We would rather be honest than win the wrong customer. Tock is a serious product and there are venues it suits better than we do.

  • Your business is the prepaid seating. Tock was built around table tickets and tasting menus, right down to dynamic pricing on the best seats in the room. If almost every cover you sell is paid for in advance, that depth is worth having and we will not match it feature for feature.
  • You want the Amex dining network in front of you. Tock lists you on exploretock.com and distributes through American Express, which brings diners who were not looking for you specifically. We have no consumer site of our own. BookingNinja powers the booking on pages you already control, so the traffic has to be yours.

Plenty of venues can run both: Tock for the headline ticketed experiences, BookingNinja for the everyday service, the memberships and the ordering they would rather keep on their own site. We are happy to sit next to it. If prepaid experiences are the whole business, Tock is probably your answer and we will tell you so.

FAQ

Tock Alternative Questions, Answered

Is BookingNinja a good alternative to Tock for UK restaurants?
It is if you want prepaid events without running your whole diary as a ticket shop. BookingNinja takes bookings on your own website, handles deposits and prepayment the way Tock does, and covers ordinary free reservations on the quieter nights. Memberships, gift cards and order-at-table come with it. We build the venue for you, usually within a day.
Can I sell prepaid tasting menus and ticketed events?
Yes. A session can be set to take full payment upfront, a fixed deposit, a percentage, or a card held against a no-show, and you can price each guest type separately. That covers a 12-cover chef's table on Friday and a general-admission event on Sunday from the same diary. The one thing we do not do is dynamic pricing that varies by seat quality.
What about the nights we just want normal table bookings?
Leave the payment settings off and the booking is free to make. This is where Tock gets awkward for casual and neighbourhood venues, because upfront payment is a hard sell for a Tuesday table for two. Payment rules live on the session here, so the same venue can charge on one and not the other.
Will I still own my guest data if I move from Tock?
Yes. Anything booked through your BookingNinja page is yours: names, emails, marketing consent, booking history. No discovery site or dining network sits in the middle taking the relationship, and you can export the list at any point.
How much does BookingNinja cost compared to Tock?
Our plans are flat monthly in GBP and published on the site, with no per-cover fees. On top of that you pay standard card processing plus a small platform fee of around 1 percent, depending on plan. Tock does not publish a UK price list and quotes through sales, so nobody can give you a like-for-like number until you have had that call. Price both against your own cover count.
Is there a free plan?
There is. Free Forever costs nothing a month, includes every feature, and covers up to 50 bookings a month where no money changes hands. After that a booking has to carry a payment, and the guest pays a booking fee at checkout of 2% or 50p, whichever is higher.
Is BookingNinja UK-based?
Yes. It is built and run from the UK by a small team, and the same people handle setup and support. Tock is a US company inside American Express with a smaller UK operation, so the hours and the accent on the other end of an urgent email are worth thinking about.
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Ready to Own
Your Bookings?

Prepaid nights, free nights, one diary. Flat monthly pricing, no contract, UK support from the people who built it.

Start For Free

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