Comparison
A Fresha alternative built for one chair
Fresha is built for Salons and spas, with per-team-member pricing above a solo plan.
Chairwarden is built for one person renting one chair. That narrower aim is the whole difference, and it cuts both ways — there is a list further down of what Fresha does better.
Free to try, up to 15 bookings/month · calendar protection included on every plan
What each one takes from a booking
Fresha
Fresha takes a one-time 20% commission on the first booking of a new client who arrives through its marketplace. Returning clients carry no fee.
fresha.com/pricing, checked 2026-09-05
Chairwarden
$29 a month, or $23 paid yearly. No percentage and no per-booking fee. When a client pays a deposit it lands in your own Stripe account, and we take nothing out of it.
Stripe Connect Standard, direct charges
The part nobody else does
Chairwarden refuses the booking that would split your best slot.
You have a four-hour opening for a colour appointment. A 30-minute trim books into the middle of it, and the whole block is gone — two unusable stubs instead of $250 of work. Chairwarden simply never offers that slot to a short service. You can relax the rule if you want a quick cut to fit inside the processing time.
What Fresha has instead
Fresha handles "processing and finishing times" — the gap inside a colour service. That is the same idea as Vagaro's, and it is not the same as refusing a short booking inside a long one.
fresha.com/pricing, checked 2026-09-05
Where Fresha is genuinely better
- Point of sale, stock and product sales
- Marketing tools and a consumer marketplace
- Team scheduling across several people
Choose Fresha if you sell retail products or run a team, and want the marketplace as a client source.
What Chairwarden does not do
- No card terminal or point of sale — deposits online only
- No marketing campaigns
- No staff accounts; one stylist per account
- No marketplace, so it will not find clients for you
- No client-facing app — your clients book on the web
Try it on your own calendar
Free up to 15 bookings a month, no card. Calendar protection is on from the first booking.
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