Favouritetable vs ResDiary: an honest, sourced comparison for UK restaurants (2026)

Pricing transparency: the clearest difference between the two

If you are shortlisting booking systems, the first thing you will notice is that Favouritetable tells you what it costs before you speak to anyone. The published reservation plans are FT Lite at £55 per month, FT Pro at £103 per month and FT Ultimo at £159 per month, each billed annually in advance and quoted excluding VAT, with the annual saving stated next to each tier. FT Online Ordering is £79 per month on the same billing basis.

ResDiary takes the opposite approach at plan level. Its pricing page sets out the features included — commission-free bookings, a customisable booking widget, table management, yield management, promotions and special events, credit-card guarantee and payment, customisable diner notifications, advanced reporting, marketing software integration, 24/7 support and unlimited users — and then invites you to find out which plan suits your venue rather than showing a price^[1].

Where ResDiary does publish numbers is on add-ons, and this is worth reading closely because it shapes your real monthly cost. The UK add-on form lists Pre-orders, Gift Vouchers, ResPhone and Event Manager at £35 per month each, and SMS, POS, PMS and CRM integrations at £10 per month each ^[12]. ResDiary's pricing page separately states a 1.2% surcharge for processing deposits and payments and 3% for gift vouchers, with Stripe and SMS fees applying separately^[1].

That matters for budgeting. A venue that wants pre-ordering with payment, event and enquiry handling, SMS reminders and a POS link is adding four or five separately priced lines to whatever the base plan costs, plus the published payment-processing surcharge. With Favouritetable you are choosing a tier, seeing the price, and adding SMS usage on top — which is why we are comfortable putting our prices on a public page.

ResDiary's base-plan price is set per venue rather than published, which is a normal way to sell hospitality software — it simply means the comparison you can do at home is limited to the add-ons and surcharges above. Whichever system you shortlist, ask for the total first-year cost in writing, including setup, add-ons, payment surcharges and SMS.

Commission and cover fees: both commission-free, with different edges

This is one area where we will not manufacture a difference. ResDiary is genuinely commission-free on direct bookings, and says so plainly: regardless of whether the booking comes from your website, your social channels, Reserve with Google or Dish Cult, you do not pay a commission fee ^[1]. Favouritetable is also commission-free on its subscription plans, with no per-cover fee and no tie-in on bookings through your own channels.

So the honest comparison is not commission versus commission — it is what sits around the booking. ResDiary applies a 1.2% surcharge on processing deposits and payments and 3% on gift voucher sales, before Stripe's own fees ^[1]. If deposits are central to how you protect a Saturday night, that percentage is a real, recurring cost that scales with your success.

Favouritetable's three published reservation subscriptions do not charge booking commission or a per-cover fee on bookings through a venue's own channels.

The broader point for an independent operator is control. Neither platform pushes you into paying for diners who would have booked with you anyway. Both let you own the booking journey on your own domain. Where Favouritetable pulls ahead is that the tools you use to convert and keep those diners — CRM, email, SMS, WhatsApp, review management, pre-ordering — are part of the plan structure rather than a shopping list of monthly add-ons.

Day-to-day features: what is in the box versus what is an add-on

Both systems cover the fundamentals well. ResDiary includes table management, yield management, promotions and special events, advanced reporting and unlimited users in its base feature list^[1], and its W8List tool lets teams place walk-ins without clashing with pre-booked reservations^[4].That is a solid operational core built over many years, and it shows.

Favouritetable's reservation system covers the same ground — diary, visual floor plan, table management, capacity optimiser, booking rules, waiting list, booking enquiries, allergen management and reporting — and then keeps going into guest marketing and ordering within the same subscription. Email, SMS and WhatsApp marketing, CRM segmentation, guest review management, menu pre-ordering, online ordering, order and pay at table and a branded app are all Favouritetable products, and the pricing page shows exactly which tier unlocks each one.

The structural difference is where features live commercially. With ResDiary, several of the things a busy pub or restaurant treats as everyday tooling are separately priced: enquiry and large-party handling via Event Manager, pre-ordering and payment via Order & Pay, reminders and promotions via SMS, cross-venue selling via Group Bookings, and POS, PMS or CRM connections as individual monthly connectors^[1].

There are also capabilities we could not find published anywhere on ResDiary's site: WhatsApp as a messaging channel, order-at-table, guest feedback surveys and a diner-facing branded app. We are not claiming ResDiary cannot do these things — only that they are not publicly documented, and you should ask directly rather than assume. ResDiary does publish operator-facing mobile apps^[5].Its allergen handling, as documented, takes the form of dietary markers and cooking modifiers inside pre-order menu setup rather than a standalone allergen module^[7].

One more current detail worth knowing: ResDiary relaunched its platform as ResDiary Evo in October 2025, adding AI-oriented features such as no-show risk prediction and smart guest tagging^[11].The tier gating for those AI features is not published, so if they are part of your business case, get the specifics in writing.

• Included in Favouritetable's plan structure: diary, floor plan, capacity optimiser, waiting list, enquiries, pre-ordering, allergen management, CRM, email/SMS/WhatsApp marketing, review management and reporting, with tier gating shown publicly.
• Priced separately by ResDiary:> Order & Pay, Gift Vouchers, ResPhone, Event Manager, SMS, Group Bookings, POS, PMS and CRM/marketing connections^[1].
• Not publicly documented by ResDiary: WhatsApp marketing, order-at-table, guest surveys, diner-facing branded app.

Integrations: reach versus fit for a UK independent

ResDiary advertises more than 70 technology integrations across EPOS, PMS, solutions and booking partners^[10]], with confirmed POS connections including Square for Restaurants, PowerEPOS from Triniteq, AccessEPoS and Oracle Simphony^[8]. Its demand-side partners include Reserve with Google, Meta channels, DesignMyNight, First Table and Dish Cult, its own diner-discovery platform ^[1][9].If you run a hotel with a PMS or a large group with an established enterprise POS, that breadth is a genuine strength — though note the UK add-on form lists POS and PMS integrations at £10 per month each^[12].

Favouritetable's published integration list is more focused and, for a typical UK independent, hits the same practical points: TISSL and Lightspeed for EPOS, Stripe for payments, Mailchimp for email, Reserve with Google for search-led bookings, SquareMeal and First Table for incremental demand, Really Social and Facebook for social, Deliverect for ordering integration, and Rezcontrol. Favouritetable also states that partners can build against its API or have Favouritetable integrate with theirs, so a bespoke link is a conversation rather than a dead end.

The practical test is not the length of the list, it is whether your stack is on it and what the connection costs. Send both vendors your actual EPOS, payment provider and email platform and ask three questions: is it live today, what does it cost per month, and who supports it when it breaks?

Support, ownership and who picks up the phone

Both companies are UK-registered, and both advertise round-the-clock support: ResDiary lists 24/7 support as an included feature^[1], and Favouritetable publishes a 24/7 free support line alongside UK-based telephone, email, in-app chat and social support, documentation, and online or on-site training. On Favouritetable's plans, ticket and email support is available on FT Lite, with telephone support included on FT Pro and FT Ultimo.

Ownership shapes how each company behaves. ResDiary has been part of Access Hospitality, a division of The Access Group, since completion on 11 July 2023^[2], and its help centre now sits on The Access Group's domain ^[3].That brings the resources and wider product suite of a large software group, and it means booking is one product line inside a broad portfolio.

Favouritetable is an independent UK business built specifically for UK hospitality, which means a shorter route from your problem to a decision-maker and a roadmap driven by operators rather than a group portfolio strategy. Its work has been recognised by the industry: Booking, Ordering & Payment Solution of the Year at The Caterer Supplier Awards 2026, Restaurant Booking Platform of the Year in the Corporate LiveWire Prestige Awards 2024/25, and Best Restaurant Listing & Reservation Systems Provider at the UK Enterprise Awards 2022.

Whichever way you lean, ask both vendors for two reference customers of similar size and service style to you, and call them. A ten-minute conversation with a comparable operator tells you more than any rating on any site.

Switching from ResDiary to Favouritetable

Most venues that switch booking systems worry about three things: losing guest history, breaking the booking widget on their website, and going dark during a live service. Favouritetable supports importing an existing guest database — a supplementary charge may apply depending on how complex your data is — and onboarding is included on its published reservation plans. Your booking widget is embedded on your own site, so the change is a swap rather than a rebuild, and your guest data remains yours to export at any time.

Before you give notice on any incumbent, check your contract's renewal date and notice period. We could not retrieve ResDiary's product terms and conditions document during our research, so we are not going to characterise its contract length or notice requirements. Ask ResDiary directly, in writing, for the minimum term, renewal behaviour and notice period on your specific agreement, and time your switch accordingly.

A sensible switching sequence: run a demo against your own service pattern, confirm total year-one costs from both vendors in writing, check your notice period, export your guest data, then go live between service periods with the new widget staged and ready. Favouritetable's team does this regularly with UK venues and will walk the sequence with you rather than leaving you to it.