TL;DR: Vagaro is the honest giant of salon software: a marketplace that lists you free and takes nothing from a standard booking, a huge feature suite, and pricing that starts low, then rises after six months and grows again with every add-on. Rezzy is the opposite shape: one flat price forever, no add-on menu, and payments through your own Stripe or Square instead of Vagaro’s own merchant program.
Vagaro deserves more credit than the marketplace platforms usually compared with it: its marketplace lists you at no extra cost and takes no fee on a standard booking. So the Rezzy comparison here is not about fees quietly landing on clients you already had. It is about two philosophies of software: an everything-suite priced piece by piece, or a front desk that comes whole for one price.
Rezzy vs Vagaro at a glance
| Vagaro | Rezzy | |
|---|---|---|
| Base price | $30/mo per location ($23.99/mo for your first 6 months) (pricing) | Solo $19/mo, Studio $39/mo with 5 seats included (pricing) |
| Marketplace booking fee | $0 on the standard listing (pricing) | No marketplace, no fee |
| Optional paid promotion | Fill My Books: 5% per booking from an existing client, 20% from a brand-new one (details) | None offered |
| Payment processing | Vagaro Merchant Services only, from 2.6% + 10¢ in person, 3.5% + 19¢ online (rates) | Your own Stripe or Square account |
| Who holds your money | Vagaro’s merchant program (an ISO of PNC Bank) | You, directly |
| Extras | Add-ons: text marketing, forms, website, branded app, payroll, each priced separately | Everything ships with the plan |
| Client list export | Self-serve, owner-only, per Vagaro’s own guide | One-click CSV on any plan |
| Try it without risk | 30-day trial (email, text marketing, and the branded app excluded) | 30-day money-back guarantee, all features |
Competitor prices and policies checked September 9, 2026 against the linked official pages. Prices change; the links are the source of truth.
How Vagaro pricing actually assembles
Read the sticker carefully. Vagaro’s own pricing page shows $23.99 a month for one bookable calendar, labeled “exclusive rate for the first 6 months,” next to a $30 figure that is the price after that. The month-one number is not the month-thirteen number, and a comparison that only quotes $23.99 is quoting a rate you keep for half a year.
Adding staff costs more, but Vagaro does not publish the number. The pricing page has a calendar-count selector, one, two, three, up to seven or more, and the price it shows updates as you move it, without a stated per-seat rate anywhere in the page text. If you run a team, the honest answer is: get your real number from Vagaro’s own calculator before you commit, because nobody outside Vagaro can quote it for you.
The suite is where the bill grows further. Text marketing, digital forms, the website builder, the check-in app, and payroll are each their own add-on, and a branded client app runs into the hundreds. None of this is hidden; it is a menu, and menus add up. A studio using forms, text marketing, and a website builder pays for each on top of the base subscription.
Payments are the structural piece. Card processing runs through Vagaro Merchant Services, an ISO of PNC Bank; you cannot connect a Stripe or Square account you already own (Vagaro’s processing page). In-person rates are fair, especially at volume: 2.6% + 10¢ for smaller merchants, 2.29% + 19¢ plus $10 a month above $4,000 in monthly card volume. Online and keyed-in transactions cost more, 3.5% + 19¢ at either tier, and Tap to Pay adds 6¢. The merchant relationship belongs to the platform, and your money routes through it.
One more line item deserves its own paragraph, because it is the exception to the free marketplace above. Vagaro sells an opt-in promotion called Fill My Books, which took over from Get Featured and Daily Deals in July 2026. There is no monthly fee for it. Instead there is a per-booking fee of 5% when the client is already yours and 20% when the client is brand new (Vagaro’s own page). Vagaro is straight about the deal: you opt in, you cap the discount, you pick the services, and a promotion that produces no booking costs you nothing. Read the 20% for what it is anyway. That is a commission on a first visit, the same shape of fee the marketplace platforms charge by default, offered here as a channel you choose rather than a toll you discover. Leave it switched off and Vagaro’s marketplace stays free.
How Rezzy prices the same studio
By team size, once: Solo $19, Studio $39 with five seats included, Unlimited $79 with unlimited seats and the email marketing suite. Deposits, review requests, reports, standing appointments, the client book, and the booking widget for your own website are all in every plan; there is no add-on menu to price out.
Payments go through the Stripe or Square account you own. Rezzy never processes, holds, or schedules your money; deposits and balance links settle to your account at your processor’s normal speed. If you ever leave, the processor relationship, and every saved client card inside it, stays yours.
Every completed visit still owed for, in one list. Collect emails the client a payment link, and the money lands in your own Stripe or Square account.
What a year actually costs
The only number both platforms let us compute honestly is a single operator, one calendar, no add-ons, because that is the one Vagaro publishes a real price for.
| Line item | Vagaro, one calendar | Rezzy Solo |
|---|---|---|
| Year one | $323.94 (6 months at $23.99, then 6 at $30) | $108 ($9 × 12, founding annual price) |
| Year two onward | $360 ($30 × 12) | $108, held as long as the plan runs |
| Marketplace booking fee | $0 | $0 |
| Card processing | Vagaro Merchant Services rates, platform payout | Your own Stripe or Square rates, direct |
Rezzy is cheaper even in Vagaro’s discounted first year, and the gap widens every year after, before either platform’s add-ons enter the picture. Read our own sticker the way we just told you to read Vagaro’s: $9 a month is the founding annual price, capped at the first 30 studios and held for as long as the plan runs. Month to month is $19, and once the 30 are gone annual is $190 a year. Add a second chair and the comparison gets harder to pin down on Vagaro’s side by design: Rezzy’s Studio plan is still a flat $39 with five seats included, while Vagaro’s per-calendar increment is not published anywhere we could read.
Three practitioners on the Studio plan. The fourth and the fifth cost nothing more, and there is no calendar counter to run first.
Want the front desk without the menu? Rezzy runs booking, reminders, deposits, reviews, and rebooking at one flat price, through your own Stripe or Square. Take a booking today.
What Vagaro does better
- The marketplace, honestly priced. Vagaro’s consumer marketplace lists your studio at no extra cost and takes no fee on a standard booking, which is genuinely rare. Rezzy has no marketplace at all.
- Breadth. POS hardware, retail inventory, memberships, loyalty points, payroll, even a branded app. If you want one vendor for everything including the cash drawer, Vagaro is built for that.
- Processing rates at volume. The 2.29% + 19¢ large-merchant in-person rate is one of the lowest published in the industry.
- Price of entry. $23.99 for your first six months is a lower opening number than Rezzy’s Solo plan.
What Rezzy does better
- The money path. Your own processor, your own merchant relationship, zero platform custody. Only a handful of tools in this market work this way, and it is the difference between using a processor and being processed.
- A price you can actually predict. No calendar-count calculator to run, no six-month cliff. What the plan says is what every month costs, including the thirteenth.
- A book that works your regulars. The self-building client timeline, the needs-rebooking list that flags lapsed regulars, and automatic Google review requests are on every plan, not tiers.
- Small-team focus. Rezzy is deliberately boutique: no inventory module you will never open, no feature maze between you and today’s schedule.
The whole front desk on one screen: every practitioner’s week, filtered to whoever you want to see.
Which one should you pick?
Pick Vagaro if you are running a retail-and-services operation: product inventory on shelves, memberships, loyalty points, payroll, and a front counter that needs a full POS. It is the most complete suite in this comparison, and its base marketplace costs you nothing extra, so long as you read the pricing page past the first six months. Pick Rezzy if you are running a boutique studio on relationships: your revenue is appointments, your growth is regulars and referrals, and you would rather own the payment relationship than rent one, at a price that never itemizes and never resets after a promo period. That is the shape salons, lash artists, and barbershops tend to be, and it is the only shape Rezzy tries to serve.