OpenTable Review

OpenTable is the reservations, waitlist, and table-management system to buy if you run a full-service, booking-led restaurant and want its diner network driving guests to your door — but the headline $149–$499/month plan is only half the bill, because you also pay a per-cover fee every time a network diner sits down. If you're a QSR, café, or food truck that doesn't take reservations, there's almost nothing here for you.

OpenTable is a booking and front-of-house system, not a point-of-sale: you keep your existing POS and integrate it.

What Is OpenTable #

OpenTable is a cloud reservations, waitlist, table-management, and guest-relationship platform, paired with a consumer diner network — the OpenTable app and site plus 100-plus booking partner sites — that sends bookings into the restaurants that run it. The restaurant-facing product is sold under "Restaurant Solutions" in three plans: Basic, Core, and Pro.

Two things come bundled. First, the software your host stand runs on: customizable floor plans, table assignment, waitlist, guest profiles, messaging, and reporting. Second, distribution — inbound reservations from the OpenTable network, billed per "network cover." That second half is what you're really paying for and what separates OpenTable from a reservations tool that only manages your own bookings.

OpenTable, Inc. is headquartered in San Francisco and is part of Booking Holdings Inc., the online-travel group behind Booking.com and Priceline, which acquired it in 2014. It's built for full-service and reservations-driven venues — independents, bars, higher-check and experience-led dining rooms, multi-unit groups, and dedicated setups for hotels, casinos, and private/group dining.

Features #

Reservations and the diner network #

The core job is filling seats. Diners book through the OpenTable app, opentable.com, or any of 100-plus partner sites, and those reservations land on your floor plan. A customizable booking widget on your own site, Notify Me waitlist alerts, Experiences, and Ticketing round out the demand side, with deposits and credit-card holds to cut no-shows on high-demand nights.

Table and floor management #

On the operations side, customizable floor plans, Smart Assign table management, Access Rules, and an in-house plus online waitlist let a host seat the room from a web dashboard or a floor-plan app on the host-stand tablet. Automated reservation messages and direct guest messaging handle confirmations and running-late texts without a host tying up the phone.

Guest profiles and repeat business #

Guest profiles, real-time spend alerts, and a pre-shift report put a diner's history in front of the team before service — allergies, big spends, special occasions, visit count. On Pro, automated email campaigns, automated guest messaging, relationship management, and benchmark reporting turn that booking history into repeat business rather than one-off covers.

POS integration #

OpenTable integrates with your existing POS and other restaurant tools rather than replacing them, so check data can flow back against the reservation and feed guest spend. There's an Integrations & APIs hub for connecting POS, marketing, and other systems. OpenTable sells no proprietary hardware — it's software layered on the devices and POS you already run.

How the three plans differ #

The plan ladder is about depth, not a different product. Basic covers the essentials — your OpenTable profile and listing, a booking widget, review management, booking across 100-plus partner sites, Experiences, Ticketing, Notify Me, deposits, and card holds — enough for a single independent that mainly wants the network. Core adds the full table-management layer OpenTable positions as "best-in-class to maximize seatings": Smart Assign, advanced inventory controls, Access Rules, and the deeper waitlist and messaging tools, plus direct website reservations with no per-cover fee. Pro is the relationship tier — guest insights, automated email campaigns, automated guest messaging, relationship management, and benchmark reporting — aimed at multi-unit operators and concepts that live on repeat business. Dedicated solutions exist for hotels and casinos and for private and group dining.

Pricing #

OpenTable publishes three monthly plans plus a per-network-cover fee. The standard contract is one year, auto-renewing annually unless you notify OpenTable 30 days before renewal.

How the fee works: you pay the per-cover charge only for seated diners who came through the OpenTable network — not for phone reservations, walk-ins, no-shows, or cancellations. Reservations booked directly through your own website or booking widget are not network covers; on Basic they run $0.25 per cover (or a $49/month flat option), and on Core and Pro they're included at no per-cover charge.

OpenTable is not your payment processor, so there's no card-processing rate to weigh. The only payment-linked charge is a 2% service fee on prepaid and ticketed experiences. The real math to run before signing: multiply your expected monthly network covers by $1–$1.50 and add it to the subscription. A Core restaurant seating 600 network diners a month pays $299 plus $600 in cover fees — roughly $900, not $299 — while the same room filling most tables with walk-ins and repeat guests off its own booking widget pays close to the flat $299. That spread is the whole decision: the network earns its fee when it brings covers you couldn't fill yourself, and costs you when it's charging for diners who'd have come anyway.

Who It's For (and Who It Isn't) #

Good fit: full-service, reservations-driven restaurants, bars, and higher-check or experience-led venues that take bookings and want inbound demand they can't generate alone. Basic suits a single independent that wants the network; Core adds the table-management depth to maximize seatings; Pro fits multi-unit operators and relationship-driven concepts that want guest data and campaigns across locations. Hotels, casinos, and private-dining operators get dedicated solutions.

Weaker fit: quick-service, fast-casual, counter-service, cafés, and food trucks that don't take reservations. The entire value — network covers, table management, deposits, ticketing — is built around booked, seated dining, so if guests order at a counter you'd pay for machinery you can't use. Operators who only need to manage their own bookings and don't want inbound network demand will find the per-cover model hard to justify versus a flat-fee or POS-bundled reservations tool.

Is It Legit and Worth It? #

OpenTable is the most established name in restaurant reservations, backed by Booking Holdings, and it earns strong third-party marks — Capterra 4.7 from 1,322 reviews and G2 4.4 from 284. Operators consistently praise ease of use, the diner network as a genuine demand driver, the integrations, and the all-in-one reservations and table-management stack. For a booking-led restaurant, the network is the draw, and it delivers.

The complaints are real and worth pricing in. The loudest is cost: the per-cover network fee stacks on top of the monthly subscription, and because it scales with volume, a full dining room can pay far above the $149–$499 headline — the trade-off for inbound demand. Some operators cite a learning curve getting floor plans, Access Rules, and guest data dialed in, and a few report login and session issues. A few capabilities cost extra — Premium SMS messaging is an add-on, and waitlist direct-messaging is limited on the lower tier. And the one-year auto-renewing contract is a commitment; diary the 30-day opt-out window so a renewal doesn't catch you.

None of that is a dealbreaker for a restaurant that lives on reservations. The honest question is whether the covers the network brings you clear the per-cover fees — for a destination venue they usually do; for a neighborhood spot filling most tables with walk-ins and regulars, the math is tighter.

Alternatives #

OpenTable's pure-play rivals are Resy, SevenRooms, and Tock. If you'd rather fold reservations and table management into the system you already run instead of paying per-cover network fees, these catalog vendors are the honest cross-shops:

• SpotOn — restaurant POS whose SpotOn Reserve adds reservations and waitlist, so bookings and checks live in one system with no per-cover fee.
• TouchBistro — iPad POS with reservations and a guest-marketing add-on; a fit for full-service rooms that want booking and point-of-sale from one vendor.
• Square for Restaurants — free-tier POS with built-in table management and a flat, transparent fee structure; the simplest path for a small dining room.
• Lightspeed Restaurant — processor-flexible cloud POS for full-service and multi-location groups that want reservations through integration.
• Compare the field in our restaurant reservation software guide.

Login & Support #

Restaurant operators sign in to the OpenTable for Restaurants dashboard (the Guest Center management console) through the restaurant-solutions area of opentable.com; the consumer diner app and site are separate. Onboarding is demo-led — "See demo" or "Schedule a demo" — and OpenTable offers Consulting Services plus an Academy learning resource for customers.