How mee-table compares to booking portals, explained by us
We wrote this page: mee-table did, and you should know that before reading the rest. What follows are checkable facts (subscription fee, commissions, data, where the booking form lives), not opinions: sources and dates sit next to every competitor figure.
The comparison on facts
The competitors here are booking portals (OpenTable, TheFork, Quandoo) and subscription systems like Zenchef.
| Point | mee-table | Portals |
|---|---|---|
| Commission on bookings | No commission per cover: you pay the plan's fixed fee, from €24/month with annual payment. | Yes, on bookings sourced from their network. Amounts differ by portal: verified figures are in the table below. |
| Where the booking form lives | On the restaurant's own website or its Google profile: guests book without leaving the venue's own channels. | On the portal's own platform, with a profile inside their restaurant listing. |
| Your restaurant appears in a list next to competitors | No: mee-table is not a marketplace, there is no showcase with competitors around you. | Yes, by design: that is how all three portals describe themselves on their own official pages ("marketplace", "listing", "profile on the platform"). |
| Who the guest data belongs to | It stays in the restaurant's own account, under the terms of service. | It stays on the portal's platform: export and usage terms need checking in each portal's own terms. |
| A chatbot that sees real availability | Yes: it reads the venue's own booking register and answers with real open slots. | Not a feature advertised on the three portals' official product pages (checked on 28/8/2026). |
The three portals' figures, verified
Read directly from official pages on 28/8/2026. Where a price is not public, we say so: "check for yourself" beats a wrong number.
Fee: $149/month
Commission: A per-cover fee on bookings from the OpenTable network. The exact amount is not stated on this page: check it before signing.
On the Core plan, bookings from your own website are free, and no-shows are never charged: stated on their official page.
Source: opentable.com/restaurant-solutions/plans/basic (and /core)
Fee: By request: no price published on the official site.
Commission: A percentage of your average bill per guest, for bookings coming from TheFork, Tripadvisor and partners. They do not publish the exact percentage: our own estimate, taken from the public price lists and used in the calculator at mee-table.com/alternativa-portali-prenotazione, is around 2.30 euro per cover.
Bookings from your own website, Instagram and Facebook are included, meaning no commission: stated on their official page.
Source: theforkmanager.com/en/restaurant-software-price
Fee: £39/month + £249 one-time setup fee.
Commission: £3.90 per cover on bookings from the Quandoo network.
Bookings from your own website's widget, Google and social are free. The Premium plan costs £99/month + £749 one-time, same commission. UK pricing: other markets may differ. NOTE: Quandoo has announced it stops accepting bookings on 30 September 2026, so for anyone choosing today it is not a competitor any more, it is a supplier to replace.
Source: restaurants.quandoo.com/en-gb/pricing-plans
Fee: Not published: the plans page tells you to contact them.
Commission: Zero per cover on the Reserve plan, same as us. But on payments: card 6% on Reserve, 4% on Manage, 2% on Grow; iDEAL 3.29 euro per transaction on Reserve, 0.29 only on Grow.
Multi-venue, website, automatic SMS and the AI assistant are separate paid add-ons, and their price is not published either. European, strong in the Netherlands after buying Formitable.
Source: zenchef.com/plans, read on 28/8/2026
Price lists change: if what you see when you sign up differs from this, check the date above and look again on their site.
When a portal is the better choice, not us
We say this because it is true, not out of politeness: a portal does a job we do not do.
- If you are opening today with no customers yet, you need to be found by people who do not know you: that is a portal's job, not ours.
- A portal brings new eyes to your restaurant every day. mee-table manages the bookings that come from YOUR own channels: your website, your Google profile, your social media. If those channels have no traffic, mee-table will not invent it for you.
- The two are not mutually exclusive: you can stay on a portal for discovery and use mee-table for the form on your own website, where you pay no commission on what you bring in yourself.
- Restaurants with an existing regular clientele, who come back through the restaurant's own site or Google, save the most by no longer paying a per-cover commission on bookings that would have come in anyway.
The chatbot that sees real availability
This is the real technical difference: our guest assistant reads the venue's own booking register. Asked "do you have a table Saturday evening?" it answers with real open slots, not a redirect to the phone.
It never invents prices: it states them only if the restaurant has published them on its own pages, and repeats that exact figure. Same for allergens: it only repeats what the venue has written, never a guarantee of its own.
When it does not know something, it says so and sends the guest to the venue. It is not built to promise things just to avoid disappointing someone.
Try mee-table, or see the price list
The fee is fixed, from €24/month with annual payment, zero commission per cover. Fourteen days to try it, no credit card.