How Much Does Treatwell Charge Salons? Fees Explained
Treatwell charges UK salons 35% commission plus VAT on new clients' first bookings. Every fee explained, with the monthly price Treatwell doesn't publish.
Treatwell charges UK salons a monthly software fee it doesn’t publish, plus 35% commission on a new marketplace client’s first booking — with VAT on top, an effective 42% if your salon isn’t VAT-registered. Repeat and direct bookings are 0%. Online prepayments add 2.5% plus VAT; Treatwell Pay card payments cost 1.1% + 20p ex VAT.
Every figure below is read from Treatwell’s own partner pages or from guides that read them directly, with the read dates given. Where sources disagree — and they do, including Treatwell’s own pages — this article says so rather than picking the convenient number. Fees checked October 2026; Treatwell can change them, so confirm against your partner agreement.
The short version: four charges exist. (1) A monthly fee — amount not published. (2) 35% + VAT on a new client’s first marketplace booking only. (3) 2.5% + VAT on online prepayments. (4) Optional card payments at 1.1% + 20p ex VAT. Everything else — repeats, direct bookings, your own Book Now button — is 0% commission.
Is Treatwell free for salons? The monthly fee it doesn’t publish
No. There are two plans — Freelancer (for solo operators) and Advanced (for teams, with no extra charge per stylist) — but Treatwell’s UK pricing page does not print what either costs. Beeviral, which read Treatwell’s UK pages on 18 September 2026, puts it bluntly: the page just doesn’t say what it costs. Resoclinx, checking in October 2026, found the same: Treatwell does not print its UK plan prices.
You may see a figure quoted elsewhere: one rival, Booksy, claims in its comparison table that Treatwell starts at “£40 + VAT a month, typically on rigid annual commitments.” Treat that as what it is — an unverified competitor claim. Treatwell’s own pages don’t confirm the £40, and Beeviral’s read of the partner terms found no minimum contract length mentioned at all, with exit on 30 days’ notice. The £40 and the “rigid annual commitment” may both be wrong; neither should be repeated as fact.
The 3 questions to ask Treatwell before you sign
Since the price isn’t published, get these answered in writing:
- What is my monthly fee, for my plan, at my location — and is it fixed for the term?
- What is my new-client commission rate at my postcode? (Treatwell’s own wording is “subject to location” — see below.)
- Is there any minimum term, and what notice do I give to leave?
Whatever you’re told, it’s your partner agreement that counts, not a sales call.
The 35% new-client commission — and what “subject to location” means
The headline charge: 35% commission on the first booking of a new client the marketplace introduces you to. Treatwell’s own pricing FAQ states it: “we only charge a 35% commission on first bookings made by new clients we bring you from the marketplace.” Beeviral (from Treatwell’s UK pages), Resoclinx (citing Treatwell’s UK pricing page) and Booksy’s comparison all repeat the same 35% — no source disagrees on the headline rate.
Two qualifiers on Treatwell’s own plan cards matter:
- “Subject to location.” The card literally prints the commission as subject to location, which means the rate can vary by where your salon is. Nobody explains this further — not Treatwell, not the guides. Don’t assume 35%; confirm your postcode’s rate in your agreement (question 2 above).
- It’s first bookings only. A client Treatwell introduced costs 35% once. Every visit after that — if they book through the marketplace, your Book Now button, or by phoning you — is 0%. Treatwell’s FAQ is explicit that direct bookings, including calls, texts and WhatsApps, carry no commission.
And one structural point: Treatwell doesn’t sync with other salon software (“we do not sync with any other existing management systems,” per its FAQ). Joining means your whole diary moves onto Treatwell — which is part of what you’re paying the monthly fee for, and part of what makes leaving a project (our guide to moving clients off Treatwell covers that in full).
VAT: why 35% is really 42% if you’re not VAT-registered
Treatwell states on its plan cards: “All commissions and fees are subject to VAT.” VAT is added on top of the 35%, at the UK standard rate of 20%.
- If your salon is VAT-registered: you reclaim the VAT, so the true cost of the commission stays 35%.
- If you’re not VAT-registered — many smaller salons and most solo operators aren’t — you can’t reclaim it. Your effective commission is 35% × 1.2 = 42% of the client’s first booking.
That 42% figure isn’t our invention: Beeviral’s worked example lands on it, Fusion Creative states the same 42% on its salon page, and a salon owner quoted by Slick says it in his own words — “I’d pay 42% commission.” When you compare Treatwell against alternatives, compare like with like: use 42% if you can’t reclaim VAT. Our Treatwell alternative comparison runs the routes side by side on that basis.
Who counts as a “new” client: the 365-day rule
This is the least-known part of Treatwell’s pricing and the part most likely to cost you money you didn’t expect. Per Beeviral’s read of Treatwell’s partner terms, a marketplace booking counts as a billable “new” client when any of these is true:
- The client isn’t in your client list at all — a genuine first-timer.
- They were added to your list more than 365 days ago and haven’t had a completed appointment in the last 365 days. A lapsed regular who returns through the app after a year away is charged as new — 35% + VAT, again.
- They were added within the last year, but only from an appointment that never went ahead — no completed visit, so the next booking is their first.
Everything else — anyone on your list with a completed appointment inside 365 days — is a repeat: 0%.
Rule 2 is why the timing of a move off Treatwell matters financially, and why win-back messages to your own list (pennies each) beat letting lapsed clients rediscover you through the app.
The 2.5% online prepayment fee
When a client prepays online through Treatwell, you pay a processing fee of 2.5% + VAT on that payment — separate from, and in addition to, any commission on the same booking. Both of Treatwell’s plan cards and its FAQ state 2.5% for online prepayments, and Beeviral and Resoclinx both cite 2.5% + VAT from the UK pages.
One honest wrinkle: Treatwell’s own Dutch pricing page FAQ quotes “a small processing fee (2% + VAT).” Treatwell’s regional pages disagree with each other. For a UK salon, the figure sourced from Treatwell’s UK-facing pages by two independent readers is 2.5% + VAT — use that, and check your agreement.
Treatwell Pay: card payments in the salon
If you take card payments through Treatwell Pay, the rate is 1.1% + 20p per transaction, priced ex VAT — so add VAT to it if you can’t reclaim. The card machine costs £199 one-off, ex VAT; Tap to Pay on your own phone runs at the same rate with no hardware. Payouts can be daily, weekly, or every two weeks (the default), at no extra charge. (Figures from Treatwell’s payments page, via Beeviral’s read of 18 September 2026.)
Treatwell Pay is optional — nothing forces you to retire your existing card terminal — so treat it as a convenience comparison against whatever you pay now, not as a required part of the package.
Every Treatwell fee at a glance
| Charge | Amount | When it applies |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly software fee | Not published | Every month, either plan (Freelancer / Advanced) |
| New-client commission | 35% + VAT (42% effective if not VAT-registered) | First marketplace booking of a “new” client only — incl. lapsed clients under the 365-day rule |
| Repeat / direct / Book Now bookings | 0% | Every booking after the first; all direct bookings |
| Online prepayment processing | 2.5% + VAT | When a client prepays online (Treatwell’s NL page says 2% + VAT — its pages disagree) |
| Treatwell Pay card payments | 1.1% + 20p, ex VAT | Only if you use Treatwell Pay in-salon |
| Treatwell Pay machine | £199 one-off, ex VAT | Optional (Tap to Pay on your phone: no hardware cost) |
What a £40 appointment actually leaves you
Beeviral’s worked example, on a £40 appointment, with VAT loaded the way a non-VAT-registered salon experiences it:
| Booking route | Treatwell takes | You keep |
|---|---|---|
| New client, prepaid via the marketplace | £18.00 (£16.80 commission + VAT, £1.20 prepayment fee + VAT) | £22.00 |
| That client rebooks, pays by card (Treatwell Pay) | £0.64 | £39.36 |
| Client books direct (Book Now), pays cash | £0 | £40.00 |
The same client is worth £22 or £40 to you depending on which door they walk through. That gap — not the headline 35% — is the number to manage.
What Treatwell costs over a year: count your new clients
Do this with your own diary. The arithmetic below uses an average first booking of £45 and counts commission only — swap in your real average.
If you’re not VAT-registered (42% effective = £18.90 per new client):
| New marketplace clients per month | Per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | £189 | £2,268 |
| 25 | £472.50 | £5,670 |
| 50 | £945 | £11,340 |
If you are VAT-registered (35% = £15.75 per new client; the VAT is reclaimable):
| New marketplace clients per month | Per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | £157.50 | £1,890 |
| 25 | £393.75 | £4,725 |
| 50 | £787.50 | £9,450 |
On top of either table: your unpublished monthly fee, 2.5% + VAT on whatever share of those bookings is prepaid, and Treatwell Pay charges if you use them. The exercise that matters is the count — pull last quarter’s genuinely-new marketplace clients from your diary and multiply. If the annual figure buys you clients who become regulars, it may be money well spent. If it’s taxing people who would have found you on Google anyway, it isn’t.
The break-even question: what else could that money buy?
Your annual commission figure is also the budget line for the alternative. Take the monthly version of your count — say 25 new clients a month as a non-VAT-registered salon, £472.50 — and hold it against any quote you get for a booking system you own, whether that’s flat-fee software or a done-for-you build. If the owned route costs less than your monthly commission bill and your diary stays full without marketplace discovery, the swap pays for itself every month. If it costs more, or your diary depends on the marketplace’s new faces, Treatwell is the rational spend for now.
We won’t put a number on the owned route here — Loopwise prices are set per salon after a discovery call, and any article that quotes you a generic figure for a system it hasn’t scoped is guessing. What we can do is the counting: if you want that count done against your real diary — and the alternative routes priced against it — get a free audit and we’ll run the numbers with you.
Freelancer vs team: the plan shape matters too
One structural detail hides inside the unpublished monthly fee. Treatwell’s Advanced plan covers an unlimited team at no extra per-stylist cost — the two plans are Freelancer (solo) and Advanced (team), and the per-head charge that other platforms make simply isn’t in Treatwell’s model. Fresha, by contrast, charges its subscription per team member (£9.95 each per month, per its pricing page via Resoclinx), so a six-person team’s subscription line there is roughly £60 a month before any commission.
Neither shape is automatically better. A solo operator pays Treatwell’s unknown monthly fee for one diary; a growing team pays nothing extra per chair on Advanced but also can’t find out what the base fee is without signing up. It’s one more reason the monthly figure belongs in writing in your agreement — for a team salon, it’s the difference between a rounding error and a real line in the budget.
Myth: Treatwell takes 35% of everything you earn. Fact: It takes 35% + VAT of a new marketplace client’s first booking. Repeats, direct bookings and your own Book Now bookings are 0%. The fee that catches salons out isn’t the headline — it’s the 365-day rule quietly reclassifying lapsed clients as new.
When Treatwell is worth paying for
Fairness matters here, because for some salons Treatwell earns its cut:
- You’re new or quiet. A marketplace’s footfall is real, and 42% of a booking beats 100% of an empty chair.
- Your new clients stick. The commission is a one-off introduction fee if the client rebooks five more times at 0%. The whole model works when first-timers become regulars — and rebooking them through your own link is what makes sure of it (the approach in our Fresha alternative guide makes the same point for clinics).
- You’ve no other discovery channel yet. If Google and Instagram bring you nothing, the marketplace isn’t the expensive option — it’s the only one.
It stops being worth it when your diary is full of regulars, your lapsed clients keep re-triggering the 365-day rule through the app, and your reviews — your real asset — are building on a profile you don’t own.
Leaving: 30 days’ notice, your data, your reviews stay
If you do leave: Treatwell’s partner terms allow ending the agreement for any reason with 30 days’ notice, and Beeviral found no minimum contract length in the terms. Your client data remains your salon’s property even after you cancel — Treatwell’s FAQ confirms it in its own words. Your marketplace profile and the reviews on it stay behind.
Which is why the exit is a sequence, not a switch — export the data, build the new booking home, move the regulars, then give notice. The VAT-loaded commission comparison against owning your booking channel outright sits in our guide to what a clinic website with online booking costs for the website side of that maths.
Run your own count first. Then decide with numbers instead of vibes — and if you’d like a second pair of eyes on them, get a free audit.
FAQs
Does Treatwell charge commission on repeat clients?
No. Repeat bookings are 0% commission, as are direct bookings and bookings through your own Book Now button. The one catch is the 365-day rule: a client with no completed appointment in the last 365 days who rebooks through the marketplace counts as new again, and the 35% + VAT applies.
What is Treatwell’s monthly fee for salons?
Treatwell doesn’t publish it. Its UK pricing page shows two plans — Freelancer and Advanced — with no prices. A rival (Booksy) claims £40 + VAT a month, but Treatwell’s own pages don’t confirm that figure or its claim of “rigid annual commitments,” and the partner terms as read by Beeviral mention no minimum term. Get your fee in writing in your partner agreement.
Why do people say Treatwell takes 42%, not 35%?
Because the 35% commission has VAT added on top. A VAT-registered salon reclaims the VAT and truly pays 35%. A salon that isn’t VAT-registered can’t reclaim it, so the effective cost is 35% × 1.2 = 42% of the new client’s first booking.
What does Treatwell charge for online payments?
Two separate things: a 2.5% + VAT processing fee when a client prepays online (Treatwell’s Dutch page quotes 2% + VAT — its own regional pages disagree), and Treatwell Pay in-salon card payments at 1.1% + 20p per transaction ex VAT, with an optional card machine at £199 ex VAT.
How does Treatwell’s 20%-style rival Fresha compare?
Fresha charges 20% once on a new marketplace client’s first completed appointment, with a £4 minimum, plus VAT, and a subscription of £9.95 per team member a month (per Fresha’s pricing page and help centre, via Resoclinx). Cheaper per introduction than Treatwell — but the same model: commission on discovery, reviews on their platform.
Can I leave Treatwell whenever I want?
Per the partner terms as read by Beeviral, yes — 30 days’ notice, for any reason, and your client data remains your property after you cancel. Your profile and its reviews stay on Treatwell. Check your own agreement before acting, as terms can change.
