restaurant reservation software
OpenTable vs Tock
OpenTable and Tock are both reservation platforms, but they solve opposite problems. OpenTable is the largest consumer-facing marketplace in the category (60,000+ restaurants / 1B+ guests seated per year), a discovery network that actively sends new diners to your door alongside table management, waitlist, and confirmation tools. Tock is built the other way around: prepaid reservations, deposits, and ticketed events designed to structurally eliminate no-shows for high-demand and tasting-menu rooms. The problem is real for everyone, since about 30% of Americans no-showed in the past year.
So the honest framing is a question about your actual pain. If you need demand (fill seats, get found, bring people in) OpenTable's marketplace is the draw, and you pay for that reach through cover fees, a subscription, and a recently added service charge (2% service fee / $15-per-person no-show fee). If your seats are scarce and expensive and your pain is protecting every cover, Tock turns a booking into a financial commitment before the guest arrives. Reminders alone move the needle a lot (automated confirmations pull the individual no-show rate down to around ~2% of booked reservations were no-shows), but Tock goes further and makes the commitment structural. Both, though, leave the rest of your digital operation for you to run.
| OpenTable | Tock | |
|---|---|---|
| Core model | OpenTableA consumer-facing discovery marketplace: guests browse and book across OpenTable's network, and you plug into that demand. | TockA booking engine built around prepaid reservations, deposits, and ticketed events, closer to a direct channel than a marketplace. |
| Discovery and demand | OpenTableThe category's biggest network, with 60,000+ restaurant partners seating over a billion guests a year (60,000+ restaurants / 1B+ guests seated per year); it brings you diners who were not already looking for you. | TockNot a discovery marketplace. It converts demand you already have, so you supply the traffic. Strong for destination and reservations-hard-to-get rooms. |
| No-show defense | OpenTableAutomated SMS and email reminders, waitlist, credit-card holds, prepaid experiences, and a four-strikes policy that suspends chronic no-show accounts. | TockStructural rather than procedural: prepaid reservations, deposits, and tickets mean the guest has money on the line before they walk in, which is why high-demand rooms adopt it. |
| Events and ticketing | OpenTableSupports prepaid experiences and card holds, but the standard reservation is the core workflow. | TockBuilt for ticketed events, tasting menus, and prix fixe; selling a seat like a concert ticket is the native motion, not a bolt-on. |
| Pricing | OpenTableCover-based and subscription pricing, plus a recently added 2% transaction service fee on some bookings and, at some restaurants, a per-person no-show fee (2% service fee / $15-per-person no-show fee). | TockA flat monthly subscription plus optional payment processing, with no per-cover marketplace fee, so cost does not scale with how many diners the network sends. |
| Best fit | OpenTableRooms whose problem is being discovered and filling tables, that will pay per cover for a steady flow of new diners. | TockHigh-demand, high-ticket rooms where a walked reservation is genuinely expensive and eliminating no-shows matters more than marketplace reach. |
| The catch (both) | OpenTableYou get bookings, reminders, and reach, but the guest relationship and the rest of your digital operation are still yours to run. | TockYou get commitment and structure, but discovery, marketing, reviews, and the wider operation are on you. |
The verdict
Which one, and the catch either way.
Bottom line
Questions
What buyers ask.
Is OpenTable or Tock better for preventing no-shows?
Does Tock bring in new diners the way OpenTable does?
What do OpenTable and Tock cost?
References
Every figure on this page drills down.
4 sourced statistics cited here across 3 publications. Each number links to the research hub, and each entry there links out to its primary source.
- 01Restaurant Dive, OpenTable launches initiative to combat diner no-shows (2024)
- 02The Philadelphia Inquirer, OpenTable begins adding a 2% service fee to some transactions, including no-show fees (2026)
- 03Toast (via The Globe and Mail), Toast Data: How Reservation and Full-Service Restaurant Dining Trends Shifted In the Last Year (2025)
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