Checkfront pricing and fees, plus the best alternatives (2026)

Checkfront pricing

Checkfront's pricing page lists one plan: $99 a month plus a 3% online booking fee from your first booking, with no setup fee, no free plan and no fee on offline bookings. You can absorb the 3% or pass it to your guests, and the page shows the price in your local currency (€99 from Europe, for example). On a $100 day tour, the 3% is $3 per booking; on a $3,000 trip, it's $90. Samba is $0/month with the first $10,000 of bookings free, then a flat 2% per booking.

One thing to check before you sign: Checkfront's help center lists more plans than its pricing page does (Growth (Subscription), Growth (Online Booking Fee) and Managed) and says the plans you can choose depend on your business country. On the booking-fee plan, every booking also needs a deposit of at least 10%. Ask which plan you'd be on and what it costs at your booking volume.

Why are operators looking for a Checkfront alternative?

Checkfront is a mature, capable platform — running since 2010 out of Victoria, British Columbia, and now part of the same group as Rezdy and Regiondo. It has processed more than $5 billion in bookings across 128 countries, and its pricing is refreshingly simple: one published plan, one published booking fee, no setup charges. For a tour, activity or rental operator who wants a transparent, well-supported booking engine, that simplicity is a genuine strength.

The friction shows up for operators who sell direct: there's no free way in, the entry price is high for a single tier, the booking fee starts on your very first booking, and its deposits stop short of an automatic installment schedule.

What does Checkfront actually charge?

Checkfront is transparent about its pricing, which helps. The subscription is a single plan at $99/month, with no free plan and no free trial on the pricing page. On top of the subscription comes a 3% online booking fee, charged on every online booking from the first one, which you can absorb or pass to your guests. There's no fee on offline bookings. For OTA bookings, the pricing page says connections carry no additional fees, but Checkfront's help center says that on its booking-fee plan the fee also applies to bookings that come in through GetYourGuide and Expedia, so ask how yours will be billed. That 3% sits above Samba's flat 2%, and Samba's first $10,000 of bookings carries no fee at all — so on the bookings a smaller operator takes early, the gap is the full difference.

Where does Checkfront fall short?

A trip that isn't paid in full upfront needs a deposit to hold the booking and an installment schedule to collect the balance over the weeks before departure. Checkfront takes deposits and offers buy-now-pay-later financing through Flex Pay, but it doesn't run its own installment schedule. Operators selling higher-value trips often find they're building payment plans by hand around it.

Who should stay on Checkfront?

Be fair about it: if you want one simple plan, a transparent fee, and a platform with a long operating history behind it, Checkfront delivers exactly that. The operators with the clearest reason to move are the ones selling direct, who want a free way to start, a lower per-booking fee, and real payment plans built in.

How should you choose a Checkfront alternative?

There's no single best tool — there's a best tool for how you actually sell. Start with one question: where do your bookings come from?

What if you want to stay close to what you know?

Checkfront sits inside the Expedition Software group alongside Rezdy and Regiondo, so its closest comparisons are its own stablemates. Rezdy keeps the transparent, distribution-first approach you're used to — a published 3% online fee and a 12,000+ agent marketplace — at a $49/month entry, well below Checkfront's single $99 tier. Regiondo is the European option in the same family, pairing an OTA channel manager with its own consumer marketplace. Either lets you move without leaving the group's way of working.

What if you sell direct and take deposits?

Then deposits, installments and fee transparency matter more than distribution. Samba is purpose-built for this: native deposits and installment plans, a free $0/mo plan with every feature included, and a flat 2% per booking with the first $10,000 of bookings free. WeTravel is the closest alternative, pairing a native itinerary builder with auto-billing — just confirm its booking fee on a demo, since it isn't published.

What if most of your bookings come from OTAs?

Then reach outweighs the headline fee. Bókun is built for it: a marketplace of 2,600+ OTAs and resellers and a 0% Bókun fee on Viator bookings on paid plans, on transparent four-tier pricing with a booking fee around 1–1.5%. On a $3,000 trip, Checkfront's 3% online fee is about $90 from booking one; Samba's flat 2% is $60, and the first $10,000 of bookings is free. Model your real average ticket against each platform's fee — and its subscription — before you weigh anything else.