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

Checkfront pricing

Checkfront's single plan is $99/month plus a 3% online booking fee from your first booking, with no free tier. Samba is $0/month with the first $10,000 of bookings free, then a flat 2% per booking.

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 the payment structure a higher-value trip needs isn't surfaced.

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 and no extra fee on OTA bookings. 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's own pages describe payment methods rather than a deposit or installment system. 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 multi-day trips direct?

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.

How hard is it to switch from Checkfront to Samba?

Switching booking platforms feels heavier than it is, mostly because your live calendar and customer relationships are on the line. The practical work breaks into three parts: moving your experiences and availability, redirecting your booking links, and bringing across any in-flight bookings.

What do you need to move first?

Your experiences and their availability. On Samba's free plan you can rebuild all your experiences, set deposit and installment terms, and run real test bookings through the engine before you point any traffic at it — with no subscription to clear first. In Samba, deposits and installment plans are standard rather than a workaround on an activity-and-rental tool.

What happens to bookings already in Checkfront?

Let existing departures run out on Checkfront while new bookings flow to Samba — there's no need for a hard cutover. Point your website's "Book now" links and embedded buttons at the new checkout, keep Checkfront live until its last booked trip departs, then close the account. Offline payments you mark manually carry no Samba fee, which keeps reconciling a transition period straightforward.

The honest part: there's real setup work, and if a share of your volume comes through Checkfront's OTA connections, you'll want a distribution plan for those — Samba syncs bookings from connected channels like GetYourGuide, but it isn't a full distribution channel manager. What you get in exchange is a free way to start, a per-booking fee that sits below Checkfront's — a flat 2%, first $10,000 free, processing billed straight to Stripe — and deposits and installment plans built in. If you're ready to see it against your own trips, you can start free on Samba.