Fresha alternatives for Singapore hair salons: what is really on offer in 2026

Fresha is the name every Singapore salon owner knows. Its consumer marketplace is live in SGD, it lists over a hundred hair salons across the island, and for years its pitch was unbeatable: completely free salon software. That era is over. Fresha is now subscription software with usage fees on top, and, more awkwardly for anyone trying to budget from Singapore, its dedicated Singapore pricing page has been taken offline. When we checked in October 2026, fresha.com/en-sg/pricing returned an HTTP 410 "Gone" error, and the global pricing page showed us another country's currency. So the honest starting point for this comparison is unusual: the dominant player's Singapore prices cannot currently be verified in public, and we will say so plainly rather than copy a number from a listicle.

Full disclosure: this article lives on the blog of ViteUneCoupe, a free online booking system for hair salons with zero commission. We are an interested party, so we compensate with method: every claim below was checked on the vendor's own pages with the date of the check, we state the currency each page displayed to us, and we openly credit what Fresha does better than we do. For the wider local picture, our guide to hair salon booking software in Singapore compares every option that actually works here.

Is Fresha still free in 2026?

No. Fresha ended its free-forever plan and now runs on paid subscriptions with a 7-day trial. Checked in October 2026, Fresha's official pricing page lists:

• Independent, for a one-person business with a single calendar column;
• Team, priced per bookable team member per month;
• above that, a custom-priced Enterprise tier for 20 or more team members.

Here is the catch for a Singapore reader. Fresha's pricing page localises by country, and the version served to us displayed euros: 14.95 € per month for Independent and 9.95 € per bookable team member per month for Team, with a note that "rates are exclusive of 20.0% sales tax". Singapore's GST is 9% since 1 January 2024, so the grid we saw was unmistakably another country's. The Singapore-specific pricing URL, fresha.com/en-sg/pricing, returned HTTP 410 when we fetched it in October 2026. The result: we could not verify a single SGD subscription figure on Fresha's own site, and neither can you until you open the app from Singapore or ask Fresha directly. If a comparison article quotes you Fresha's Singapore prices in SGD without a date and a source, treat it with suspicion.

Independent writeups fill some of the gap, carefully. Pabau's Fresha pricing breakdown, updated 22 September 2026, reports USD 19.95 per month for the Individual plan and USD 14.95 per bookable team member for the Team plan, and dates the removal of the free plan to early 2025. Those are a competitor's figures in a third currency, not Fresha's Singapore price list, but they give you the order of magnitude to sanity-check whatever the app quotes you.

The usage fees on top of the subscription

The subscription is only the first line of the bill. From the global pricing page, checked in October 2026 (euro amounts as displayed to us; your Singapore grid may differ):

• online payments: 1.29% plus 0.15 € per transaction when a client prepays through Fresha;
• in-person payments: 0.59% plus 0.15 € per transaction through Fresha's card solution, plus 0.10 € per tap-to-pay authorisation;
• buy now, pay later: 4.99% plus 0.50 € per transaction;
• texts and WhatsApp: 20 free messages per month, then roughly 0.10 € per text and 0.09 € to 0.23 € per WhatsApp message, with marketing texts at about 0.14 €;
• marketing emails: 50 free per month, then about 0.02 € per email.

None of these lines is scandalous on its own. The point is the shape of the bill: it grows with your activity. A salon sending a confirmation plus a reminder for 250 appointments a month burns through a 20-message allowance on the first morning, and every prepayment and marketing send adds its own line. Our breakdown of the real cost of salon software in Singapore runs that arithmetic across vendors, in SGD where vendors publish SGD.

The marketplace new-client fee: "free" or 20%?

This is where the record is genuinely contradictory, so we will show you both halves and date them.

What Fresha's own pages said in October 2026. The global pricing page served to us listed the marketplace new-client fee line as "Free", with no percentage. The same day, Fresha's help centre article on marketplace new-client fees documented the full fee mechanics in detail: a one-time charge when a brand-new client discovers your salon on the marketplace and books, calculated on the value of the first completed appointment, with a minimum fee and a maximum cap, non-refundable, deferred to the next booking if the client cancels online or you mark a same-day no-show, still charged if you or your team cancel the appointment, and potentially applicable to a booking made from your own website or Instagram if the client first viewed your marketplace profile. The help article states no rate and points to the pricing page, the very page that showed us "Free" and whose Singapore edition is offline.

What third parties said. Pabau's writeup, updated September 2026, describes a 20% fee on new marketplace clients with a USD 6 minimum. Other 2026 comparison pages repeat similar figures.

We will not pick a winner between "Free" and "20%", because we cannot verify which applies in Singapore today. A "Free" line on a geo-localised page could be a promotion, a transition, or simply the grid of the country we browsed from. What you should do is mechanical: before listing your salon, ask Fresha in writing for the current Singapore rate, minimum and cap, and keep the answer. And either way, import your full client list before your marketplace profile goes live: per the help centre, clients already in your list never trigger the fee, so a regular from the next block who happens to find you on the marketplace stays free.

One structural point survives the ambiguity: per the same help article, the only way out of the fee's scope is to unlist your marketplace profile, and on Fresha that disables your online booking channels, including buttons on your own site and social pages. Online booking and the marketplace come as a package. Whether that package suits you is exactly the question our comparison of direct bookings versus marketplaces for a Singapore hair salon takes apart.

What Fresha genuinely does well in Singapore

Fresha did not become the default choice of Singapore salons by accident.

• A very polished product. Calendar, client records, point of sale, marketing, consultation forms: the interface is modern, fast and pleasant on a phone. Few competitors match the finish.
• A real, live SGD marketplace. Checked in October 2026, the Fresha marketplace lists well over a hundred hair salons across Singapore with SGD prices and real-time availability. For a new salon in a Tampines or Toa Payoh shopfront with zero walk-in history, that discovery channel is genuinely valuable, and most of the alternatives below offer nothing like it.
• No-show protection, available today. Fresha supports upfront payments and cancellation fees at booking time. That is an honest concession from us: ViteUneCoupe's bank-card no-show protection is still in preparation.
• Scale and longevity. Whatever you think of the pricing turn, Fresha is a large, funded company that will still exist next year. For some owners that certainty is worth paying for.

The famous "alternatives" you cannot actually use in Singapore

Most "best Fresha alternatives" listicles are written for the US or the UK, and a Singapore owner can waste an evening on tools that will not take the business. Checked in October 2026 on each vendor's own site:

• Booksy, Vagaro, Mangomint, Salonkee: their own country or availability pages list no Singapore edition;
• Square Appointments: Square's own availability page lists eight countries for card acceptance, and Singapore is not one of them;
• Phorest: does not list Singapore among its markets;
• Timely: sells in Singapore, but with a serious handicap covered below.

Availability can change, so re-check before dismissing a tool, but as of October 2026 the realistic shortlist for a Singapore hair salon is much shorter than the global listicles suggest.

Fresha alternatives a Singapore hair salon can actually use

Everything below was checked in October 2026 on each vendor's own site. Where a vendor publishes no SGD price, we say so rather than guess.

ViteUneCoupe: the free plan, with its Singapore limits stated first

Let us start with the limits, because for a Singapore salon they are real. ViteUneCoupe's reminders go by email only: no SMS on any plan, and no WhatsApp, in a market where WhatsApp is how most clients talk to their salon. There is no point of sale, no PayNow, no deposits today, no inventory, and the interface is available in English and French. And the subscription is billed in euros, not SGD: the exchange rate moves, and your card may add a small foreign-currency fee, though at 29 € a month the sums involved are small.

Now the other side. Since Fresha vacated the free ground, ViteUneCoupe occupies it without an asterisk: the free plan includes unlimited online bookings with 0% commission permanently, a personalised booking page for your salon, your service catalogue, staff schedules, your client database (Singapore +65 numbers work normally) and your calendar. No trial countdown, no card at sign-up, and no marketplace between you and your clients: the booking link is yours, on your Google Business Profile, your Instagram bio and your voicemail. The Standard plan, from 29 € excluding tax per month with no commitment, adds automatic emails (confirmation, reminder, thank-you) and ICS calendar sync with Apple, Google or Outlook. Bank-card no-show protection is coming soon in a Standard + Anti No-Show plan at 49 € excluding tax per month. If what you want is a reliable online calendar with a bill of exactly zero and no cut of your work, that is precisely what it is built for.

Idle Booking: the local option built around WhatsApp

Idle Booking is Singapore-built and prices in SGD: checked in October 2026 on idlebooking.com, the Solo plan is S$18 per month (S$180 billed annually) and the Grow plan S$99 per month, with no commission, no lock-in and free CSV export of clients and appointments. Its strongest card for this market is reminders over WhatsApp rather than SMS: a confirmation or reminder costs about S$0.02 per message, billed by Meta directly with no markup, which neatly sidesteps the SMS problems that trip up foreign vendors here. One thing to weigh: Idle publishes aggressive comparison listicles of its own, so read its "best software in Singapore" pages as marketing, the same way you should read ours as marketing with sources.

LovingBooking: the local free plan for a solo stylist

LovingBooking is the other Singapore-local option with a genuinely free tier: checked in October 2026 on lovingbooking.com, the free plan covers 1 staff member and 30 bookings per month, and the Plus plan is S$12 per month with zero transaction fees and PayNow QR support (you upload your own QR code, clients pay you directly). Reminders are email only. For a solo stylist doing under 30 appointments a month it costs nothing; a two-chair salon outgrows the free tier quickly, but S$12 is one of the lowest paid entries on this list.

Setmore: cheap, generalist, USD-billed

Setmore is generalist appointment software, not salon software, but it works from Singapore: checked in October 2026 on setmore.com, the free plan covers up to 4 users with unlimited appointments and email reminders, and Pro is USD 5 per user per month billed annually (USD 12 monthly) with SMS credits and two-way calendar sync. Pricing is USD only, so like ViteUneCoupe it carries a currency caveat, and you will be mapping generic "staff and services" onto colour processing times yourself.

Timely: good software with its SMS switched off in Singapore

Timely deserves its own entry because it illustrates a structural problem. Singapore's SMS Sender ID Registry (SSIR, run under IMDA rules) blocks SMS from unregistered foreign sender IDs to fight scam texts, and Timely's own help centre states plainly that SMS functionality from Timely is unavailable in Singapore: SMS reminders, campaigns and client login by SMS do not work here, and Timely suggests switching those messages to email. We could not retrieve SGD pricing from our location either. The lesson is bigger than Timely: any foreign booking tool selling you SMS reminders deserves the question "do your SMS actually deliver in Singapore?" in writing before you pay. Our guide to appointment reminders for Singapore hair salons covers what the SSIR means for each channel.

One Singapore question to settle before signing: your client data

Your client records, colour formulas and contact numbers are personal data under the PDPA, and the obligations, including appointing a data protection officer, apply to every business, however small, per the Personal Data Protection Commission. Whichever vendor you pick, confirm in writing how you export your client list and appointment history, and what happens to the data when you leave. A booking system you cannot cleanly leave is not a tool, it is a lease.

Leaving Fresha without losing your client list

If the maths points to a move, do not cancel anything until your data is out and the new booking link is live. Export your client list and appointment history first, open the new booking page, then update the link on your Google Business Profile, Instagram and website before closing the old account. Remember the structural detail from Fresha's own help centre: unlisting your marketplace profile disables all Fresha online booking channels at once, so have the replacement link ready the same day, and keep both systems running through one full colour cycle so nobody falls between calendars. The full step-by-step, including timing the move around a quiet stretch rather than the Chinese New Year rush, lives in our guide to switching salon booking software in Singapore.

Frequently asked questions

Is Fresha free or paid in Singapore?

Paid. Fresha ended its free-forever plan and now sells subscriptions with a 7-day trial: an Independent plan and a Team plan priced per bookable team member. Checked in October 2026, Fresha's Singapore pricing page (fresha.com/en-sg/pricing) returned an HTTP 410 error and the global page showed us another country's euro grid, so the current SGD figures can only be confirmed inside the app or by asking Fresha directly.

How much is Fresha's new-client marketplace fee in Singapore?

It is genuinely unclear. In October 2026, Fresha's own pricing page listed the marketplace new-client fee as "Free", while third-party writeups updated in September 2026 described a 20% fee with a minimum. Fresha's help centre documents the fee mechanics (one-time, on the first completed appointment, minimum and cap, non-refundable) but states no rate. Ask Fresha in writing for the current Singapore rate before listing your salon, and keep the answer.

Does Fresha charge commission on my existing clients?

No. Per Fresha's help centre (checked in October 2026), clients already in your list at the time of booking never trigger the marketplace new-client fee. That is why you should import your full client list before your marketplace profile goes live: a regular who finds you on the marketplace afterwards would otherwise count as new.

Why do Booksy, Vagaro and Square not appear in this comparison?

Because you cannot practically sign up from Singapore: checked in October 2026, their own availability pages list no Singapore edition, and Square's own help pages list eight supported countries without Singapore. Most "Fresha alternatives" listicles are written for the US or UK market and skip this detail entirely.

What is the best free alternative to Fresha for a Singapore hair salon?

Two serious free plans exist. ViteUneCoupe offers unlimited online bookings, 0% commission permanently, a booking page, client database and calendar, with email-only reminders and euro billing as the trade-offs. LovingBooking, Singapore-based, is free for 1 staff member and 30 bookings per month with PayNow QR support. Setmore is also free up to 4 users if a generalist tool suits you.

Do SMS reminders from foreign booking software work in Singapore?

Often not. Singapore's SMS Sender ID Registry blocks texts from unregistered foreign sender IDs, and Timely's own help centre confirms its SMS features are unavailable in Singapore for that reason. Before paying for any plan that includes SMS, ask the vendor in writing whether its sender ID is registered with the SSIR and its texts actually deliver to +65 numbers. WhatsApp-based reminders (as Idle Booking uses) and email reminders are not affected.