If you are weighing up these three, one of them has already answered for you — and the other two are less alike than the shortlist suggests.
bookatable.co.uk now redirects to TheFork. Bookatable was bought by Michelin and its business has since been folded into TheFork; the name is not taking new restaurants under its own banner. We checked the redirect on 4 August 2026 — you can check it yourself in a browser in about five seconds, and we would rather you did than take our word for it.
So if Bookatable is on your shortlist because of something you read a while ago, the live comparison is really TheFork versus a booking system you run yourself. That is a genuinely different question, and it is the one below.
Almost every option in this market is one of two things, and which shape you want decides far more than which brand you pick.
TheFork sits here, as OpenTable does. You are listed in a consumer app people already have, and it sends you covers you would not otherwise have had. That is a real service, and for some restaurants it is worth real money. The trade is the one every marketplace makes: you generally pay for those covers, and the diner is partly theirs — they arrived through someone else's app, and the relationship and the data sit at least partly with the platform. Marketplace terms vary and change, so check the current ones rather than trusting any summary, including this one.
ResDiary, Nextable and nuvelo sit here. Nobody sends you diners; the software runs your diary, on your booking page, for the guests you already earn through your food, your location and your reputation. You pay a subscription instead of a cut. If your tables are already full most weeks, this is nearly always the better economics — you are not paying a finder's fee on a regular who would have phoned you anyway.
Decide that first. If you need demand, a marketplace is worth considering and we are not competing for that job. If you have the demand and need the diary, you are choosing between the systems below.
The established name in this group, with a long track record, a deep feature set and customers ranging from single sites to large groups. If you are a group with a head office and a reporting requirement, it is the safer answer, and we say so at more length on our nuvelo vs ResDiary page.
Smaller, and harder to assess from the outside: its site opens on a customer login rather than a product or pricing page, so there is little published detail to compare against. We are not going to invent an assessment of a product whose terms are not public — if you are considering them, ask them directly what the plan costs, whether anything is charged per cover, and who owns the guest data. Those three questions separate almost every option in this market.
That is usually the real blocker, not the software. Your future bookings, your guest book and any gift vouchers still out there come across with you — we do it by hand, at no charge, and nothing switches until you have signed in and seen your own diary sitting in it. How switching works →
Take the marketplace if your problem is empty tables on a Tuesday rather than an awkward diary. Paying for covers you would not have had is a perfectly rational trade; paying for covers you would have had is not.
Take ResDiary if you are a group, if you need a large vendor with a support organisation behind it, or if you want a feature depth we have not built yet. We are early, and for some restaurants that is the whole argument.
nuvelo is early. Our first ten venues get every feature at the Pro price, locked for as long as they stay, and we ask nothing in return. The demo has a restaurant and a soft play centre in it, already trading — ten minutes will tell you more than we can here.
This is our own comparison, so read it as such. We have described how each option is shaped rather than quoting anyone's figures — prices and terms change, and a stale number on our site is no use to you. The Bookatable redirect was checked on 4 August 2026 and is the one claim here you can verify in seconds. For everything else, check their current pricing and terms on their own site before you decide.