Checkfront Pricing 2026: Fees, Payments and Annual Cost

Checkfront pricing in 2026 starts with an advertised $99 monthly subscription plus a 3% online booking fee, which you can absorb or pass on to guests, with no setup fee and no booking fee on offline bookings. That is the pricing page's offer in October 2026. Card processing comes on top; confirm the plan and billing currency for your business.

The cost to a tour operator depends on which bookings carry each fee. To compare engines, open our booking engine pricing comparison. If you are still deciding what kind of system you need, the tour operator software guide shows where a booking engine ends and operations software begins.

Checkfront Pricing in 2026: The Advertised Plan

The public offer combines a monthly subscription with a variable booking fee. These are the main cost lines published on Checkfront's official pages, read in October 2026:

Compare written quotes in the same currency, with taxes and processing shown separately.

Other Checkfront plans you will not see on the pricing page

The plans FAQ also names Growth (Subscription) and Managed, alongside Growth (Online Booking Fee), while the payments documentation classifies Growth (Subscription) as legacy. Confirm which you can buy. Subscription plans have booking allowances: each invoice counts, including test, void and cancelled bookings, with 100 extra bookings annually for testing.

The Checkfront Booking Fee: Which Bookings Pay the 3%

The booking-fee help article, read in October 2026, defines the scope:

• Charged on customer bookings, including those made through the booking widget, and on bookings that include items, products or gift certificates.
• Not charged on bookings created before you moved to the plan, imported bookings and refunds. Staff-side bookings carry no online fee.
• Collected automatically: Checkfront deducts the fee from the payment and calculates it in your account's base currency.
• A 10% minimum deposit applies on plans with the booking fee. If your deposit is set lower, the system raises it to 10% on the invoice.

OTA and API bookings: read two pages

The pricing page is direct: Checkfront "does not charge additional fees for OTA" bookings, so you pay only the commission set by the OTA, and API-generated bookings are free of fees too. The booking fee article says something narrower. Booking fees apply to bookings "processed through GetYourGuide and Expedia", bookings through myallocator count as staff-side, and Viator bookings can be customer-side or staff-side depending on your account configuration.

For a tour operator who sells heavily on GetYourGuide, that difference is real money. Ask Checkfront which of your channels will carry the 3% and get the answer in writing. The commission side of those bookings is covered in our OTA commission guide.

Absorb the fee or pass it on

Checkfront gives three display settings. By default the fee is added to the invoice sub-total as a separate line, so the guest pays it. You can also mark it as inclusive, meaning it is already inside your price, or inclusive and hidden from the guest. In every case Checkfront takes the fee from the payment. Passing it on raises the checkout total. Absorbing it comes out of your margin unless you raise the price, which is a pricing decision (see how to price a tour).

Refunds follow the same article. On a full refund, Checkfront returns its booking fee to you. On a partial refund the booking fee stays with Checkfront, and payment processing fees are not refunded in either case. If your cancellation policy allows partial refunds, write that cost into it (our tour cancellation policy template helps).

Checkfront Payment Processing Fees

Checkfront Payments is the built-in processor, powered by Stripe. The rate depends on where your business is and where the card was issued. These are the published rates for card payments (help center, read October 2026):

Domestic American Express costs 3.40% in the US and Canada, and 1.90% in the listed European markets, plus the fixed transaction fee. UK cards cost 2.50% for the listed European businesses; EEA cards cost 2.50% for UK businesses. In the listed EU countries, other EEA cards receive the domestic rate.

Four details from the same pages:

• Processing applies to the full amount, including a booking fee you pass on to the guest.
• Refunds are free to process, but the original transaction fee is not returned.
• Payouts run on a rolling 2 to 7 day schedule, and fees are deducted before payout.
• Dispute fees vary by region, and extra chargeback protection costs an additional fee that is not priced on the page.

Using another payment provider

Supported gateways include Stripe, Adyen, PayPal Checkout and Square, but availability depends on your plan and country. Checkfront names Checkfront Payments as the supported provider for Growth (Online Booking Fee). A gateway on the general list is not proof that your quoted plan includes it. Without a processor, Checkfront runs in Reservation-Only mode.

Checkfront Cost: A Worked Annual Example at Three Volumes

This example uses our own assumptions, not a study. Swap in your numbers. A US tour operator on the published plan, billed $99 a month; an average booking of $120; 55% of bookings online direct, 30% through OTAs and 15% offline; the 3% absorbed, so the guest pays $120; domestic non-Amex cards at 2.90% + $0.30, one payment per online booking. Assume offline sales are paid in cash and OTAs collect their own payments. We apply no OTA booking fee, following the pricing page; confirm this treatment for your account. Taxes and transaction-by-transaction rounding are excluded.

Three things stand out. On a $120 online booking, Checkfront's 3% ($3.60) and the card fee ($3.78) together take $7.38, or about 6.2% of the price. At 15,000 bookings the subscription is under 4% of what you pay Checkfront itself, so the online share drives the bill: each ten points of online share moves the booking fee by $5,400 a year at that volume (1,500 bookings at $3.60).

Passing the fee on changes who pays. The guest then pays $123.60, Checkfront keeps $3.60, and card processing on the higher amount costs $3.88 instead of $3.78. Your own yearly cost falls to $3,324, $11,870 and $33,234 at the three volumes, while guests pay the $1,980, $9,900 and $29,700 in booking fees at checkout. Whether a 3% higher checkout total costs you bookings is something only your own conversion data can show.

The OTA caveat cuts the other way. If your account charges the 3% on GetYourGuide bookings, every 100 of them at $120 adds $360 a year. None of these totals includes OTA commission or your team's time after the booking. For the full picture per departure, see the tour operator profit margin guide, and track your channel mix monthly with OTA KPIs for tour operators.

Checkfront vs FareHarbor vs Rezdy: Pricing Models and Questions for Sales

The three engines put the fee in different places. The table uses only what each vendor publishes on its own pages, read in October 2026.

Checkfront advertises no offline fee. FareHarbor's October 2024 policy extends 6% to all direct bookings for qualifying established businesses below $35,000 in annual online direct volume. Ask about eligibility. Its provider terms offer an operator-paid commission model and allow termination with 15 days' written notice.

Run your last twelve months (online, OTA, offline) through each model before you compare totals. The detail per vendor is in the FareHarbor pricing guide, the Rezdy pricing guide, the Bokun pricing guide and the TourCMS pricing guide. For a wider shortlist, see FareHarbor alternatives.

Questions to ask Checkfront sales

The plans FAQ permits cancellation at any time without a subscription refund. The older Self-Serve Terms name Soho, Pro and Plus; do not assume their cancellation process governs a new Growth order. Under the Master Terms, request your data in writing within 10 days of termination. Before signing, ask:

1. Which channels carry the 3%? Name each OTA and reseller you use.
2. Which plan and currency apply? Include taxes, cancellation charges and any annual commitment.
3. Is the plan available in my country with Checkfront Payments? If not, which provider and which rates apply?
4. Can I keep my gateway? Existing Stripe accounts with active business are not supported for Checkfront Payments.
5. Do the $99 and the 3% both appear on my invoice? The booking fee article says booking fees replace subscription fees; the pricing page lists both.
6. How many staff accounts and which API access do I get? Staff limits and authenticated API access depend on the plan, and webhooks need the authenticated API.
7. What do disputes and chargeback protection cost? Neither is priced on the public pages.

Where automate.travel Fits Next to Your Booking Engine

automate.travel runs operations after the booking, next to your booking engine. Bookings arrive from Checkfront, Bokun, FareHarbor and Ventrata through a direct connection, and GetYourGuide, Viator and Civitatis bookings come through those engines. automate.travel is not a booking engine.

With a connected engine, automate.travel gives you:

• One conversation per guest for email, WhatsApp and phone calls, with OTA messages in the same inbox, linked to the booking. Message templates and automatic messages go out after booking, before and after the tour. The AI prepares a draft reply; a person reviews and sends it. See communication and AI.
• A guest portal behind one link, with no login: date, time, party size, meeting point on a map and attachments, plus a "need help / running late" request on the tour day. See guest experience.
• Guide assignment: you see each guide's availability and rate; the office decides who is asked or assigned, and the first guide to accept takes the tour. See crew dispatch.
• Margin per tour, what each guide is owed and monthly OTA reconciliation in multiple currencies. See finance and analytics.

The automate.travel pricing page lists €1.50 per completed booking, falling by tier to €0.55 above 60,000 bookings a year. You pay for tours that ran, and cancelled and refunded bookings cost €0. To see it on demo data, book a demo.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

All vendor pages read in October 2026. Prices and terms change, so check them again before you sign.

• Checkfront, Pricing: subscription and booking fees.
• Checkfront, FAQ: Reservation-Only mode, data export.
• Checkfront, Online payments: payout schedule, countries, dispute fees.
• Checkfront, Payment rates: card rates by region, refunds.
• Checkfront, Booking fees: which bookings carry the fee, display options, refunds, 10% deposit.
• Checkfront, Plans FAQ: current and legacy plans, refunds.
• Checkfront, Changing plans: plan availability by country, Managed plan.
• Checkfront, Booking allowances: how bookings are counted.
• Checkfront, Payment setup: Stripe, existing accounts.
• Checkfront, Payment providers: third-party gateways.
• Checkfront, Self-Serve Terms (2022): scope of legacy terms.
• Checkfront, Master Terms (2025): transaction fee, data extraction after termination.
• Rezdy, Pricing: plans and booking fees.
• FareHarbor, Provider Terms (2025): fee types, commission model, notice.
• FareHarbor, Kayak Tours Booking Software: no monthly software fees.
• automate.travel, Pricing: completed-booking charges.
• FareHarbor, Booking fee adjustment: eligibility for direct-booking fees.
• FareHarbor, API fee: eligible API bookings.
• FareHarbor, Total price display: booking-fee examples.