Fresha for aesthetic clinics: fees, the marketplace and your own brand

Fresha is one of the largest booking platforms in the world, it is free to sign up for, and plenty of aesthetic practitioners start there for exactly those reasons. This page is not an argument that Fresha is a bad product. It is a plain look at how Fresha makes its money, why that model can quietly cost an established aesthetics clinic more than a subscription would, and where a your-own-brand clinic platform fits instead.

Accurate as of July 2026; if Fresha changes its model, this page changes.

The one thing to understand about Fresha

Fresha is a consumer marketplace, not a subscription tool. The software is free to use, and Fresha earns instead through the transactions that flow through it: card processing on payments, and the marketplace that puts your business in front of consumers browsing on Fresha’s own site and app. That is a legitimate model, and for a business that wants marketplace discovery it can work well. It is simply a different bet from a paid clinic platform, and the difference matters most once your diary is full of your own returning patients rather than strangers browsing a marketplace.

Two consequences follow from the marketplace model, and both are worth checking against Fresha’s current terms before you rely on this page:

• Fees are transaction-based, not a flat subscription. Card processing applies to payments taken through Fresha, and the marketplace has historically carried a fee on new clients it introduces to you.
• The client discovers you on Fresha’s brand. In the marketplace, a patient can find your clinic alongside others and book through Fresha rather than through a page that is unmistakably yours.

Fresha fees, in plain terms

Because there is no subscription, the honest question is not “how much does Fresha cost” but “how do the transaction fees add up on my volume”. A clinic taking most of its bookings from its own returning patients pays marketplace and processing fees on revenue it would have earned anyway. A clinic that genuinely relies on the marketplace to find new patients is buying acquisition, which may be worth it. The arithmetic depends entirely on how many of your bookings are your own patients versus marketplace strangers.

AesthetiClinic runs the other way round. It is £25 plus VAT per practitioner per month for the whole platform, monthly rolling, cancel any time, with a 14-day free trial. Deposits and payments run through your own Stripe account and we take 0% commission, so beyond the flat subscription the only charges are Stripe’s standard card fees, paid to Stripe, not to us. There is no marketplace fee and no new-client fee, because there is no marketplace: every booking is your own. The full breakdown is on the pricing page.

Your brand versus a marketplace

For a beauty business chasing footfall, being discoverable in a large consumer marketplace is a feature. For an aesthetics clinic building a book of returning medical patients, it can cut the other way: the booking journey runs on someone else’s brand, and the patient relationship is mediated by the platform.

AesthetiClinic gives you a booking page under your own clinic’s brand, on your own domain, with deposits into your own Stripe account. Patients book you, pay you, and come back to you. There is no marketplace listing you next to the clinic down the road, and no third party sitting between you and your patient list.

Capability comparison

Capability	Fresha	AesthetiClinic
Model	Free consumer marketplace, monetised through payments and marketplace fees	Paid subscription, £25 + VAT per practitioner/month, whole platform
Booking presence	Your business listed in the Fresha marketplace	A booking page under your own brand and domain
Payments	Processed through Fresha; check current fees	Your own Stripe account, 0% commission to us (Stripe’s card fees apply)
New-client / marketplace fee	Has applied historically; verify current terms	None; every booking is your own
Multi-practitioner diary	Varies	Shifts, time off, database-level double-booking protection
Consent and records	Varies	E-signed consent on the patient’s own phone, batch numbers, dose, before and after photos
Licensing-ready records	Varies	Structured for England’s 2026 licensing scheme
Full data export	Varies	One click, any time, no exit fee

Where a row says “Varies” or asks you to verify, Fresha does not publish the detail in a form we can quote with confidence, so we have flagged it rather than guess. The licensing-ready row matters more than it used to: our licensing-ready records checklist sets out what a record should carry, and the guide to England’s 2026 licensing scheme tracks where the rules have actually got to.

Stay with Fresha if

• You want the marketplace to find you new clients. If a meaningful share of your bookings come from consumers discovering you on Fresha, you are buying acquisition, and that is a fair reason to stay.
• You are beauty-led or just starting out. Free at the point of use, with no subscription, is a genuine advantage when every fixed cost counts and your records needs are light.
• You are comfortable with a payments-monetised model. If the transaction fees suit your volume and you are happy taking payment through the platform, the bundled convenience is real.

Common questions

Does Fresha charge fees if it is free?

Fresha does not charge a subscription. It earns through card processing on payments taken in the platform and, historically, through a fee on new clients introduced by its marketplace. Because these are transaction-based, the real cost depends on your volume and how many bookings come from the marketplace rather than your own patients. Check Fresha’s current fee schedule for the exact rates.

Is AesthetiClinic a marketplace like Fresha?

No. AesthetiClinic is clinic software, not a consumer marketplace. You get a booking page under your own brand, and there is no directory listing your clinic alongside others. Patients book and pay you directly through your own Stripe account.

What does AesthetiClinic cost compared with Fresha?

AesthetiClinic is £25 plus VAT per practitioner per month for the whole platform, with no marketplace fee and no commission to us on takings. Fresha is free to use but monetised through transaction fees. Which works out cheaper depends on your booking mix; a clinic running mostly on its own returning patients usually prefers the flat subscription.

How switching works

Moving from Fresha to your own clinic platform is more routine than it sounds. We import your patients, rebuild your consent forms as versioned templates, set up practitioners, shifts and your branded booking page, then run in parallel until you cut over. The full process is on the switching page, and the 14-day free trial lets you test the export before you commit. If you are surveying the whole market, our comparisons with Pabau, Zenoti and Glowday cover the other common options, and the best aesthetic clinic software guide lays them out side by side.