Checkfront Alternative: For Tours, Rentals and Activities
Whether an alternative makes sense depends less on Checkfront than on what you sell: tours, or things people rent.
Checkfront serves a wider range of businesses than most tour booking systems: tours and activities, but also equipment rentals, accommodation, adventure parks and escape rooms. That breadth is its strength, and it is also why the answer to "should I switch?" depends so much on what you sell. A bike-rental business and a walking-tour company can look at the same platform and reach opposite conclusions — and both can be right.
This page works from Checkfront's own published pricing and features, compares the main alternatives on cost and fit, and covers what switching involves — including the parts that are harder to move than bookings.
What Checkfront does well
- Flexible availability. Bookings from one minute to one week — daily, multi-day, timeslots and flexible periods — which suits rentals and accommodation as well as tours.
- Resource management built around getting the most from every vehicle, seat, piece of equipment or room.
- Fees only on online bookings. Nothing on offline sales, nothing extra on OTA bookings and nothing on bookings made through its API.
- Built-in waivers, a choice of four booking widgets, and automated email and SMS notifications.
- Payment choice including Apple Pay, Google Pay, iDEAL and Alipay, and 24/7 support.
Checkfront's pricing
Checkfront's pricing page shows one plan for every customer: $99 a month plus 3% on each online booking. You can absorb the 3% or pass it on to guests, there is no setup fee, and the page notes that pricing may vary with your region and currency. Offline, OTA and API bookings carry no Checkfront fee.
Two things to check. Review sites still list older plan structures, such as a flat $225 monthly plan, so if you are an existing customer, confirm which terms apply to your account. And the pricing page does not state how many staff accounts the plan includes; if your team is larger than a handful, ask before comparing.
A single plan cuts both ways. There is no upgrade to buy when you need waivers, API access or more widgets, because one price covers them. But there is also no cheaper tier for a business that only needs the basics — a small tour operator pays the same $99 as a busy rental fleet. Tiered systems work the other way round: a lower entry price, with some features held back for the plans above it.
OTA connectivity
Connectivity is sometimes named as a reason to leave Checkfront, but its own pricing page lists connections to Google Things to do, Viator and GetYourGuide, plus more than 20,000 resellers, with no fee added on top of the marketplace's commission. Rather than relying on general claims either way, list the specific marketplaces and resellers you sell through and confirm each one is supported, with live availability, on any system you consider. Our guide to Google Things to do explains why that particular connection matters.
Why tour operators look elsewhere
For a tour business selling mostly online, the main reason is cost at the entry level. Checkfront's $99 subscription is higher than several tour-focused entry plans, and its 3% online fee is higher than some. A tour operator may also be paying, in effect, for depth in rentals and accommodation that it never uses.
None of that makes Checkfront a poor choice; it makes it a different one. A rental or multi-use business may find exactly the opposite: that its flexibility is worth the price, and that a tour-first system cannot model what it sells.
The alternatives compared
Here are the monthly totals — subscription plus online booking fees — for a business selling $60 bookings online and absorbing the fee, using each provider's entry plan as published. Payment processing sits outside every figure:
| Monthly online bookings | 100 | 300 | 600 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Checkfront, $99 + 3% | $279 | $639 | $1,179 |
| Bókun START, $49 + 1.5% | $139 | $319 | $589 |
| Rezdy Foundation, $49 + 3% | $229 | $589 | $1,129 |
| Travelity Starter, $39 + 1.9% | $153 | $381 | $723 |
On online fees alone, every entry plan here costs less than Checkfront at these volumes. But entry plans have limits Checkfront's single plan may not: Bókun START and Travelity Starter allow up to five users. For a team of up to ten, compare Travelity Professional at $139 plus 1.9%, which costs less than Checkfront above about 61 online bookings a month, or Bókun PLUS at $149 plus 1.25%, cheaper above about 48.
Rezgo, with no subscription and 4.9% per online booking, costs less than Checkfront below about 87 online bookings a month. The detail behind each is in our guides to Bókun, Rezdy and Rezgo.
Beyond online fees
The table counts online bookings only, which flatters any system with a low percentage. Two other channels can change the picture:
- Offline bookings. Checkfront, Bókun and Travelity charge nothing on them. Rezdy charges $1 each, which erases its $50 monthly advantage over Checkfront at 50 offline bookings a month. Rezgo charges 0.9%.
- Marketplace bookings. Checkfront adds nothing on top of the marketplace's commission. Bókun charges nothing on Viator bookings but applies its plan fee to other marketplaces. For any other system, ours included, ask exactly how bookings arriving from marketplaces are charged.
An operator selling heavily through marketplaces other than Viator, with modest direct volume, may find Checkfront's "fees on online bookings only" approach closer in cost than the table suggests. Take a month of 150 online bookings, 60 through a marketplace other than Viator and 40 by phone, all at $60. Checkfront comes to $369, because the marketplace and phone bookings add nothing. Bókun START comes to $238, because its 1.5% applies to the marketplace bookings too — and to $184 if those 60 came through Viator instead. The gap narrows, but on these numbers it does not close. Run your own channel mix through each before deciding.
Switching from Checkfront
Moving bookings is the easy part. What takes care is everything Checkfront's flexibility lets you model:
- Resources: vehicles, equipment, seats and rooms, and how they are shared between products. Confirm the new system can represent them before you rebuild anything.
- Availability types: multi-day, flexible or by-the-minute bookings may not map onto a system built around fixed tour times.
- Waivers: if you rely on Checkfront's built-in waivers, check the alternative supports them. Travelity does not document waiver signing, so you would pair it with a separate waiver tool — our guide to digital waivers covers the options.
- Data: export customers and future bookings, and keep both systems running until every future booking has moved.
Then reconnect marketplaces one at a time, confirm availability syncs on each, and swap the booking widget on your website last. A quieter month gives you room to fix what the test bookings reveal.
During a trial of any alternative, test it against your real setup rather than a demo product:
- Rebuild your most complicated product, including shared resources and add-ons.
- Take a multi-day or flexible-length booking if you sell them.
- Connect one marketplace and confirm a booking there reduces availability everywhere.
- Check how many staff accounts you need and what they cost.
- Confirm the currency and payment methods your guests use are supported where you operate.
Who each option suits
- Checkfront: rental, accommodation and multi-use businesses that need flexible availability and resource management, and operators who sell through many marketplaces and want no fee added to those bookings.
- Bókun: tour operators growing online, especially through Viator, who want the lowest published percentage.
- Rezdy: operators built around agents and resellers.
- Rezgo: small or seasonal businesses that want to pay nothing when they are not selling.
- Travelity: tour, transfer and activity operators after a small fixed monthly cost, a 1.9% fee that applies only to online sales, free phone and walk-in bookings, and no fee shown to guests at checkout. It includes accommodation inventory management, but it is built primarily for tours — for a business that is mainly equipment rental, Checkfront is the stronger fit.
See the full field in our buyer's guide and the three-way comparison, and trial your shortlist with real products before you move.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Checkfront cost?
Checkfront’s pricing page shows one plan for all customers: $99 a month plus a 3% fee on online bookings, which you can absorb or pass on to guests. It charges no fees on offline bookings, no additional fees on OTA or API bookings, and no setup fee. The page notes that pricing may vary by region and currency.
Does Checkfront charge fees on OTA bookings?
No. Checkfront states that it charges no additional fees on bookings from OTAs, so you pay only the commission the marketplace itself sets. It also charges nothing extra on bookings made through its API. Its pricing page lists connections to Google Things to do, Viator, GetYourGuide and more than 20,000 resellers.
What is a good Checkfront alternative for tour operators?
For a tour operator mainly selling online, a lower subscription and a lower percentage usually cost less: Bókun START at $49 plus 1.5%, or Travelity Starter at $39 plus 1.9%. For an agent-heavy business, Rezdy’s reseller network stands out. For a very small or seasonal business, Rezgo’s no-subscription model can cost less. Compare on your own channel mix and team size.
Is Checkfront good for rentals?
Rentals are one of Checkfront’s clear strengths. It supports availability from one minute to one week, including daily, multi-day, timeslot and flexible bookings, with resource management for vehicles, equipment and rooms. Businesses built mainly around rentals or accommodation should weigh that carefully before moving to a system designed primarily for tours.
How do I switch from Checkfront to another system?
Export customers and future bookings, then check the new system can model your resources and availability types before rebuilding products. Plan for waivers if you use Checkfront’s built-in ones, run both systems until every future booking has moved, reconnect marketplaces one at a time, and swap the booking widget on your website last.
Bottom line
Checkfront charges $99 a month plus 3% on online bookings, with nothing on offline, OTA or API bookings. For a tour operator selling mostly online, several alternatives cost less; for a rental or multi-use business, Checkfront's flexibility may be worth the price.
Compare on your real channel mix and team size, check that any alternative can model your resources and handle waivers, and move only once test bookings run cleanly end to end.
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