How Treatwell and Fresha Make Money From Your Beauty Business
Treatwell takes 35% of your first booking from every new client. Add VAT and you're handing over 42p in every pound to a platform that didn't do the treatment. Here's exactly how the numbers work.
Let’s be honest about something the platforms would rather you didn’t think too hard about.
Every time a new client finds you on Treatwell or Fresha and books an appointment, a significant chunk of what they pay goes to the platform. Not to you. Not to your rent, your kit, your training, or your time. To a software company that connected two people who might have found each other anyway.
Here’s exactly how much, and how the rules are written to maximise it.
The Treatwell numbers
Treatwell charges 35% commission on the first booking from any new client introduced through their marketplace.
At UK VAT rates, that 35% becomes 42% of the booking value. A £60 lash appointment nets you £34.80 before your costs. A £120 colour service? You keep £69.60. The rest goes to Treatwell.
To their credit, repeat bookings carry no commission, which is genuinely fair. The problem is in the definition of “repeat.”
Treatwell defines a client as new again if they have not had a successful appointment with you in the last 365 days. So a client who comes to you every few months is a loyal regular. A client who comes twice a year but slips past the 12-month window? Treatwell can treat them as a new client and charge 35% again. This is not a loophole. It is in their terms of business.
The April 2025 rule change made this significantly more expensive. Before April 2025, if you had to cancel a new client’s appointment, no commission was charged. From April 2025, if you cancel a new client’s booking from the Treatwell marketplace, the 35% commission still applies. You pay whether the appointment happens or not.
For a treatment that never took place.
The Fresha numbers
Fresha built its user base as a free platform, which is how it attracted so many salons. They now charge a monthly subscription (around £15 per bookable team member for multi-person salons, less for independent stylists), plus 20% commission on first bookings from clients who find you through the Fresha marketplace, with a minimum fee of around £6 per booking.
20% is meaningfully cheaper than Treatwell’s 42% all-in figure, but the same fundamental model applies: the platform profits from your new client relationships, and the client data sits in their system, not yours.
The data problem nobody talks about
The commission is visible. The data problem is not.
When a client books through Treatwell or Fresha, the platform captures that relationship. They hold the client’s contact details, booking history, and preferences. The platform uses that data to market their own services, recommend other salons, and retain the client within their ecosystem.
You receive a booking. They receive a customer record.
This matters more than it sounds. If you ever leave a platform, cancel your subscription, or simply want to run your own marketing campaign, your ability to reach clients who originally found you through the marketplace is limited by what the platform allows you to export and use. In some cases, it is limited entirely.
You did the treatment. You built the relationship. But the platform owns the data that makes that relationship commercially useful.
Why the platforms are genuinely useful
None of this means the platforms are dishonest. Treatwell and Fresha do provide real value, particularly for new salons without an established client base. Discovery on a platform that half a million people use daily is genuinely worth something, especially when you are starting out and need to fill chairs.
The question is not whether the platforms are worth using. The question is whether you have thought carefully about what you are paying, and whether you have built anything that belongs to you.
Most salon owners have not. They are on Treatwell or Fresha, they have a Facebook page, and they have nothing else. Every client relationship is mediated by a third party. Every rebooking runs through someone else’s system. The business exists, but the infrastructure belongs to the platform.
What belonging to yourself looks like
It starts with a website.
Not a Treatwell profile. Not a Facebook page. A real URL that you own, that shows up when someone Googles you, that goes in your Instagram bio, on your business cards, and on the back of your appointment reminders.
From there, the direct booking layer is cheap or free. Fresha’s direct booking link, which carries zero commission because the client is not coming through the marketplace, can sit on your own site. The client finds you directly, books directly, and the relationship belongs to you from the start.
A one-page website with your work, your prices, a booking link, and your contact details does this job. It does not replace Treatwell or Fresha’s discovery function. It means that clients who find you any other way, through Google, through Instagram, through a referral, through a business card, book with you directly rather than through a platform that takes a cut.
From £10 a month with no contract, it is the cheapest way to start building something that is actually yours.
Treatwell and Fresha are marketing tools. A website is your business. The two are not the same thing.
👉 See what your site could look like at onepagesites.uk
Commission and fee figures sourced from Treatwell and Fresha UK pricing pages, verified July 2026. VAT calculated at the current UK standard rate of 20%. Always verify current pricing directly with each provider before making business decisions.
