Vagaro Pricing: Calendars, Add-ons, Card Fees and the Real Monthly Bill

Vagaro is booking, payments and marketing software for salons, spas, barbershops and fitness studios. Its price has three layers: a base subscription that grows with the number of people who take appointments, a menu of optional add-ons, each with its own monthly charge, and the card processing fees taken from every payment. This guide prices all three in US dollars, from Vagaro's own price list and help center, and works out what a real salon pays.

If you are still choosing between Vagaro, Fresha, GlossGenius, Square and the rest, start with our salon software comparison. This page goes deep on Vagaro alone.

Vagaro pricing at a glance

Vagaro's US pricing page calls the $23.99 base price an "exclusive rate for the first 6 months" and doesn't show what you pay after that, so check the price on your own signup screen before you commit.

The base subscription and calendar licenses

Vagaro prices by bookable calendar: one column in the appointment book for one person, or one resource, that clients can book. One calendar license is included in the base subscription. Each additional employee calendar is $10 a month, for up to seven licenses, and once you have paid for seven, Vagaro lets you add more employees at no extra charge.

That cap is what sets Vagaro apart. A solo stylist pays $23.99, a four-person team $53.99, and every team of seven or more, whether 8 stylists or 15, pays $83.99 a month. Per-person systems keep charging for every hire; Vagaro stops.

Calendars are managed from Settings → Manage Subscription, where you raise or lower the number of bookable calendars. To drop a license, you first remove the employee using it. A business with several locations can pick different features for each one, and Vagaro has a sales team for multi-location businesses.

What every plan includes

Before you look at the add-ons, it helps to know what you already get. Vagaro's pricing page lists these in every plan:

• The appointment calendar, resource management and a customer waitlist.
• Online booking on Vagaro, Instagram, Facebook and Apple Maps, plus a booking widget for your own site.
• A listing on the Vagaro Marketplace, the consumer app where clients search for and book appointments.
• Unlimited notifications and appointment reminders.
• 1,000 free marketing emails a month.
• Memberships, packages, gift certificates, loyalty programs and Daily Deals.
• Inventory tracking, invoices, advanced reporting, client tracking and SOAP notes.
• AI business tools from Vera, Vagaro's built-in assistant.

For a salon that only needs a calendar, online booking, reminders and a checkout, the base subscription is the whole software bill. Clients book their Vagaro appointment through the Marketplace or your booking link at no cost to you.

Add-ons and their monthly prices

Everything else is a premium feature with its own price. These are the US prices from Vagaro's price list:

Connect by Vagaro, the two-way messaging inbox, is free to start, though Vagaro recommends a text plan with it.

What to watch:

• The deposit tool is an add-on. Taking deposits and charging cancellation fees on online bookings comes with the Online Shopping Cart, at $10 a month. Most salons that fight no-shows will want it.
• Some add-ons bill forward. Email marketing, text marketing, QuickBooks, Vagaro Drive, Payroll, Xero and the Large Merchant plan are charged at the end of the billing cycle even if you switch them off before your billing date.
• MySite has a design option. Building the site yourself costs only the $20 a month once it is published, and trying it is free until then. Vagaro's design team will build it for a one-time $299. Compare that with a stand-alone website builder for a small business if you want more than a booking-led site.
• Payroll scales with staff. At 8 employees it is $34 + 8 × $5 = $74 a month. If you already run payroll elsewhere, see what payroll services for small businesses charge first.

Text and email marketing plans

Reminders are included, but marketing campaigns are sold in credit plans. One text message is one credit.

Larger plans run up to 500,000 credits for $2,500 a month.

Email marketing starts free with 1,000 emails a month. Above that:

A salon with 1,500 clients that sends one newsletter a month uses 1,500 emails, so it needs the Medium plan at $10. That is cheap next to most stand-alone email marketing tools, with the advantage that the list is your Vagaro client list, already up to date.

Card processing: Small vs Large Merchant

Vagaro Merchant Services handles card payments, and the rate depends on the merchant plan you choose when you sign up.

"Keyed in" covers more than it sounds: Vagaro counts online payments, recurring membership and package charges, cards on file and Google Pay or Apple Pay online as keyed-in transactions, at 3.5% + 19¢. A no-show fee charged to a card on file is a keyed-in payment.

Vagaro says the monthly amount you process should decide your plan, but the $4,000 line is a guide, not a rule: there are no requirements to switch, and you change plans through Vagaro support. The Large plan's lower percentage only pays off once it covers the $10 fee and the higher 19¢ per payment. At an $80 average ticket, that happens at about $5,060 a month in card sales; at a $50 ticket, not until about $7,700.

Other fees in Vagaro's US table:

• FANF (Fixed Acquirer Network Fee): none under $200 a month in card sales, 0.15% of volume between $200 and $1,250, then a fixed fee. For card-present payments it is $2 a month per location for 1 to 3 locations ($2.90 in high-volume industries). Card-not-present volume has its own scale by monthly volume: $7 at $1,250 to $3,999, $9 at $4,000 to $7,999, $15 at $8,000 to $39,999 and $45 at $40,000 to $199,999, rising in steps for larger businesses.
• Mastercard location fee: $1.25 a month.
• Chargebacks: $7.50 for the first, and $15 more if a Mastercard dispute defense fails.
• Buy Now, Pay Later: clients can split a bill with Affirm, and you pay 6% + 30¢ on those sales.

Vagaro doesn't let you pass card fees on to clients as a surcharge, so budget for them as a cost of doing business.

Hardware and the free card reader

Vagaro sells its own payment hardware. US list prices, before tax and shipping:

When you sign up for Vagaro's card processing, you can order a PayPro Go for free or take $150 off a PayPro Mini or a hardware bundle. Two conditions come with it:

1. A 12-month commitment. You agree not to cancel Vagaro or switch off its card processing within 12 months, or you are charged the price of the reader or the discount you received. Vagaro doesn't accept hardware returns.
2. An inactive processing fee. US businesses on the Small Merchant plan that got promotional hardware on or after January 1, 2026 pay $10 a month in any month after the first in which they process less than $1,000 in card payments. The fee doesn't end when the 12 months do. Large Merchant accounts are exempt.

A part-time stylist who takes mostly cash or transfers should think twice about the free reader: $10 a month for a few slow months soon costs more than buying a PayPro Go outright.

Vera Fill My Books and other commission fees

Vagaro takes no commission on normal Marketplace bookings in the US; its price list shows the Marketplace as free. The commissions come only with Vera Fill My Books, an optional tool that creates discounted deals, features you in a "Sponsored" spot on the Marketplace and emails nearby Vagaro users.

The fee is charged on the client's whole cart, on top of the discount you chose to offer. On an $80 service with a 15% discount, a new client pays $68 and Vagaro's 20% is $13.60, so you keep $54.40 before card fees. Treat it as an advertising cost, cap the number of customers per month in the campaign settings, and switch it off when your book is full.

What a real salon pays

A solo nail tech, Small Merchant, $3,000 a month in card sales at a $50 average ticket (60 payments):

A four-chair hair salon, $16,000 a month in card sales at an $80 ticket (200 payments), on the Large Merchant plan, with the Online Shopping Cart for deposits, the Small text plan and MySite:

These assume every payment is dipped or tapped in person. Deposits, card-on-file charges and online sales are billed at the keyed-in rate, 3.5% + 19¢, so a salon that takes many online payments pays more, and online payments also count toward the card-not-present FANF. In both examples the card fees are most of the bill, which is why the processing rate matters more than the subscription when you compare Vagaro with its rivals.

Support and training costs

Vagaro's support chat with Vera, its help articles, video tutorials and group workshops are free to every business, trial accounts included. A one-on-one training session with a Vagaro expert costs $100. The design studio sells a custom business logo for $100 and a brand package for $250.

If an account is closed for non-payment, reactivating it brings the outstanding balance plus a $5 late fee.

Vagaro compared with the rest

On the subscription alone, Vagaro's position depends on team size. For one person, systems with a free plan or a lower solo price cost less. For a big team, the seven-license cap makes Vagaro one of the cheaper choices, because rivals priced per team member keep adding a charge for every hire while Vagaro stays at $83.99. The full side-by-side, with each rival's subscription and card rates, is in our salon software guide.

Outside beauty, the choice widens. A consultant, tutor or clinic that just needs clients to book a time may be better served by a general appointment scheduling tool; Acuity Scheduling's pricing is a common alternative for a solo practice. If your business sells more products than services, look at the POS systems for small businesses first.

Vagaro's client records, notes and visit history already do the job a CRM does for most salons. If you also run a sales team that needs a pipeline, see what CRM software costs per user before you add a second system.

Is Vagaro worth the price?

Choose Vagaro if you have, or plan to have, five or more people taking appointments: from the seventh calendar on, adding staff costs nothing, and the base plan already includes online booking, reminders, the Marketplace listing and 1,000 marketing emails a month.

Be careful if you are a part-time solo provider with low card volume. The free reader ties you in for 12 months and can cost $10 a month in slow months, and add-ons like forms and deposits push the $23.99 base up quickly. Start with the 30-day free trial, add only the features you use in that month, and look at the subscription total on the Manage Subscription screen before the trial ends. Leave email and text marketing and the hardware offer until you have decided: activating either marketing plan, the Yelp integration or the discounted hardware ends the trial early. The trial turns into a paid month automatically, and Vagaro gives no refunds on subscriptions, so cancel before it ends if Vagaro is not for you.