Square Appointments Pricing: What Moves You Off Free

Square Appointments has a $0 plan, and the next two cost $49 and $149 a month per location according to Square's own pricing page. Whether you ever need them depends less on card volume than on one or two features that Free leaves out.

Quick answer

• Free is $0, Plus is $49 a month and Premium is $149 a month, charged for each location you run (Square Appointments pricing, checked 2026-10-13).
• Staff count alone does not push you up: calendars are unlimited on every plan.
• Plus is where multi-staff booking, cancellation and no-show fees, the waitlist, classes and multi-location management appear. Premium is where room and chair resources, a future bookings report and service cost tracking appear.
• Paid plans cut the card percentage by 0.1 to 0.2 points in person, and Plus and Premium cut online to 2.9%. Whether those cuts repay the subscription depends on your card volume; the sums are below.
• Square cannot tell you which ad produced a booking. It can tell you a booking came from Google's booking button.

Which job makes you leave the free plan?

The feature grid on Square's pricing page is the reliable guide. I read each row for where Free shows a dash, and where Free and Plus both do. The page's own plan summaries match this reading: Plus lists "Cancellation policy and no-show fees", "Multi-staff appointment booking" and "Waitlist", while Premium lists "Future bookings report", "Service cost tracking" and "Resource management" (same page, checked 2026-10-13).

Free does include an online booking site, deposits, appointment reminders by text and email, and a Book Now button for Instagram, Facebook or a Google Business Profile. Text and email appointment confirmations and Google Calendar sync start on Plus. A deposit is a partial payment taken at booking; it is not the same as a no-show fee, which is charged afterward to the card the client left at booking.

Text campaigns follow the plan too. The fee table marks text message marketing as not available in Square Free, with 500 texts a month per account included and then 3 cents each on Plus, and 2,500 included and then 1.5 cents each on Premium.

What does a card payment cost on each plan?

(Square Appointments pricing, checked 2026-10-13)

Two details matter. The fixed part (15 or 30 cents) is the same on every plan, so it never changes the upgrade math. And Square's US pages do not say which row a no-show charge falls under: if it counts as a saved card on file, it is the 3.5% line, the highest card rate in the table after Afterpay.

Sellers processing over $250,000 a year can ask Square about custom fees under Square Pro. Gift card loads cost a 2.5% fee on Free and Plus and nothing on Premium.

When does a paid plan pay for itself?

Take the subscription and divide it by the percentage points you save on the volume that actually uses that rate. The fixed cents cancel out.

• In person, Free to Plus: $49 ÷ 0.1% = $49,000 of in-person card sales a month.
• In person, Free to Premium: $149 ÷ 0.2% = $74,500 a month.
• Online, Free to Plus or Premium: $49 ÷ 0.4% = $12,250 for Plus, $149 ÷ 0.4% = $37,250 for Premium.
• Plus to Premium: the online rate is identical, so only the in-person 0.1 point counts, $100 ÷ 0.1% = $100,000 a month.

If your volume splits across rows, add the savings together and compare the total with the subscription difference. If a feature in the table above is what you need, the sums only tell you what that feature costs after the rate cut.

What does that look like for a three-chair salon?

Illustrative: the salon below is imaginary, every number is made up, and none of it comes from a client.

Say it takes 300 in-person card payments averaging $60 ($18,000), 50 online prepayments averaging $80 ($4,000) and 10 keyed-in cards averaging $100 ($1,000) in a month, using Square's published rates above.

Plus saves this salon $34 a month in rates ($18 in person, $16 online) against a $49 fee, so it costs $15 more a month, $180 a year. The real question is whether a waitlist or a no-show fee brings back more than $15 a month. To redo this with your own books, pull last month's card report from Square Dashboard and split it into the three payment types.

A second location doubles the fee, because it is charged per location: Plus at two locations is $98 a month before any savings.

What else does Square sell around the plan?

The same pricing page points to Square Payroll "starting at $35 per month + $6 per person paid" and Square hardware "starting at $59", and says you do not need to buy hardware to take payments, since invoices, payment links, Tap to Pay on iPhone or Android and a virtual terminal work without it. Email and text marketing are not sold separately: Square's Marketing page says they need Square Plus or Premium, with unlimited email campaign sends plus the text allowances above (Square Marketing, checked 2026-10-13).

In Canada, Square lists separate prices: Free $0 for a single location, Plus $35 and Premium $85 per location per month, and the same card rates on every plan (in-person credit at 2.5%, debit at 0.75% + 7 cents, online at 2.8% + 30 cents, manual entry at 3.3% + 15 cents), so a paid plan there buys features, not a lower rate (Square Canada pricing, checked 2026-10-13). Promotional texts to Canadian clients need their consent, express or implied, under CASL (Justice Laws, CASL s. 6, checked 2026-10-13).

Can Square show which ad brought the client?

Square can show where a booking came from only for some channels. With Reserve with Google, a booking made from Google Search or Maps is marked in the appointment details on your calendar and in the notification email (Square Support, checked 2026-10-13). That label says Google, not which ad, keyword or campaign. Only the owner or tenant of the physical place of business qualifies, so booth and room renters cannot use it, and clients cannot book several services at once or prepay through it.

For tracking codes, Square's help center describes a tracking-code setting where you paste Google Analytics or a Facebook (Meta) pixel ID, but the article is written for the Square Online website, not the Appointments booking page (Square Support, checked 2026-10-13). I found no Square article saying the same code can be added to the Appointments booking site, so ask support before promising an agency that conversions will fire there. The pricing page also says a booking widget can be embedded in an existing website, so the visit lands on a page your own analytics sees; ask support whether the finished booking can be counted there.

A phone booking or a walk-in never reaches any of that. What a booking system should record by source is covered in what a salon booking system should log, and how to credit a booking to the ad that bought it covers the step after.

What to ask Square before you upgrade

• Which exact features do I lose if I drop back to Free after the trial?
• Does the Appointments booking site accept a Google Analytics or Meta pixel, and where is that documented?
• Is my business eligible for Reserve with Google, and will it ignore my no-show fee?
• Is a no-show or late-cancel charge billed at the card-on-file rate or the online rate?
• If I add a second location, is the full fee charged again?

The plan-for-plan table against a flat-rate rival is in the GlossGenius pricing breakdown.