FAREHARBOR FEES, EXPLAINED
What does FareHarbor cost? It doesn't publish a rate.
FareHarbor pricing has no monthly fee for the operator on its standard model — it charges you a processing fee and adds a booking fee to your customer's total at checkout. What that fee costs, FareHarbor does not say: we read its provider contract end to end on August 22, 2026 and there is no rate anywhere in it. So it isn't free; the cost just moves to the person you're trying to convert, at a number nobody outside FareHarbor can look up.
Timber & Tackle is flat-fee booking software for guides — $19/mo, and we will never take a cut of a client you brought us.
The confusing part about FareHarbor pricing is that there's no subscription to you, so it looks free. The revenue comes from a booking fee added to the customer's order as a separate line item. What the search results will not tell you is that FareHarbor publishes no percentage at all. The six pages quoting you one are all published by companies that sell competing booking software, none of them cites a FareHarbor document, and they do not agree: up to 6%, 6–8%, 5% to 8%, and a card-processing rate that is either 1.9% or 2.9% depending on which of them you read. We checked all six on August 22, 2026 and listed them, with their own words, on the FareHarbor alternative page.
Whatever the number turns out to be for you, the shape of it is the part that matters: a clean $850 trip arrives at the final checkout screen as something more than $850, right when the customer is deciding whether to pull the trigger. Every booking that surcharge talks out of it is a booking you lose, and you never see it. "Free" software, paid for in your conversion rate.
The contract is where we expected to settle this, and it does the opposite. FareHarbor's General Terms of Service for Providers names nine separate fees and prices none of them; the one place a percentage belongs, in the Commission definition, is a parenthesis saying the number will be communicated to you separately. The whole agreement contains exactly one percent sign and it governs what happens if somebody buys your business. We wrote up what the contract actually says on the FareHarbor alternative page, quotes and all.
There's also the quieter cost: it's their platform. Moving off FareHarbor later means rebuilding integrations and retraining — a switching cost that keeps operators in place even when the fee adds up.
The alternative is a flat fee with no surcharge: Timber & Tackle charges you one predictable monthly rate and adds nothing to your customer's bill. Your price is your price, on your own site, and you can export everything and leave anytime.
Where the money goes
Monthly fee to you
- FareHarbor
- $0 on its standard model; you still pay a processing fee
- Timber & Tackle
- One flat monthly fee
Booking fee
- FareHarbor
- On the customer. Rate not published; third parties guess 5% to 8%
- Timber & Tackle
- None
Your $850 trip at checkout
- FareHarbor
- $850 plus a fee you can't look up
- Timber & Tackle
- $850
Who eats the fee
- FareHarbor
- Your customer
- Timber & Tackle
- Nobody
Leaving later
- FareHarbor
- Rebuild & retrain
- Timber & Tackle
- One-click export
| FareHarbor | Timber & Tackle | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly fee to you | $0 on its standard model; you still pay a processing fee | One flat monthly fee |
| Booking fee | On the customer. Rate not published; third parties guess 5% to 8% | None |
| Your $850 trip at checkout | $850 plus a fee you can't look up | $850 |
| Who eats the fee | Your customer | Nobody |
| Leaving later | Rebuild & retrain | One-click export |
"Free" isn't free
The booking fee rides on your customer's total instead of your invoice — and the bookings it scares off are yours, not FareHarbor's.
Your price is your price
A flat fee adds nothing at checkout. What the customer saw is what they pay — no last-screen surprise.
No lock-in
Your own site and domain, your client list, one-click export. Nothing to unwind if you ever move on.
Do the math on your own trips.
Switch the calculator to FareHarbor and enter your numbers. Its FareHarbor side starts blank — FareHarbor publishes no rate, so we do not seed one. Put the number you have in writing.
What are you on now?
Keep it for the strangers it finds you. This is about the trips you book yourself.
50 trips= $28,650 a year
FareHarbor fee — your anglers pay
—
Timber & Tackle add-on fees
$0
Your price is your price.
Rate not published — enter yours to sketch the customer fee.
Only guide part of the year? Pause the rest.
Run your seasons, then pause your bill in the off-months — $0 while you're off the water, and your site stays live, still booking next season. You only pay the months you're actually fishing.
FareHarbor has no monthly fee for the operator on its standard model — it charges you a processing fee and adds a booking fee to the customer's total at checkout. It does not publish the booking-fee rate — we read its provider contract and there is no percentage in it. This calculator does not seed one. Enter the rate you have in writing.
Straight answers.
Does FareHarbor charge the operator a monthly fee?
Not on its standard model — there it's $0/month to the operator. FareHarbor charges you a processing fee and adds a booking fee to your customer's total at checkout. FareHarbor does not publish what either one costs; its provider contract, which we read in full on August 22, 2026, contains no fee percentage at all.
Can I turn off the FareHarbor booking fee?
Not by flipping a switch, but it isn't welded on either. FareHarbor's provider terms describe an alternative Commission Model where the customer pays a single price and you pay FareHarbor instead — Annex 1 states that under it “FareHarbor shall not charge a Booking Fee to Bookers.” The contract says a provider may request that structure, so it's a right to ask rather than a right to get, and no rate is published for it. We read the contract and quoted it on the FareHarbor alternative page.
How much does the booking fee actually add?
We can't tell you, and neither can anyone else writing about it — the rate isn't published and the third-party guesses run from 5% to 8%. What we can tell you is the arithmetic to run yourself: on an $850 trip, every point is about $8.50 on your customer's bill, so the spread between those guesses is roughly $25 a trip. Multiply by a season, count the bookings that don't convert at the higher total, then get your real number from FareHarbor in writing before you sign.
What does Timber & Tackle charge instead?
One flat monthly fee and nothing else — no percentage on you, no surcharge on your customer. See the pricing page for current rates.
Related: What FareHarbor's contract actually says about its fees · The real math on booking fees · What we charge
No surcharge. Your price is your price.
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