FISHING CHARTER BOOKING SOFTWARE
Take bookings online without paying to book.
The booking tools built for charters mostly come in two shapes: generic tour software that charges a monthly fee plus ~3% on every booking, or a website builder with a widget bolted on. Timber & Tackle is built for guides — online booking, deposits, and your own site — for one flat fee, no commission, no per-booking cut.
First, clear one thing up: a marketplace isn't booking software, and we're not asking you to drop yours. FishingBooker and Captain Experiences find you strangers and charge a commission for it — that's the trade, and it's a trade we can't offer, because finding you customers isn't something we do. This page is about the other category: the software that takes the booking. Generic tour/activity platforms (Rezdy, Checkfront) put a booking widget on your site but charge a monthly subscription plus about 3% on every online booking, on top of card processing. FareHarbor is 'free' because it staples ~6% onto your customer's bill instead.
Either way you're paying a percentage to take a booking you found yourself. And neither is really built for a guide — the deposit-then-balance rhythm of a trip, the intake questions, the weather reschedule, licenses, the seasonality.
Timber & Tackle is booking software made for fishing guides specifically: a customer requests a trip, you accept, they pay a deposit straight to your own account, and they get a branded confirmation with everything they need. One flat monthly fee — no commission, no per-booking percentage — and the whole thing runs on your own domain with your client list yours to keep.
Three ways to take a booking
SaaS pricing (Rezdy $49–$249/mo + 3%, Checkfront $99/mo + 3%) and marketplace commissions are from the platforms' own published pricing pages, verified July 2026.
What it charges
- Commission marketplace
- 10–30% commission per trip
- Generic tour SaaS
- Monthly fee + ~3% per booking
- Timber & Tackle
- One flat fee — $0 per booking
Cost as you book more
- Commission marketplace
- Grows every trip
- Generic tour SaaS
- Grows (the 3%)
- Timber & Tackle
- Flat — never grows
Built for fishing guides
- Commission marketplace
- You're a listing
- Generic tour SaaS
- Generic activities
- Timber & Tackle
- yes — trips, deposits, intake, weather
Own your client list
- Commission marketplace
- Generic tour SaaS
- Timber & Tackle
Your own domain & brand
- Commission marketplace
- Generic tour SaaS
- A widget on your site
- Timber & Tackle
- Your whole site
Who finds you strangers
- Commission marketplace
- The marketplace — that's what it's for
- Generic tour SaaS
- Nobody
- Timber & Tackle
- Nobody. We don't do that; keep your listing
| Commission marketplace | Generic tour SaaS | Timber & Tackle | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it charges | 10–30% commission per trip | Monthly fee + ~3% per booking | One flat fee — $0 per booking |
| Cost as you book more | Grows every trip | Grows (the 3%) | Flat — never grows |
| Built for fishing guides | You're a listing | Generic activities | yes — trips, deposits, intake, weather |
| Own your client list | |||
| Your own domain & brand | A widget on your site | Your whole site | |
| Who finds you strangers | The marketplace — that's what it's for | Nobody | Nobody. We don't do that; keep your listing |
$0 per booking
No commission, no 3% online-booking fee — one flat monthly cost whether you run 10 trips or 200.
Made for guides
Deposit-then-balance, intake questions, weather reschedule, seasons, licenses — the actual rhythm of a charter, not a generic activity slot.
You own it all
Your own domain, your SEO, your client list — export everything with one click, anytime. You're building an asset, not renting a listing.
Do the math on your own trips.
Not what you'd save by quitting anything — what a percentage costs you on the trips you book YOURSELF. Put in your regulars, referrals, and name-search bookings, your average price, and the rate you're paying today.
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
Checkfront — $99/mo + 3%
$2,048
Timber & Tackle flat
$290
$1,758 of that stays with you a year.
Same trips, same clients — booked on your own site instead of through a cut. Keep your listing for the strangers it brings.
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.
Checkfront's published plan is $99/mo plus a 3% online booking fee (Rezdy is priced the same). Exact rates vary by plan.
Straight answers.
Is there really no per-booking fee?
Correct — no commission and no per-booking percentage from us. One flat monthly subscription. The only per-transaction cost is standard card processing (Stripe), which every platform incurs and which goes to Stripe, not us.
How is this different from Rezdy or Checkfront?
Those are solid general tour/activity platforms, but they charge a monthly fee AND about 3% on every online booking, and they're not built around a guided trip. Timber & Tackle is guide-specific and takes no per-booking cut.
Do I get my own website or just a booking button?
A whole site — hero, trips, gallery, reports, reviews, and booking — on your own domain, built for you free before you pay anything. Not a widget bolted onto someone else's template.
What if I also want the marketplace traffic?
Keep them. A marketplace is good at finding strangers and we don't do that at all — we'd be lying if we said otherwise. Run your own site alongside it, for the clients you already have.
Related: Website builders for a charter · How to get more direct bookings · Tie flies or make lures to sell? Track the materials with MadeKeeper
Booking software that doesn't charge you to book.
We build your whole site free and send you a link. Look it over. If the math doesn't move you, you've lost nothing.
Get your site built — freeFree until you accept your first booking, then $29/mo · keep every listing you have · built before you decide
We will never take a cut of a client you brought us.