Guides · updated 20 August 2026
What kids' club booking platforms really charge
Booking platform pricing is built to be hard to compare: one quotes a monthly fee, one a percentage, one a cap, one a bolt-on menu. Underneath there are only three models. This guide names them, shows the published numbers with sources, and gives you the sum to run on your own club. We sell one of these products, so read us as a participant, not a referee: every claim here is cited so you can check it.
First, the fee every club pays: card processing
Whoever you choose, taking cards costs money, and it is worth separating that cost from the platform's own fees because platforms blur them. Stripe, the processor behind many of these products, publishes 1.5% + 20p for standard UK consumer cards. That fee exists on every platform; the question is what gets added on top of it.
Model one: flat subscription
A fixed monthly price, however many bookings you take. Predictable, and cheap at volume, but you pay it in quiet months too. Gymcatch runs a low version of this model (from £10 + VAT a month) with features unbundled into £2-a-month bolt-ons; RocketClass, ours, runs a flat subscription with everything bundled. The number to check is not the headline but what your feature list costs after unbundling.
Model two: subscription plus a percentage
A monthly fee and a cut of every booking. The percentage is the part that grows with you: Pebble publishes 3% + VAT per booking on its £25 Core plan and 2.5% + VAT on its £35 Premium plan. On £20,000 of annual bookings, 3% is £600 a year on top of the subscription, and £40,000 makes it £1,200. If you expect to grow, model the percentage at the size you intend to be.
Model three: caps and quotes
Two variants of the same idea: the price depends on your volume, disclosed either as tiers or not at all. Bookwhen publishes tiers with monthly booking caps from 300 to 4,000, so a sold-out term can move you up a tier; it takes no cut of payments. ClassForKids does not publish its rates; its own materials describe transaction fees as estimates confirmed by an account manager, which means you cannot put it in a spreadsheet until you are in a sales conversation.
The sum to run
Take your places filled per term, times price per place, times terms per year: that is your annual booking volume. Apply each candidate's percentage to it, add twelve months of their subscription and any bolt-ons you need, and put the results side by side. Ten minutes of arithmetic beats every pricing page, including ours; our calculator on the compare page does the multiplication for you if you want it done.
Fair questions
Why do platforms charge a percentage at all?
Because it prices small clubs in cheaply and grows revenue with the club's success. That is a legitimate model; our objection is when the percentage is hard to find or only quoted on a call, because then you cannot compare it.
Are booking fees charged to parents better for the club?
They move the cost off your invoice onto the parent's checkout, which parents see and remember at re-enrolment time. Eventbrite's default works this way for events. Whether that trade is worth it is your call; just make it knowingly.
Where these figures come from
- Stripe's published UK pricing: 1.5% + 20p for standard UK cards. Source
- Gymcatch's published pricing: from £10 + VAT per month, optional bolt-ons at £2 + VAT each per month. Source
- Pebble's published pricing: Core £25/month with 3% + VAT per booking, Premium £35/month with 2.5% + VAT. Source
- Bookwhen's published pricing: paid tiers with monthly booking caps (300 to 4,000); no cut of payments. Source
- ClassForKids' materials describe transaction fees as estimates confirmed by an account manager. Source
- Eventbrite's published fees are added to the ticket price paid by the attendee by default. Source
Checked 20 August 2026. If anything here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
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