A free restaurant waitlist app with no cap on parties
Guests join by QR code, watch their place in line on their phone, and hear from you the moment their table is ready. Your host stand runs on whatever phone is already in the apron.
- Every party, no monthly cap
- Guests join by QR code or link
- Free plan: $0/mo, no end date
- Texts for 25 parties a month included
- No credit card to start
- Runs in any browser, no hardware
bavoli takes the opposite bet. The waitlist is full and uncapped on every plan: add every party, quote waits, seat from the floor plan, and let guests follow their place in line on their phone. On the Free plan it costs $0 a month with no end date and no credit card. The first 25 parties each month get a text when their table is ready, and after that the notice reaches guests by email and on their live status page. It comes with the rest of a real front-of-house system: unlimited reservations, a floor plan, guest profiles, and staff accounts.
How it works
Add a party
Name, party size, contact. Two taps on the host phone.
Table's ready
One tap sends a text or an email. The guest knows instantly.
Seat and repeat
The floor plan shows what's open. Tap to seat, and the next party moves up.
Every free waitlist app, compared honestly
These are the real free offers, verified from each vendor's public pages in July and September 2026. Caps and prices change, so check theirs before you commit.
The pattern to watch is the unit each one meters: texts, parties, or visits. bavoli meters texted parties and never the list itself, so a busy night can run past your text allowance without turning anyone away.
| App | What's free | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| bavoli | Full waitlist with every party, a QR/link join page so guests add themselves, email alerts, and texts for the first 25 parties each month, plus unlimited reservations, a floor plan, and guest profiles. $0 forever, no card. | Texting more than 25 parties a month needs Plus at $30 a month (500 parties). Online ordering has per-order fees if you turn it on. |
| Waitlist Me | Add parties only; the free plan cannot send notifications | Notifying guests starts at $34.99/mo billed monthly, and texts are metered: 1,000 included, $0.02 each after. |
| TablesReady | 150 texts and 100 parties a month | Roughly two busy nights, then paid plans from $39/mo billed annually. |
| NextMe | 100 texts a month for 1 user | At two texts a party that covers about 50 parties, then paid plans start at $59.99/mo billed monthly ($49.99/mo billed annually) with 3,000 texts. |
| Waitwhile | 50 visits a month, a one-time $2 message credit, and 5 emails per visit | The 50-visit cap is the binding limit for a restaurant. Paid plans start at $39/mo billed monthly ($31/mo billed annually) for each 250 visits, and texts are bought separately as message credits. |
What the Free plan includes
QR self-serve join
Guests scan a code at the door, add themselves, and see their live place in line. No app to download.
Floor plan and waitlist together
See open tables and the queue in one view. Seat from the list into the plan without switching screens.
Wait time quotes that stick
Quote by party size, save the number with the guest, and re-quote when the room slows down. No more memory-based guesses at 8pm.
Reservations included
Unlimited on the Free plan. The waitlist and the book live in the same system.
The honest part: how bavoli makes money
Every other app on this page leads with text alerts, so here is the straight answer about ours. bavoli texts the guest when the table is ready, from a real number, and the host stand sees the status change instantly. On the Free plan that covers the first 25 parties each month. After that, the guest's live status page shows the table is ready and an email goes out if they left an address, and nobody is taken off the list.
Texts cost bavoli money to send, so texting is what the paid plans are for. Plus is $30 a month and texts up to 500 parties a month, and Pro is $60 and texts up to 1,500. A party counts once a month however many texts it gets, so a guest who joins, gets a quote, and gets a table-ready text is one party. The list itself is never metered on any plan, and the same Free plan includes reservations, floor plans, and a guest list that other vendors sell as separate tiers. bavoli also earns 50c when a guest orders pickup, a dollar on delivery from your ordering page, and half a percent on a dine-in QR order.
What bavoli charges for, and what it does not
The host stand runs on the Free plan: the waitlist, reservations, floor plans, guest profiles, staff accounts, email updates, and texts for the first 25 parties each month, with no monthly fee and no per-cover fee. On Free, your booking page carries a small "Powered by bavoli" badge.
You pay when you want more than that. Plus ($30 a month, or $300 a year) texts up to 500 parties a month, adds card holds and no-show fees, and lets you hide the badge. Pro ($60 a month, or $600 a year) texts up to 1,500 parties a month and adds a custom domain for your website. The AI phone agent is a $50 a month add-on on any plan, with 300 minutes a month. For a one-off rush, an Event pass ($150) keeps the essential texts going, like the table-ready text and the reservation reminder, for up to 10,000 more parties in the US over 30 days.
Online ordering works on every plan, if you turn it on: 50c per pickup order, $1 per delivery order, and 0.5% of the subtotal on dine-in QR orders. By default your guest covers that at checkout, and you can choose to cover it yourself. No card is needed to sign up, and the Free plan never bills you.
When a free waitlist app is not the right fit
There are rooms this is wrong for, and it is cheaper to say so here than after you sign up. If you want a consumer app that sends you diners who have never heard of you, a waitlist tool is the wrong purchase, and bavoli does not do that. If you are a group trying to run four rooms in four buildings off one list, bavoli is built for a single restaurant.
And if the door never backs up, you do not have a waitlist problem: a 30-seat room with no line needs a booking page instead of a queue, and there is a page on this site about the free version of that.
Where it does fit is narrow and common: an independent restaurant whose door jams on the weekend, a host with a phone in their apron, and no appetite for a monthly fee for the privilege of writing names down.
Running your waitlist: a practical guide
Frequently asked questions
Keep reading
More honest comparisons and pricing breakdowns for independent restaurants.
- The free reservation system this waitlist comes with
- How the waitlist works, in detail
- What each bavoli plan costs, from $0
- Online reservations, unlimited on the Free plan
- The floor plan your waitlist seats into
- Cheap restaurant reservation software with no per-cover fees
- The best OpenTable alternatives for 2026, ranked