Guide · Online Booking
If you teach group classes, the booking tool you want is probably free
Class and group scheduling is a paid add-on at most booking vendors — but two tools put it on the $0 tier, and a third charges the same flat rate for classes as for one-on-ones.
Most booking tools are built around the one-on-one appointment: a single client, a single slot. If you teach a yoga or fitness class, you need the opposite — many people booking the same slot, with a roster, a cap, and a waitlist. The good news for a small studio is that the tools which say “group classes” out loud are also the cheap ones. The trap is assuming you have to pay for the capability at all.
The short answer: group classes on the free tier
Two vendors in our dataset put class booking on a $0 plan, and they are the place to start.
Setmore’s Free plan ($0/month) explicitly lists “1-on-1 and group classes,” along with up to 4 staff logins and 200 appointments a month — enough for a solo or two-instructor studio running a few classes a week. Picktime’s Free plan ($0) goes further on volume: “unlimited bookings, appointments, classes” with up to 3 users included. Between them, the deciding factor is staff count versus volume — Setmore gives you one more login (4 vs 3) but caps you at 200 appointments a month; Picktime is unlimited on bookings but stops at 3 users.
If you outgrow free, both stay cheap. Setmore’s Pro is $12/user/month billed monthly, or $5/user/month billed annually (unlimited users and appointments). Picktime’s paid tiers are the lowest per-seat prices in the entire dataset: Pro at $2.25/user/month and Starter at $3/user/month, both billed annually — so a 3-instructor studio on Picktime Pro is about $6.75/month all-in.
When classes are a first-class product, not a free add-on
Bookeo treats classes as a named product line. Its Classes & Courses pricing is identical to its appointments pricing — the same five flat tiers, with no per-seat math:
| Bookeo tier | Price/month (flat) | Staff logins | Bookings/month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo | $14.95 | 1 | 200 |
| Small | $29.95 | 3 | 1,000 |
| Standard | $39.95 | 20 | 1,000 |
| Large | $79.95 | 40 | 2,000 |
| X-Large | $119.95 | 60 | 3,000 |
There is no annual discount on any Bookeo tier, and no setup fee. The reason to pay $14.95 when Setmore and Picktime give you classes for nothing is throughput and structure: Bookeo’s tiers are sized by bookings-per-month and staff logins, so a busy multi-instructor studio pushing past free-tier caps gets a flat, predictable bill instead of a per-seat one that climbs with every instructor you add. At three instructors, Bookeo Small is $29.95 flat; the same three seats on Setmore Pro (monthly) would be 3 × $12 = $36.
The Square route: free, if you live in ClassPass
Square Appointments has a $0 Free tier (priced per location, single location on Free) and lists ClassPass among its integrations — the path most fitness studios take to fill classes from the ClassPass marketplace rather than only their own booking page. Square doesn’t advertise “group classes” as a line-item feature the way Setmore does; the class story here is the ClassPass connection plus Square’s payment processing. If discovery through ClassPass matters more to you than native roster tooling, Square’s free plan is a real option. Its paid tiers — Plus at $49/month and Premium at $149/month, each per location — are priced for multi-location operators, not a single studio.
How to read this
For a small studio, the honest ranking is: start free on Setmore or Picktime, because both put group-class booking on the $0 tier and one of those caps (200 appointments vs 3 users) probably doesn’t bind you yet. Move to Picktime Pro ($2.25/user/month annual) if you want the cheapest paid seats, or Setmore Pro ($5/user/month annual) for unlimited appointments. Step up to Bookeo’s $14.95 Solo or $29.95 Small when you want classes as a structured product with flat, seat-independent billing and higher booking ceilings. And reach for Square’s free plan specifically if ClassPass discovery is the point.
None of these requires a sales call or a setup fee, and the cheapest workable plan for a group-class studio is $0. What you pay above that buys throughput, instructor seats, and — in Bookeo’s case — a billing model that doesn’t punish you for hiring.