Guide · Online Booking
The cheapest paid booking tool for a one-person business is $2.25 a month
At a single seat, per-seat scheduling tools collapse to one license — and Picktime's annual rate undercuts every flat-priced booking app and every other per-seat vendor in our index.
Ask a per-seat booking vendor “how much?” and the honest answer is “how many of you are there?” That question has a trivial answer when you are a solo operator: one. And at one seat, the entire per-seat-versus-flat debate that dominates this market quietly dissolves — a per-user tool just charges you for a single license.
That collapse is what lets the cheapest paid plan in our index be genuinely, almost absurdly cheap.
The answer: $2.25/month
The lowest paid sticker for a one-person business is Picktime’s Pro plan at $2.25/user/mo, billed annually — one seat, so $2.25 total. Its Starter plan sits just above at $3.00/user/mo. Both are the annual-billed per-user rates rendered on Picktime’s live pricing page; the month-to-month rate is gated behind JavaScript and not published in the page source, so $2.25 and $3.00 are the figures you can actually quote. (Picktime also has a Free tier covering up to 3 users — but the question here is the cheapest paid tool.)
At a single seat, nothing else in our index comes close.
How a solo seat reshuffles the whole ranking
| Vendor | Plan | One-seat cost/mo | Model |
|---|---|---|---|
| Picktime | Pro (annual) | $2.25 | per-seat |
| Picktime | Starter (annual) | $3.00 | per-seat |
| Setmore | Pro (annual) | $5.00 | per-seat |
| GReminders | Standard (annual) | $8.00 | per-seat |
| Calendly | Standard (annual) | $10.00 | per-seat |
| TidyCal | Pro | $12.00 | flat |
| Bookeo | Solo | $14.95 | flat |
| Acuity | Starter (annual) | $16.00 | flat |
Read the table top to bottom and the pattern is clear: at one seat, the per-seat tools occupy the entire cheap end. Setmore Pro is $5/user/mo annual (it lists $12/user/mo billed monthly), and GReminders Standard is $8/user/mo annual ($10 monthly). Calendly Standard is $10/seat at the annual rate. Every one of these is a single license at a solo desk, and every one undercuts the cheapest flat tool.
The flat-priced apps only start to matter once you stop being one person — because a flat fee buys unlimited staff. TidyCal’s Pro plan is a flat $12/mo (or $99/yr, roughly 31% off), not per-seat. Bookeo Solo is $14.95/mo flat, capped at one staff login. Acuity’s Starter is $20/mo, $16 billed annually. For a solo operator those flat fees are a premium you are paying for headroom you don’t have yet.
The catch worth knowing before you click buy
Picktime’s $2.25 buys scheduling, not compliance. Its pricing page makes no HIPAA or BAA claim, so a therapist, clinic, or anyone handling protected health information should not anchor on this number. Among the cheap per-seat options, Setmore ($5/user/mo annual) and GReminders ($8/user/mo annual) both publish HIPAA support with a signed BAA — Setmore via its Setmore Health product, GReminders on its Professional tier ($39/user/mo annual). That compliance line item, not the sticker, is what should set the floor for a regulated solo practice.
There’s also the annual-billing asterisk. Nearly every figure above is the discounted yearly rate: Picktime advertises “Save up to 25%,” Setmore’s $5 is the annual rate against $12 monthly, GReminders’ annual discount is 20% on Standard. If you want to pay month-to-month, the per-seat tools that publish a monthly rate cost more — Setmore jumps to $12, GReminders to $10 — which narrows the gap to the flat tools considerably. Picktime simply doesn’t publish a confirmable monthly per-seat price, so the honest cheapest-monthly comparison can’t even include it on month-to-month terms.
How to read this
For a one-person business that pays annually and doesn’t need HIPAA, the cheapest paid booking tool is Picktime Pro at $2.25/mo, with Starter at $3 and Setmore Pro at $5 close behind. The reason it’s this cheap is structural, not promotional: per-seat pricing is designed to scale up with a team, so at a team of one it bottoms out. The moment you hire a second person, that math inverts — two Picktime Pro seats is $4.50/mo, still cheap, but a flat tool like TidyCal stays $12 no matter how many staff you add. We publish the model, the billing term, and the source behind every figure precisely because the “cheapest” answer flips the day your headcount does.