FareHarbor pricing and fees: what operators really pay (2026)
FareHarbor is free for operators and guests pay a booking fee. Here's the fee, card processing, the 2% OTA fee, and how it stacks up against Viator.
Jon Persson
Co-founder, Websites & Systems ·
Maybe you’re on FareHarbor already and a guest just asked about the extra line at checkout. Maybe you’re comparing booking systems and FareHarbor keeps coming up as the free one. Either way, “free” leaves out who pays what, and that’s the part you need to know about FareHarbor pricing.
FareHarbor is the booking system we set up by default on the websites we build, so this is the checkout most of our clients’ guests go through. Here’s who pays what, in plain numbers, and how it compares to what Viator takes.
FareHarbor pricing: the short answer
FareHarbor charges operators no monthly fee and no setup fee. It describes its model as a per-booking fee with no mandatory monthly platform fee, and says the numbers depend on your volume and setup (FareHarbor).
So how much does FareHarbor cost? There are four pieces:
| Cost | Who pays | How much |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly or setup fee | Nobody | $0 |
| Booking fee on direct bookings | The guest, by default | 6% in FareHarbor’s own examples |
| Card processing | You | Not published; quoted per account |
| API fee on OTA bookings (Viator and others) | You | 2% |
The 6% comes from FareHarbor’s help center, which uses “the 6% FareHarbor booking fee” in its worked pricing examples (FareHarbor help center, 2026). FareHarbor doesn’t publish a rate card, and the third-party pricing pages disagree with each other, so get your number in writing on the demo call.
How the FareHarbor booking fee works
By default the fee sits on top of your price. Say you run a $600 half-day charter. The guest picks a date, sees a $36 booking fee added at checkout, and pays $636. You get your $600, minus card processing. FareHarbor keeps the $36.
That’s how FareHarbor stays free for you. FareHarbor’s own argument is that guests are used to paying booking fees on sites like Ticketmaster, so the fee at checkout doesn’t put them off (FareHarbor).
Two details operators tend to miss:
- Refunds don’t include the fee. FareHarbor’s customer terms say booking fees are non-refundable, though FareHarbor can refund them at its discretion (FareHarbor terms for customers). If weather cancels the trip and you refund the $600, the $36 is FareHarbor’s call.
- Phone bookings can carry it too. Since an October 2024 change, FareHarbor’s help center says the 6% direct booking fee, for accounts that meet its criteria, covers more than online checkout: dashboard bookings, Dock staff-mode bookings and payment links, when the guest pays with a FareHarbor payment method (FareHarbor help center, FareHarbor login required). If you key in a phone booking and run the card through FareHarbor, expect the fee on it.
Can you absorb the fee?
Yes. FareHarbor’s help center covers operators who absorb the booking fee: the guest never sees it, and it comes out of your side (FareHarbor help center, 2026).
There’s also a middle path. A setting called total price display folds the fee into the prices guests see from the first screen, so nobody meets a new line at checkout. The guest still pays it. It just isn’t a surprise.
My take: leave the fee on the guest and show all-in prices. Absorbing 6% on a $600 charter is $36 a trip out of your pocket, and over a season that adds up fast. If choosing who pays matters a lot to you, some booking systems make it a simple switch; I compared them in FareHarbor alternatives.
Payment processing: the part you pay
The booking fee isn’t your cost, but card processing is. FareHarbor runs the cards through FareHarbor Payments, and the processing fee comes out of your side of the booking. For that you get next-day payouts, Apple Pay and Google Pay, card readers and tap to pay, and FareHarbor submitting evidence for you when a guest disputes a charge (FareHarbor Payments).
The rate itself is harder to pin down. FareHarbor’s payments page says its rate is among the lowest in the industry but doesn’t print a number. The last public figure is from 2015, when FareHarbor announced 1.90% plus $0.30 per transaction, down from 2.9% plus $0.30 in 2013 (FareHarbor, 2015). That’s over a decade old, so ask for your current rate in writing before you sign.
It’s worth the question. On a $600 trip, every point of processing is $6. Say you run 400 trips a season: one point is $2,400.
The 2% FareHarbor fee on Viator and other OTA bookings
This one lands on you, not the guest. When an eligible booking comes in through an API connection from an OTA like Viator, FareHarbor charges you a 2% API fee. It started with European operators in 2023 and reached the US in 2025 (Arival, 2025). FareHarbor bills it monthly and calculates it from the prices on your OTA price sheet (FareHarbor API fee terms).
On a $600 trip sold through Viator, that’s $12 on top of Viator’s commission.
What you get for no monthly bill
For no monthly fee, FareHarbor gives you more than a calendar:
- The dashboard. Bookings, availability, manifests, check-in, gift cards, and the office side of running trips.
- The Book now Lightframe. A booking window that opens over your own website when a guest taps your button, so they book without leaving your site (FareHarbor glossary).
- Google Things to Do. FareHarbor connects your trips to Google’s Things to Do booking links with no setup or commission fees, and your link gets the “Official Site” badge (FareHarbor, 2023).
- Abandoned cart emails. When a guest reaches the card step and leaves, FareHarbor emails them two hours later. According to FareHarbor, 20% of guests who get that email go on to book (FareHarbor, 2024). You ask support to turn it on, and it needs FareHarbor’s online cart.
- Follow-up emails. You can schedule an email after the trip asking for a review, and FareHarbor works with Tripadvisor’s Review Express, which sends its own review request after the trip (FareHarbor).
What FareHarbor doesn’t do
FareHarbor is booking software, and good booking software. It isn’t the rest of the system that gets a guest to your Book now button or brings them back. It won’t:
- Give you a website that ranks for your name. The Lightframe needs a site to sit on. FareHarbor does sell websites, called FareHarbor Sites, and they come with their own fees (FareHarbor help center, 2026).
- Answer your phone. When you’re on the water and a caller hits voicemail, nothing texts them back. That’s the job of missed-call text-back.
- Sort your reviews. A follow-up email asks every guest the same way. A review funnel has guests rate the trip first, sends 4 and 5 stars to your Google and Tripadvisor review pages, and sends anything under 4 to a private form so you hear it first.
- Tell you what direct booking saved you. FareHarbor reports your bookings. It doesn’t text you once a month with what you’d have paid Viator on the trips that came in direct.
What is FareHarbor, and is it legit?
FareHarbor is booking and business software for tours, activities, rentals and attractions. It was founded in Hawaii in 2013, more than 23,000 businesses use it, and it has been part of Booking Holdings since 2018 (FareHarbor, 2026). Booking Holdings, the parent company of Booking.com, announced the deal in April 2018 (Booking Holdings, 2018).
So yes, it’s legit. The gripes you’ll read online are about the fee model (the checkout line, the 2% API fee), not about whether your payouts arrive.
FareHarbor’s fee vs Viator’s commission
This is the comparison that matters. FareHarbor’s booking fee is paid by the guest. Viator’s commission is paid by you.
Viator doesn’t publish one rate (its supplier page says rates vary by location), but operators commonly report 20% to 30%, with 25% the most common figure (Samba HQ, 2026). Here’s the same hypothetical $600 charter both ways, at 25%:
| Booked direct on your site | Booked on Viator | |
|---|---|---|
| Guest pays | $636 | $600 |
| FareHarbor booking fee | $36, paid by the guest | $0 |
| Viator commission (25%) | $0 | $150, paid by you |
| FareHarbor API fee (2%) | $0 | $12, paid by you |
| You keep | $600, minus card processing | $438 |
That $150 is what you saved by not paying Viator’s commission on one trip, before you count the $12 API fee.
None of this means drop Viator. Plenty of Viator guests would never have found you on their own, and a booking you’d never have had is still a booking. The money worth going after is narrower: guests who searched your business by name and still booked through Viator because its listing showed up first. Those guests were already looking for you. For the full fee picture on that side, see how much Viator charges.
That narrow slice is what our system is built around. We build your website with FareHarbor’s Book now on every trip page, and if you’re not on FareHarbor yet, we set you up on it free. Once a month you get a text with your direct booking revenue and how much you saved by not paying Viator’s commission. If you’d like to see what that looks like for your trips, book a call.
