How much does a custom booking system cost in the UK

It’s one of the first questions people ask us, and one of the hardest to answer in a sentence. The honest answer is that it depends less on “booking” and more on how your business actually takes bookings: who gets booked, what gets reserved, when money changes hands and how much of it your team currently handles by hand.

This guide sets out the price ranges and timelines we work to at Made Grand, what moves a project up or down those ranges, and when you probably don’t need anything custom at all.

The short answer

What you need	Typical cost	Typical timeline
Adding booking to an existing, suitable website	£750–£2,000	1–3 weeks
A booking-enabled website using an established booking tool	£2,500–£5,000	3–6 weeks
A bespoke booking platform for one business	£7,500–£15,000	8–16 weeks
A multi-venue platform or marketplace (tightly scoped MVP)	From £20,000	4–8 months or longer

Prices exclude VAT where applicable. Hosting, booking software licences and payment processing fees are separate.

Adding booking to an existing website: £750–£2,000

If your website is in reasonable shape and an established booking tool already fits the way you work, the job is mostly about connecting the two well. That means choosing the right tool, setting it up, embedding or linking it cleanly, matching it to your brand and making sure confirmations and reminders say the right things.

This usually takes one to three weeks, depending on how quickly decisions and content are available.

A booking-enabled website: £2,500–£5,000

This is a new or rebuilt website designed around bookings from the start, using an established booking tool behind the scenes. The website does the explaining and reassuring; the booking tool handles availability, payments and reminders.

For many cafés, studios, practitioners and small venues, this is the sensible route. It typically takes three to six weeks.

A bespoke booking platform: £7,500–£15,000

A bespoke platform makes sense when off-the-shelf tools keep forcing workarounds. Where your price sits in this range depends on things like:

• Availability rules — seasonal pricing, minimum stays, buffers, capacity limits or bookings that depend on other bookings
• Staff or resource scheduling — rooms, equipment, practitioners or vehicles that each have their own calendars
• Payments and deposits — part payments, refunds, cancellation terms or invoicing
• Customer notifications — confirmations, reminders, follow-ups and changes
• Admin tools — how your team views, edits, exports and reports on bookings

A bespoke platform for one business usually takes around eight to sixteen weeks.

Multi-venue platforms and marketplaces: from £20,000

Platforms that take bookings for several venues, suppliers or hosts are a different kind of project. Each party needs its own view, payments may need splitting, and the rules multiply quickly.

A tightly scoped MVP starts at £20,000. More complex booking flows, payment arrangements and venue or supplier dashboards can take the cost above £30,000. These projects are more likely to take four to eight months or longer, which is why we usually recommend starting with a small first version and learning from real use.

When Calendly or Acuity is enough

Custom isn’t always the right answer, and we’d rather tell you that early. An off-the-shelf tool such as Calendly, Acuity or a similar service is usually enough if:

• You book one-to-one appointments or simple sessions
• Each booking involves one person and one time slot
• Payment is straightforward — paid in full, or not at all
• Your cancellation rules are simple
• Nobody on your team is regularly fixing bookings by hand

If that sounds like you, start there. A good tool, set up well on a clear website, will serve you for years. The point to look again is when you notice workarounds creeping in: spreadsheets running alongside the booking tool, manual deposit chasing, double bookings across resources or customers emailing because the system can’t handle what they need.

Ongoing costs to plan for

• Support and development: £75 an hour for standard work, and £85–£90 an hour for more complex booking logic or integrations
• Support allowance: a pre-agreed allowance of two to four hours a month costs £150–£300
• Hosting: allow around £25–£60 a month for standard managed WordPress hosting. Hosting for a custom platform is quoted separately to match its expected use
• Third-party fees: booking software licences and payment processing fees are paid directly to those providers

What affects the timeline

Timings depend on the scope, the booking tools involved and how quickly content and decisions are available. The quickest projects are the ones where the booking rules are already clear. If they aren’t, that’s normal; working them out together is often the most useful part of the project.

Not sure which route fits?

If you’re weighing up an off-the-shelf tool against something built for you, we’re happy to talk it through. Read more about how we build custom booking platforms, or start a conversation and we’ll help you work out the smallest sensible next step.