The "Treatwell Tax": Why Independent Beauty Pros Are Quietly Looking for a Way Out

If you've spent any time in beauty industry Facebook groups or forums lately, there's a recurring thread that always gets heated: booking platform commissions. Specifically, how much of a treatment's price quietly disappears before it ever reaches the person who actually did the work.

The numbers, once you actually lay them out, explain why.

What it actually costs to be "found" through a marketplace

Treatwell charges 35% plus VAT on a new client's first booking through its marketplace. Once VAT is factored in, that 35% headline figure works out closer to 42% of the booking value in real terms. Fresha charges around 20% with a minimum fee of roughly £6 per booking. Booksy's optional marketplace boost sits around 30% plus VAT. All three drop to roughly 0% commission on repeat bookings — the catch is getting a client to that second visit in the first place.

So picture a £50 treatment booked by a brand new client through Treatwell. Once commission and VAT are taken out, the professional is left with somewhere around £29. That's before product costs, before their own time, before rent if they're salon-based.

The part that's been causing the most frustration

Since April 2025, Treatwell charges that new-client commission even if the salon is the one who has to cancel the appointment — illness, an emergency, a genuine scheduling issue. The professional pays for a client relationship that never actually happened. Independent professionals have been vocal about this specific change, and it's a recurring theme in reviews and industry forums: the commission is framed as a "finder's fee" for a client relationship, but it doesn't disappear even when that relationship doesn't materialise.

There's also a structural issue independent of any specific rule: these are marketplaces, not just booking tools. A client searching for a treatment on Treatwell or Fresha sees every other salon in the area at the same time — including direct competitors, often at a lower price. You're not just paying commission, you're paying to be one option among many in someone else's storefront.

So why does anyone stay?

Because the maths genuinely can work, under the right conditions. If that £50 first booking becomes a client who rebooks monthly for two years, the commission paid up front is small compared to the lifetime value gained. The honest framing, even from people defending these platforms, is that the commission only makes sense as a customer acquisition cost — if you can convert a new client into a loyal repeat one quickly.

The problem is when retention is weak. Industry estimates suggest a large share of first-time marketplace clients never come back for a second visit. If that's happening to you, the commission isn't an investment in a future relationship — it's just a discount handed to a stranger who books once and disappears.

What independent professionals are actually doing about it

A few patterns keep showing up when this topic comes up among beauty professionals:

• Using marketplaces for discovery, then moving clients off-platform. Some professionals deliberately treat Treatwell or Fresha purely as a way to be found, then encourage rebooking directly via their own site, WhatsApp, or a phone call to avoid repeat commission entirely.
• Investing harder in the first-visit experience. Since the commission is essentially a bet on retention, some professionals have shifted focus toward making sure that first marketplace client has a strong enough reason to rebook directly, rather than treating every visit the same.
• Looking for lower-commission or commission-free discovery channels. This is exactly the gap that's opened up space for alternatives that don't take a cut of every booking at all — directories and community platforms that work more like a recommendation than a marketplace transaction.

Where this leaves independent professionals

None of this means Treatwell or Fresha are bad tools — for a lot of professionals, particularly when starting out with zero existing client base, the visibility is genuinely worth the cost. But it's worth going in with the real numbers rather than the headline percentage, and being deliberate about converting marketplace clients into direct, commission-free regulars as quickly as possible.

It's also exactly why we built our own professional directory the way we did — a place to be found by clients without a percentage of every booking disappearing before it reaches you. If you're an independent beauty professional in the UK, it's worth a look.