Automated booking bots break the terms of service of Resy, OpenTable, and Tock, which ban automated access and fake accounts, and they can get accounts, phone numbers, and payment methods banned and their tables canceled. Aggressive automation can also brush up against laws on unauthorized computer access. Being alerted to an opening and booking it yourself is not a bot booking.
Selling a restaurant reservation is prohibited by the major platforms' terms and by most restaurants' policies, and it is increasingly restricted by law. New York State passed a law targeting third-party reservation resale done without the restaurant's agreement, and other jurisdictions have weighed similar rules. The clear trend is that paid resale of tables the restaurant never agreed to sell is being restricted.
Reservation resale marketplaces such as AppointmentTrader operate in a contested and tightening space, because reselling reservations violates the terms of Resy, OpenTable, and Tock, and New York State has passed a law aimed at third-party resale without restaurant agreement. This page is general information and not legal advice, so treat any specific service as its own question and read its current terms.
The bigger risk to a buyer is practical rather than personal, because a resold reservation is usually booked under a fake name and against platform rules, so the restaurant can cancel it on sight and leave you with no table and no refund. Whether an individual buyer faces legal exposure depends on the jurisdiction, but the reliable downside is losing both the reservation and the money.
Yes, restaurants routinely cancel or void reservations that they discover were resold or booked under a name that does not match the guest. Many hard tables confirm the name on the booking, and some tie a card or a deposit to it, so a reservation bought from a stranger is fragile and can vanish at the door.
Yes, an availability alert is the clean lane, because it does not book or sell anything. A service like SnagRes watches the restaurant's own pages and notifies a real person when a table opens, and that person books it themselves in their own name through the normal platform, which is an ordinary reservation rather than a resale or a bot booking.
Three very different things get lumped together whenever people ask whether reservation bots are legal, and separating them is the whole answer. A booking bot automates the act of grabbing tables, often by creating fake accounts and racing real diners to newly released slots. A resale marketplace treats a confirmed reservation as a product and sells it to the highest bidder, usually under a name that does not match the guest. An availability alert does neither, because it only tells a real person that a table has opened so that person can book it through the restaurant's normal system.
The legal and policy questions attached to each are not the same, so an honest answer has to keep them apart. The rest of this page walks through each practice in turn, from the aggressive end of the spectrum to the ordinary end.
A booking bot auto-grabs inventory at scale, frequently using fake accounts, to snipe or hoard tables.
A resale marketplace charges money to transfer a confirmed reservation from one party to another.
An availability alert simply notifies a human when a table opens, and that human books it themselves.
Automated bots that scrape inventory and auto-book tables sit in the riskiest lane, mostly because of what they have to do to work. Resy, OpenTable, and Tock all prohibit automated access and the use of fake or duplicate accounts in their terms of service, so a bot that snipes prime slots or hoards them for resale is breaking those rules on its face. The consequence is rarely a courtroom and usually an account action, because platforms ban the accounts, blacklist the associated names, phone numbers, and payment methods, and cancel the tables those accounts hold.
Beyond the platforms' own rules, aggressive automation can brush up against broader laws about unauthorized access to computer systems and deceptive business practices, especially where fake identities or the evasion of technical blocks are involved. The practical takeaway is simpler than the legal theory, because a bot that pretends to be many people in order to beat real diners is designed to violate the terms it operates under, and the people running it carry that risk.
Selling a restaurant reservation for money is the practice that regulators and restaurants have moved against most directly. Reselling reservations is prohibited by the terms of service of Resy, OpenTable, and Tock, and by the policies of most restaurants, which treat a table as a courtesy extended to a named guest rather than a transferable asset. When a restaurant discovers that a reservation was resold or booked under a fake name, it routinely cancels or voids the booking, and the buyer arrives to no table.
The law has begun to catch up with the marketplaces as well. New York State passed a law targeting third-party reservation reselling done without the restaurant's agreement, aimed squarely at services that scoop up tables and auction them off, and other jurisdictions have taken up similar proposals. The direction of travel is clear, because paid resale of reservations that the restaurant never agreed to sell is being restricted rather than encouraged.
Buying a reservation from a marketplace carries a specific, practical downside that has little to do with whether you personally broke a law. The reservation you paid for was almost certainly booked under a name that is not yours, or resold in violation of the platform's terms, which means the restaurant can cancel it the moment it notices. People who pay for these bookings can and do show up to find the reservation voided and their money already spent.
There is also the identity problem at the door. Many hard-to-book restaurants confirm the name on the reservation, and some ask for a card or a deposit tied to that name, so a table booked as someone else is fragile by design. Paying a stranger for a reservation puts you at the mercy of both the reseller and the restaurant's willingness to honor a booking it never sanctioned.
An availability alert lands in a completely different place, because it does not book anything and it does not sell anything. A tracker like SnagRes watches the restaurant's own reservation pages and tells a real person the moment a table opens up. That person then books it themselves, with their own name and their own account, through the restaurant's normal platform, exactly as if they had happened to refresh at the right second. Nothing is automated on the booking side, no fake account is created, and no reservation changes hands for money.
That is why being alerted is the clean lane. The booking that results is an ordinary reservation in the diner's own name, indistinguishable from one they found by luck, so it does not trigger the resale prohibitions or the anti-bot rules that catch the other two practices. SnagRes alerts you and stops there, and the reservation stays yours from the very first click.
This page is general information and not legal advice, and the rules vary by state and by platform, so check the current terms of the service you are using whenever you need certainty.
Are Reservation Bots Legal? Is Selling Reservations? (2026) | SnagRes
Are reservation bots legal and is it legal to sell restaurant reservations? Reselling breaks platform rules and is being restricted; being alerted is clean.
Are reservation bots legal? Is it legal to sell restaurant reservations?
A plain-language explainer on reservation bots, paid reservation resale, and availability alerts, and which of the three is a clean, allowed booking.
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