Last updated . Source: SnagRes availability record, 61,530,416 checks across 284 restaurants through 19 October 2026. How we measure. Open dataset.
It depends entirely on the restaurant. Across the 102 restaurants where we have confirmed a booking window against the venue's own listing, 30 days is the most common at 32 restaurants, followed by 14 days at 19, 21 days at 11, 28 days at 6, 20 days at 5 and 7 days at 4. Sixteen more release a full calendar month at once on a fixed date. Find the exact number for the room you want rather than assuming a standard.
Resy sets no single window, because each restaurant sets its own. On Resy you will find everything from 7-day windows to 31-day ones, plus fixed monthly drops such as Le Bernardin, which opens on the 1st at 7:00 AM. 4 Charles Prime Rib publishes 21 days at 9 AM on its own Resy page and Monkey Bar publishes 21 days at 9 AM on its own. Check the specific listing.
No, and the gap is large. The median measured window is 20 days across our 76 New York rooms and 30 days across our 60 San Francisco rooms. 27 of the New York rooms reach only 14 days or less, against 3 in San Francisco, and 40 of the 60 San Francisco rooms sit at exactly 30 days. Counting back a month works in San Francisco and misleads you in New York.
Four times cover 88 of the 98 restaurants where we have confirmed a drop time: 10:00 AM at 26, 9:00 AM at 24, midnight at 24 and noon at 14. Those are the hours to check first, but confirm the exact one, because outliers are real. Le Bernardin and The Four Horsemen open at 7:00 AM and Tsukimi opens at 3:00 PM.
It means a table for a given night becomes bookable exactly 30 days before that night, not that any date in the next 30 days is available. One new date rolls onto the calendar each day at the drop time. 49 of the 118 rooms with a current reading had an open table sitting at that far edge, so the newest date is worth checking, but it is not where most of the availability is.
Switch to the near edge of the calendar. Once the window has passed, prime dates rarely reopen through the front door, so what surfaces afterward is mostly tables other people released. That supply is better than it sounds: across 118 rooms the median nearest open date was one day out and 108 of them had an opening within three days. Those appear at random hours, which is what an availability alert is for.
Sixteen of the restaurants we track, ten of them in San Francisco. Lazy Bear releases monthly on the 15th at 10 AM for the following calendar month. Sons and Daughters releases one month ahead on the 1st at midnight. Enclos releases on the last Friday of the month at noon Pacific for dates two months out. Per Se opens the following month on the 1st at 10:00 AM and Le Bernardin opens on the 1st at 7:00 AM.
Thirty days is the most common answer and it is wrong about two thirds of the time. Across the 120 restaurants where we have confirmed a release schedule against the venue's own listing, 102 publish a booking window, and 30 days accounts for 32 of them. Everything else is spread across 14 days at 19 restaurants, 21 days at 11, 28 days at 6, 20 days at 5 and 7 days at 4, with a long tail running out to 60 and 90 days and a single one-year window at House of Prime Rib.
Sixteen of them do not use a rolling window at all. They drop a whole calendar month on a fixed date, which makes the question how far ahead almost meaningless for those rooms: the useful question is which date. Ten of the sixteen are in San Francisco and six are in New York.
The practical lesson is that the window belongs to the restaurant, not to the platform or the city. Two rooms a block apart can run 30 days and 7 days on the same app. Dhamaka states on its own SevenRooms page that reservations become available 7 days in advance at 9 AM. 4 Charles Prime Rib states on its Resy page that dates open 21 days in advance at 9 AM. Neither is the default, because there is no default.
So the first thing to establish is the exact number for the one table you want. Guessing 30 days costs you the date, and at a room that only reaches 13 or 14 days out you will be looking at an empty calendar and drawing the wrong conclusion from it.
Confirmed booking windows across 102 restaurants: 30 days at 32, 14 days at 19, 21 days at 11, 28 days at 6, 20 days at 5, 7 days at 4.
16 restaurants release a calendar month at a time on a fixed date instead of running a rolling window.
Longest confirmed windows: a full year at House of Prime Rib, 90 days at Delfina, Z and Y and Elena's, and 60 days at Zuni Cafe, Gary Danko, Foreign Cinema and Akiko's.
Shortest: 6 days at Bistrot Ha, then 7 days at Dhamaka, Don Angie, Verjus and Naks.
New York books about two weeks out and San Francisco books about a month out, and nobody says this because almost all reservation advice is written from one city. We can measure it, because we log how far ahead each new date actually appears rather than relying on what the window claims.
Across the 76 New York rooms with enough release history, the median measured window is 20 days, and 27 of them reach 14 days or less. Across the 60 San Francisco rooms, the median is 30 days and 50 of them reach 29 days or more. Only 3 San Francisco rooms stop at 14 days or less.
New York is also far less consistent. Its 76 rooms produced 13 distinct window lengths, from 7 days up to 31. San Francisco is lumpier and more predictable: 40 of its 60 rooms land on exactly 30 days. If you are planning a San Francisco trip, counting back a month is a reasonable default. If you are planning New York, it is not.
That single difference explains a lot of frustrated searching. Someone counting back 30 days for a New York restaurant with a 14-day window sees an empty calendar and assumes the room is booked solid, when the date they want has not been created yet.
Median measured booking window: New York 20 days across 76 rooms, San Francisco 30 days across 60.
Reaching 14 days or less: 27 of 76 New York rooms, 3 of 60 San Francisco rooms.
Reaching 29 days or more: 50 of 60 San Francisco rooms.
40 of the 60 San Francisco rooms sit at exactly 30 days. New York spreads across 13 distinct lengths.
It means a table for a given night appears exactly 30 days before that night, not that you can freely book anything in the next 30 days. This is the single most misread thing about restaurant booking, and it is why a calendar can look full when nothing is wrong with it.
If you want a Saturday four weeks out, that Saturday does not exist in the system yet. It clicks into view on the morning its 30-day mark arrives, and at a hard room it can be claimed within seconds of appearing. Read every window the same way: 14 days means each night surfaces two weeks ahead, 7 days means it surfaces one week ahead. The shorter the window, the fewer dates exist at any moment and the harder each one is fought over.
One popular piece of advice needs correcting here, and our own numbers are what correct it. The newest date on the calendar is often described as the one with the most availability. Sometimes it is. Across the 118 rooms with a current in-window reading, 49 had their furthest open date sitting right at the window's edge.
But the openings actually cluster at the near edge. For those same 118 rooms the median nearest open date was one day out, and 108 of the 118 had an opening within three days. The far edge is where new inventory arrives. The near edge is where the tables other people gave up show up, and there are more of those than there are fresh releases.
Median nearest open date across 118 rooms with a current reading: 1 day out.
108 of those 118 had at least one opening within 3 days.
49 of the 118 had their furthest open date at the far edge of the booking window.
Release times cluster much harder than windows do. Of the 98 restaurants where we have confirmed a drop time, four moments account for 88 of them: 10:00 AM at 26 restaurants, 9:00 AM at 24, midnight at 24 and noon at 14. If you do not know a room's exact drop time, those are the four to check first.
Treat the cluster as a starting guess rather than a rule, because the wrong hour costs you the date outright. Le Bernardin and The Four Horsemen both open at 7:00 AM. Naides opens at 11:00 AM. Tsukimi opens at 3:00 PM. None of those is near the cluster, and being an hour early is as useless as being an hour late.
Where we have enough release history, the hour we observe usually matches the hour the restaurant publishes, which is a reasonable check on both. Monkey Bar publishes 9 AM and the 273 releases we logged there over 22 days put the modal hour at 9 AM. Carbone and Torrisi publish 10 AM and we observe 10 AM. The Four Horsemen publishes 7 AM and we observe 7 AM.
Set an alarm for the exact minute rather than the hour. Being ready at 10:00 AM sharp and opening the app at 10:03 are different outcomes, because at a hard room the prime nights are gone inside that gap.
Confirmed drop times: 10:00 AM at 26 restaurants, 9:00 AM at 24, midnight at 24, noon at 14. Those four cover 88 of 98.
Outside the cluster: Le Bernardin and The Four Horsemen at 7:00 AM, Naides at 11:00 AM, Tsukimi at 3:00 PM.
Where both exist, the observed modal hour matches the published one at Monkey Bar, Carbone, Torrisi and The Four Horsemen.
For sixteen of the restaurants we track, there is no rolling window to count back from. The whole of next month becomes bookable in one moment on a fixed calendar date, and if you are not there, the next chance is thirty days later. These are the schedules most worth writing down, because missing one costs a month rather than a day.
Lazy Bear states it plainly on its own Tock listing: tickets are released monthly on the 15th of each month at 10am for all dinners in the following calendar month. Sons and Daughters releases one month ahead on the 1st at midnight. Naides opens the next month on the 15th of the previous month at 11:00 AM. Enclos goes furthest out, releasing on the last Friday of each month at noon Pacific for dates two months ahead.
New York has its own set. Per Se opens the following month on the 1st of the previous month at 10:00 AM. Le Bernardin opens on the 1st at 7:00 AM. Ramen by Ra releases twice a month, on the 1st and the 15th at 9:00 AM. Tsukimi opens the following month on the 1st at 3:00 PM.
These are the rooms where a tracker earns the most, because a monthly deadline is exactly the kind of thing a person forgets once and then waits a month to get wrong again.
Lazy Bear, Tock: monthly on the 15th at 10 AM, for the following calendar month.
Sons and Daughters, OpenTable: one month ahead on the 1st at midnight.
Enclos, Tock: last Friday of the month at noon Pacific, two months out.
Per Se, Tock: the following month on the 1st of the previous month at 10:00 AM.
Le Bernardin, Resy: the 1st of the month at 7:00 AM.
Put the three facts together and the method falls out. Find the specific restaurant's window and its drop time, because those two numbers are most of the game. Then be online at the exact moment the window opens, party size and dates already chosen, card already saved, logged in.
In practice that means counting forward from the night you want. If the window is 30 days and you want the 30th, you book on the 1st at the drop time. If the window is 14 days, which is the most common length in New York after 30, that same table opens on the 16th instead, and showing up on the 1st tells you nothing except that the date does not exist yet.
If you miss the drop, your next real shot is a cancellation, and the data says that shot is better than it sounds. Prime dates rarely reopen through the front door once the window has passed, but the median nearest opening across the rooms we track was one day out, which is cancellation supply rather than release supply. It arrives at unpredictable hours, which is precisely why it survives long enough for a normal person to take it.
Watching one calendar for one restaurant is manageable. Watching several, each on its own window and its own drop time, spread across midnight and 7 AM and 9 AM and 10 AM and noon, plus two or three monthly deadlines on fixed calendar dates, is not something a person does by refreshing.
That is the gap a tracker fills. SnagRes re-checks the restaurants it watches continuously and tells you the moment a table opens, whether that is a fresh date rolling onto the calendar at 10:00 AM or a cancellation surfacing at 4:00 PM on a Tuesday. You get told when to act instead of guessing when to look.
We watch 284 restaurants rather than tens of thousands, and as of 19 October 2026 that had accumulated 61,530,416 logged checks of live booking calendars. That is the only reason this page can quote a window length per restaurant instead of a platform average. We also never book a table for you: the alert links you to the restaurant's own booking page, and the reservation ends up in your name at the restaurant's own price.
How Far in Advance Can You Book a Restaurant? (2026) | SnagRes
Keep reading: When every restaurant releases tables · How to get a hard New York table · How to get a hard San Francisco table · Why tables are this hard · The four platforms compared · Set an availability alert
Browse all restaurant reservation guides
SnagRes checks 284 hard-to-book restaurants across four cities and alerts you when one opens. Watching one is free and no card is needed: last-minute tables in NYC tonight, or see the hardest tables right now.