Start with the platform, because only 10 of the 60 rooms we track here are on Resy against 27 on OpenTable and 15 on Tock. Then count back a month, which works in San Francisco: the median measured window is 30 days and 34 of 58 rooms land on exactly 30. 13 rooms release on a fixed date instead, so put those dates in a calendar, and check the next three days as well, because most rooms had an opening that close.
All four, with OpenTable the largest. Of our 60 San Francisco rooms, 27 are on OpenTable, 15 on Tock, 10 on Resy and 8 on SevenRooms. OpenTable holds the long-running dining rooms such as Boulevard, Kokkari Estiatorio and Nopa, Tock holds the ticketed tasting menus such as Lazy Bear and Enclos, and SevenRooms holds Benu, Quince and Cotogna. Watching Resy alone leaves most of the hardest tables invisible.
About a month for most rooms, which makes San Francisco easier to plan than New York. The median measured window across 58 rooms is 30 days, 47 of them reach 29 days or more and 34 land on exactly 30. Only 4 stop at 14 days or less, against 26 of 79 New York rooms. Zuni Cafe, Gary Danko and Foreign Cinema publish 60-day windows, Elena's 90.
Monthly, on a fixed date rather than a rolling window. Lazy Bear's own Tock listing says tickets are released monthly on the 15th of each month at 10am for all dinners in the following calendar month. Be signed in to Tock before 10am on the 15th, and after that, tables come back as cancellations; its SnagRes page shows the live calendar.
Far more often than in New York, and this is where transplanted advice does the most damage. The median San Francisco room puts 30% of its logged open slots between 7:00 PM and 8:30 PM against 13% in New York, and 1 San Francisco room has never shown us a prime slot, against 10 in New York. Benu runs at 55%, Delfina at 59%, The Anchovy Bar at 54%.
It depends on the room, and Saturday is more often the answer than people expect. Across the 45 San Francisco rooms where we can measure a weekday pattern, Saturday is the easiest night at 4 and Monday is the hardest at 7, while Tuesday is the hardest at 6. Frances opened on 99% of Saturdays and 76% of Tuesdays. New York is the opposite, with Saturday the hardest night at 17 of its 43 measurable rooms.
Fewer than you would think. Only 5 of the 60 we track had no two-top open at the last check: Enclos, Fu Hui Hua, House of Prime Rib, Naides and Z & Y. 2 of them still opened for a party of four: House of Prime Rib and Z & Y. Z and Y is the interesting case, reading 0% for two and 77% for four on the same day, and House of Prime Rib read 0% for two and 3% for four.
No. SnagRes watches all four platforms and tells you the moment a table opens, then links you to the restaurant's own booking page so the reservation ends up in your name at the restaurant's own price. We never book, hold, or resell a table, so there is no per-reservation fee of the kind resale services charge. Watching one restaurant is free and needs no card.
Each of these has its own page with the open rate for two and for four, the platform it sits on, the weekday pattern and the times that actually came free.
See the full live San Francisco tracker the release time for every restaurant we watch Plus raises the cap and shows the exact times each release opened .
Almost every reservation guide you will read was written from New York, where 56 of the 84 rooms we track sit on Resy. San Francisco inverts that. Of the 60 San Francisco restaurants we watch, 27 are on OpenTable, 15 on Tock, 10 on Resy and 8 on SevenRooms.
That single fact explains a lot of wasted effort. Someone who learned to book in New York, installs Resy here and watches it faithfully is watching 10 of the city's 60 hardest tables we track, and reasonably concluding that nothing ever opens. The tables are opening. They are opening somewhere else.
The split runs along recognisable lines. OpenTable holds the long-running dining rooms: Boulevard, Kokkari Estiatorio, Zuni Cafe, Nopa, Delfina, Frances, Saison, and now State Bird Provisions and Sons and Daughters too. Tock holds the ticketed tasting menus, Lazy Bear, Enclos, Naides and Ju-ni, along with Mister Jiu's. SevenRooms holds Benu, Quince and Cotogna, which are frequently reachable only through the restaurant's own website. Resy is the minority here, holding Nari among others.
As of October 22, 2026 we had logged 15,301,674 checks of live San Francisco booking calendars across those 60 rooms. Every figure on this page comes from that record rather than from what the platforms say about themselves.
San Francisco, 60 tracked rooms: 27 OpenTable, 15 Tock, 10 Resy, 8 SevenRooms.
New York, 84 tracked rooms: 56 Resy, 12 SevenRooms, 9 OpenTable, 7 Tock.
15,301,674 logged checks of San Francisco booking calendars as of October 22, 2026.
The thirty-day rule of thumb genuinely works in San Francisco, which is not true in New York. Across the 58 San Francisco rooms with a measured booking window, the median is 30 days and 47 of them reach 29 days or more. 34 land on exactly 30.
New York, measured the same way, has a median of 21 days across 79 rooms, with 26 of them reaching only 14 days or less. San Francisco is the more plannable city: pick the night you want, count back a month, and you are close for most rooms.
Only 4 of the 58 San Francisco rooms stop at 14 days or less, so the New York failure mode of staring at a calendar whose dates have not been created yet is much rarer here. When a San Francisco calendar looks empty a month out, it is usually empty rather than unbuilt.
There are outliers in the other direction. By their own published rules Zuni Cafe, Gary Danko and Foreign Cinema take bookings 60 days out, Elena's goes to 90 and House of Prime Rib to a full year. At those rooms the useful move is the opposite of urgency: book early, because the window is long enough that everybody else forgets it exists.
Median measured booking window: San Francisco 30 days across 58 rooms, New York 21 days across 79.
47 of the 58 San Francisco rooms reach 29 days or more. 34 land on exactly 30.
Only 4 San Francisco rooms stop at 14 days or less, against 26 of 79 in New York.
Longest published windows: a full year at House of Prime Rib, 90 days at Elena's, and 60 days at Zuni Cafe, Gary Danko and Foreign Cinema.
13 San Francisco restaurants we track do not run a rolling window at all. They release a whole block of dates in one moment on a fixed date, and if you miss it the next chance is weeks later. These are the schedules most worth putting in a calendar.
Lazy Bear states it 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, now on OpenTable, releases one month ahead on the 1st at midnight, per its own FAQ. Saison says dinner reservations are released at least one month out, by the 1st of the month prior, through OpenTable. Quince opens the following month on the 1st of the month before.
The rest run on their own arithmetic. Naides opens the next month on the 15th of the previous month at 11:00 AM. Sorrel uses the same 15th rule at 10:00 AM. Ju-ni opens on the 1st of the previous month at 10:00 AM. Kiln opens on the 1st for the following month at noon. Enclos reaches furthest, releasing on the last Friday of each month at noon Pacific for dates two months out.
Those fixed-date rooms are the strongest argument for an alert in this city, because a monthly deadline is exactly the kind of thing a person misses once and then waits a month to miss again. Everything else in San Francisco is a rolling window you can catch tomorrow.
Among San Francisco rooms with a rolling rule on record, release times cluster more loosely than New York's: noon at 6 restaurants, 10:00 AM at 5, midnight at 5 and 9:00 AM at 2. Noon matters much more here than it does in New York, which is a Tock and OpenTable habit rather than a Resy one.
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: the last Friday of the month at noon Pacific, two months out.
Naides and Sorrel, on the 15th of the previous month at 11:00 AM and 10:00 AM.
Rolling San Francisco drop times on record: noon at 6 restaurants, 10:00 AM at 5, midnight at 5, 9:00 AM at 2.
The standard advice is to give up prime time, and in San Francisco that advice costs you a good table for no reason. The median San Francisco room puts 30% of its logged open slots between 7:00 PM and 8:30 PM. The median New York room puts 13%.
Only 12 of the 57 San Francisco rooms with slot history sit at 10% or less, and 1 has never shown us a prime slot across a large sample. In New York, 10 rooms have never shown one. This is the clearest behavioural difference between the two cities in our data, and it flips a piece of advice that gets repeated everywhere.
Some of the rooms where prime time circulates most are not the easy ones either. Benu puts 55% of its open slots in that window, Delfina 59%, The Anchovy Bar 54%. Benu opened on only 37% of the dates in its window for two people, so it is a hard room that, when it opens, opens at a time you actually want.
The shoulder still exists, and it is worth knowing which rooms live there. Cotogna's most frequently open time is 3:00 PM with just 1% of its open slots in prime time. House of Prime Rib's is 10:00 PM, with 2% in prime time. Ask those rooms for 8 PM and you are asking for the one thing they rarely give up.
Median share of logged open slots between 7:00 PM and 8:30 PM: San Francisco 30%, New York 13%.
San Francisco rooms that have never shown a prime-time slot: 1. In New York: 10.
Prime-time share: Benu 55%, Delfina 59%, The Anchovy Bar 54%.
Shoulder rooms: Cotogna most often at 3:00 PM, House of Prime Rib at 10:00 PM.
Go on a Tuesday is the most repeated line in restaurant advice and in San Francisco it is frequently wrong. Across the 45 San Francisco rooms where we can measure a weekday pattern, Saturday is the easiest night at 4 of them and Monday is the hardest at 7. Tuesday is the hardest night at 6.
New York behaves the way the advice says. Across its 43 measurable rooms, Saturday is the hardest night at 17 and the easiest at 0. Carry that assumption west and you will avoid the night you should be booking.
The individual rooms make it concrete. Frances opened on 99% of Saturdays and 76% of Tuesdays. Nopa ran 100% on Saturday against 96% on Monday. Nari hit 100% on Monday and 98% on Tuesday. Wolfsbane ran 100% on Tuesday and 94% on Friday. There is no citywide best night, which is the point: there is a best night per room, and it is knowable.
Where the weekend really is harder, the gap is large enough to plan around. Cotogna opened on 62% of Wednesdays and 7% of Saturdays. Quince ran 55% on Thursday and 9% on Saturday. Saison ran 85% on Wednesday and 47% on Saturday.
A closing day is not a hard night, and mixing the two is how people misread a calendar. Benu has never shown us an open table on Sundays, Mondays or Tuesdays. That is a closed night, not a hard one.
San Francisco, 45 measurable rooms: Saturday is the easiest night at 4, Monday the hardest at 7, Tuesday the hardest at 6.
New York, 43 measurable rooms: Saturday is the hardest night at 17 and the easiest at 0.
Frances: 99% of Saturdays open, 76% of Tuesdays. Nopa: 100% Saturday, 96% Monday.
Cotogna: 62% Wednesday, 7% Saturday. Quince: 55% Thursday, 9% Saturday.
San Francisco openings cluster at the near edge of the calendar rather than the far edge. Across the 55 San Francisco rooms with a current in-window reading, the median nearest open date was 0 days out, and 46 of those 55 had an opening within three days.
What arrives at the near edge behaves differently from a release, and that difference is why it is catchable. Release supply appears on a clock you can set an alarm for. Cancellation supply appears at 4:00 PM on a Tuesday with no warning, which is exactly why it survives long enough for someone who is not running a script to take it.
We logged 5,418 release events across the San Francisco list, against 13,602 in New York. Fewer events, longer windows, more prime time: San Francisco is a calmer city to book in, and the near edge is the part most people are not watching.
Median nearest open date across 55 San Francisco rooms with a current reading: 0 days out.
46 of those 55 had an opening within 3 days.
5,418 release events logged in San Francisco, against 13,602 in New York.
Asking for four people instead of two is free and sometimes decisive. The clearest case in San Francisco is Z and Y in Chinatown, which showed a bookable table on 0% of the dates in its window for two people and 77% for four on the same reading.
It is less of a lever here than people assume. 18 of the 60 San Francisco rooms open more often for four than for two, 12 run the other way and 30 are identical for both. Other gaps worth knowing: San Ho Won, at 33% for two against 70% for four, and Quince, at 50% against 67%.
Only 5 San Francisco rooms had no two-top open at the last check: Enclos, Fu Hui Hua, House of Prime Rib, Naides and Z & Y. That is 5 of 60, against 18 of 84 in New York, which is the single best summary of the difference between the two cities.
Of those, 2 still opened for a party of four: House of Prime Rib and Z & Y. House of Prime Rib books far ahead, so most of its tables go at the release; it read 0% for two and 3% for four at the last check, and what comes back most often opens at 10:00 PM. At rooms like these the release date plus a cancellation alert is the way in.
If you need a room that is measurably open, the data will name one. Nari read 100% for two, Nopa 100% and Delfina 100%. Kokkari Estiatorio ran 100%, Rich Table 83%. A step-down chosen on numbers beats a sibling restaurant that is equally full.
Z and Y: 0% of dates open for two, 77% for four. Quince: 50% for two, 67% for four.
18 of 60 San Francisco rooms open more often for four than for two. 12 are the reverse. 30 are identical.
No two-top open at the last check, so the release and an alert are the way in: Enclos, Fu Hui Hua, House of Prime Rib, Naides and Z & Y. 5 of 60, against 18 of 84 in New York.
Measurably open: Nari 100%, Nopa 100%, Delfina 100%, Kokkari Estiatorio 100%, Rich Table 83%.
Four platforms, 13 fixed-date deadlines, and drop times spread across midnight, 9:00 AM, 10:00 AM and noon is not a schedule a person keeps by hand. SnagRes re-checks the restaurants it watches continuously across Resy, OpenTable, Tock and SevenRooms and tells you the moment a table opens.
We watch 285 restaurants across New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, which is the entire list and a deliberately short one. Table Alert advertises 62,198 restaurants. Nobody watching 62,198 rooms can tell you that Cotogna most often opens at 3:00 PM, that Z and Y reads 0% for two and 77% for four, or that Saturday is the easiest night at 4 of the 45 San Francisco rooms where we can measure a weekday pattern. We traded coverage for knowing the rooms we cover, and if the restaurant you want is not on our list then a broad directory is honestly the better tool.
We also never book a table. The alert links you to the restaurant's own booking page, and the reservation ends up in your name, in your own account, at the restaurant's own price. No bot holds a seat under a stranger's name and there is nothing to resell afterward.
That is a real line rather than a technicality. TableSwap publishes $25 a month plus roughly $75 for every successful reservation, which attaches a fee to a restaurant seat, and attaching a fee to a restaurant seat is the practice New York's 2024 reservation law was written to stop. We charge nothing per reservation because we never make one.
Watching one restaurant is free and needs no card. Plus raises the cap and includes the exact times each release opened, which is the part that tells you whether the room you want is one like Benu, most often open at 5:00 PM, or one like Cotogna, at 3:00 PM.
285 restaurants watched continuously across four platforms, against the 62,198 Table Alert advertises.
SnagRes alerts, it never books, holds, or resells a table. There is no per-reservation fee.
TableSwap publishes $25 a month plus roughly $75 per successful reservation.
Keep reading: When San Francisco tables drop · The same playbook for New York · How far ahead you can book · Why tables are this hard · How Tock releases tables · Full SnagRes FAQ
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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 SF tonight, or see the hardest tables right now.