Last updated . Source: SnagRes availability record, 61,530,416 checks across 284 restaurants through 19 October 2026. How we measure. Open dataset.
It depends on the city rather than the brand. In New York, Resy holds far more of the hardest tables, with 56 of the 84 rooms we track against 9 on OpenTable. In San Francisco it reverses, and OpenTable holds the largest share at 27 of 60. Measured on availability, the median Resy room was open on 62% of the dates in its window against 77% for OpenTable, which makes Resy the harder of the two in our set.
No, Tock is not owned by Resy, but the two are converging. Both are now owned by American Express, which is folding Tock into Resy, though as of 2026 they still run as separate booking systems with different release mechanics.
Resy uses rolling daily releases with free cancellation on most tables, while Tock sells prepaid tickets or deposits for tasting-menu restaurants and forfeits that deposit on a no-show. Resy suits standard dining rooms, and Tock suits multi-course prix fixe experiences. Tock rooms also spread wide in our data: Per Se was open on 12 of the 30 dates in its window, while Atomix (0%) sits at the hard end.
There is no single best app, because the hardest tables are split across all four platforms and each restaurant picks its own. The best approach is watching whichever platform your target restaurant uses, rather than committing to one app and missing the rest.
SevenRooms is a white-label reservation widget that restaurants embed on their own websites, so you book on the venue's own page rather than in a shared marketplace. Because there is no central app to browse, its tables are the easiest of the four to overlook, and its windows are short: the median SevenRooms room we measure books about 29 days ahead.
It depends on the measure. Tock is likeliest to shut you out completely; the share of measured rooms with a bookable two-top on no date at all runs Tock 25%, SevenRooms 21%, OpenTable 12% and Resy 11%. By median open rate, from hardest to easiest: SevenRooms 27%, Tock 40%, Resy 62% and OpenTable 77%. Read either as where hard restaurants cluster rather than as a verdict on the software, since these are the hardest rooms in each city rather than a random sample.
It varies by restaurant more than by platform, but the pattern is clear in our data. The median room reaches 30 days out on OpenTable and 29 on Tock, Resy rooms run from 0 days to 31, and SevenRooms rooms have a median around 29 days. 55 of the rooms we measure never let you book beyond 14 days ahead.
In San Francisco, yes. Only 10 of the 60 SF rooms we track book through Resy, so a Resy-only habit misses most of that city. In New York a Resy-first approach catches 56 of 84, but it still misses the 12 SevenRooms rooms, which are the easiest of all to overlook because they live on restaurants' own websites.
Every release hour behind these figures is listed room by room on the measured release times, platform by platform, and the full study is at our reservation availability study. For the rooms that are open most nights on each platform, see the restaurants you can actually book.
If you are comparing tools rather than platforms, read alert services compared, alerts against bots and resale and where each stands legally. Live availability is at New York and San Francisco.
Which reservation platform is best? The one your restaurant uses. Most restaurants take bookings on just one of Resy, OpenTable, Tock or SevenRooms, so the real question is which one holds the table you want. Of the 284 hard-to-book restaurants SnagRes tracks, 169 book on Resy, 59 on OpenTable, 28 on Tock and 28 on SevenRooms. Resy dominates New York, with 56 of the 84 rooms we track there, while San Francisco leans on OpenTable, with 27 of 60.
The four do not work alike. Each releases tables on its own schedule, sets its own deposit rules, and covers different kinds of restaurant. We re-check every room we track continuously, which is how the numbers below were produced rather than estimated.
The honest answer to which platform is hardest is that it depends on the city and the specific restaurant, not the logo. The costly mistake is watching one platform and assuming it holds every table you want, because in a Resy-heavy city that mostly survives while in San Francisco it falls apart.
As of 19 October 2026 the measurement set is 283 rooms with a measured open rate: 84 in New York, 60 in San Francisco, 72 in Los Angeles and 67 in Chicago, drawn from 61,530,416 logged checks of live booking calendars.
In New York, 56 of the 84 rooms we track sit on Resy, with 12 on SevenRooms, 9 on OpenTable and 7 on Tock.
In San Francisco the split flips: 27 of 60 on OpenTable, 15 on Tock, 10 on Resy and 8 on SevenRooms.
Los Angeles and Chicago lean on Resy: 53 of 72 and 50 of 68.
Tock gathers the tasting-menu rooms, while SevenRooms hides tables on restaurants' own sites instead of in a marketplace.
No single platform is a complete strategy, since the hardest tables are spread across all four.
It depends on which measure you use, and the two are worth keeping apart. Tock is the platform likeliest to shut you out completely. Share of measured rooms with a bookable two-top on no date at all: Tock 25%, SevenRooms 21%, OpenTable 12% and Resy 11%.
Ranked by the median room instead, from easiest to hardest: OpenTable 77%, Resy 62%, Tock 40% and SevenRooms 27%. The counts behind those medians are 59 rooms on OpenTable with 7 showing nothing, 28 on Tock with 7, 168 on Resy with 18, and 28 on SevenRooms with 6.
Two cautions about reading that as a league table. First, these are the hardest rooms in each city rather than a random sample, so this measures where hard restaurants cluster, not how a platform behaves in general. Second, difficulty is a property of the room: Per Se on Tock was open on 12 of the 30 dates in its window while the hardest Tock room we measure, Atomix (0%), sits at the other end.
Booking windows are the quieter half of the answer, and they vary by platform more than most people notice. 55 of the rooms we measure never let anyone book more than 14 days ahead, and the median SevenRooms room reaches about 29 days out against 30 for OpenTable and 29 for Tock.
Resy: 168 rooms measured, median open on 62% of the dates in the window, 18 with nothing bookable for two on any date.
OpenTable: 59 rooms, median open on 77% of dates, 7 with nothing.
Tock: 28 rooms, median open on 40% of dates, 7 with nothing.
SevenRooms: 28 rooms, median open on 27% of dates, 6 with nothing.
Across all four, 88 rooms have a confirmed release time and window, 23 of them at 10 AM and 25 at 9 AM.
Resy is the platform most people picture when they think about hard reservations, and in New York that reputation is earned. 56 of the 84 New York rooms we track book through Resy, and 18 of the 168 Resy rooms we measure showed nothing bookable for two.
Release hours are the thing worth knowing, and they are knowable. Among Resy rooms the most common confirmed drop is 9 AM at 20 of 63 rooms with a confirmed time, then 10 AM at 15 and midnight at 12. Windows run from 0 days to 31, and 35 Resy rooms never reach beyond 14 days out.
Most Resy restaurants use a rolling daily release, adding one new day at the far edge of the calendar each morning.
The window runs a set number of days ahead, and the drop usually lands at a fixed hour, most often 9 AM at 20 of 63 rooms with a confirmed time in our data.
Cancellations run underneath that edge and supply a large share of the tables that actually become bookable. We recorded 12,974 release events across the Resy rooms alone.
Resy offers a free built-in waitlist called Notify, which queues you for one restaurant, date and party size and alerts you only when it decides to.
OpenTable is the oldest and broadest of the four, and its defining trait is simplicity. It carries the widest mid-tier coverage, so many very good but bookable restaurants live here, and it quietly holds the most hard tables in San Francisco: 27 of the 60 rooms we track there.
Its median room was open on 77% of the dates in its window, and 7 of 59 rooms were shut out completely. That does not make OpenTable soft. House of Prime Rib, an OpenTable room, showed a bookable two-top on 0% of dates in its window, and 97% of the slots it did release were at or after 9 PM.
Booking windows tend to be long, with a median of 30 days across the OpenTable rooms we measure, and availability is the easiest of the four to read at a glance.
A points program rewards repeat diners, which none of the other three platforms offer in the same way.
Cancellation is usually lenient, with a free cutoff and no deposit on most tables.
Its hard tables concentrate in San Francisco, where OpenTable holds the single largest share we track.
Tock was built for tasting-menu restaurants, and it behaves less like a reservation book than a ticket box office. On our list the Tock rooms include Per Se, Jungsik and Atera in New York and Lazy Bear, Kiln and Mister Jiu's in San Francisco.
Its spread is wide, which is what you would expect from a ticketing model. Per Se was open on 12 of the 30 dates in its window and Atomix (0%) at the hard end, with a median room sitting at 40% of dates. When a Tock drop happens, everything opens at once and then it is gone.
Many Tock tables are prepaid, sold as tickets or held with a deposit that is forfeited if you no-show.
Releases are usually timed rather than rolling, dropping a block of dates at a set moment, often once a month.
There is generally no open waitlist, so a missed drop means waiting for the next one or a rare cancellation.
The median Tock room we measure reaches 29 days ahead, but not all do: 6 reach 25 days or fewer, and the shortest just 0, which changes the plan entirely.
Its hard tables cluster at the ambitious tasting-menu end, which is why Tock punches above its size in San Francisco with 15 of the 60 rooms we track there.
SevenRooms is the platform most diners have never heard of, and that is exactly the problem. It is a white-label booking widget that restaurants embed on their own websites, so there is no central marketplace to browse. Our SevenRooms rooms include Semma and Le Veau d'Or in New York and Benu and Quince in San Francisco.
It is also the group with the shortest reach. The median SevenRooms room in our set books about 29 days ahead, and the shortest only 7, against 30 for the typical OpenTable room. A short window means fewer dates to hope for and a much tighter race whenever one opens.
You book on the restaurant's own page rather than in an app that lists every venue using the tool.
That design makes its tables the easiest to miss, because they never appear in a feed people scroll.
Release and cancellation rules vary by restaurant, since each venue configures its own embedded widget, and the release hours we observe scatter accordingly.
Its median room was open on 27% of the dates in its window, and 6 of the 28 we measure released nothing for two at all.
Its hard tables are scattered a few per city rather than concentrated, so single-platform watchers overlook them entirely.
In New York, watching Resy first is a defensible shortcut, because 56 of the 84 rooms we track there live on it, and the same holds in Los Angeles (53 of 72) and Chicago (50 of 68). In San Francisco that shortcut breaks, since only 10 of the 60 SF rooms book through Resy, while OpenTable holds 27 and Tock 15.
So the practical rule is simple, and it is that watch-only-Resy advice fails in San Francisco and misses SevenRooms everywhere. The reliable move is to watch whichever platform each specific restaurant actually uses, which is why we monitor all four at once and re-check continuously.
We watch 284 rooms in total: 169 on Resy, 59 on OpenTable, 28 on Tock and 28 on SevenRooms. That is a deliberately short list, and it is short because measuring a room properly costs far more than listing it.
Once you have the platform right, it stops being the useful variable. What decides whether you get a table is the room, the party size, and the hour, and all three are measurable.
Party size first. Across our list, 45 rooms are easier to book for four than for two, and 53 are the other way around. Monkey Bar, on Resy, showed a bookable two-top on 15 of the 30 dates in its window and a four-top on 14, and 100% of everything it released was before 6 PM.
Then the hour. Carbone logged 581 release events across 37 observed days, its most frequently open slot was 11:30 AM, and 0% of its openings fell between 7 and 8:30 PM. 18 of the rooms we measure logged open slots but never one in that prime window. Knowing that about one room is worth more than knowing which app it uses.
Resy vs OpenTable vs Tock vs SevenRooms: which is hardest to book on?
A head-to-head comparison of how Resy, OpenTable, Tock, and SevenRooms release tables, and where the hardest reservations concentrate in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago.
Keep reading: When each platform releases tables · How Resy reservations work · Resy Notify and what it misses · The hardest tables to book
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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 NYC tonight.