Last updated . Source: SnagRes availability record, 61,530,416 checks across 284 restaurants through 19 October 2026. How we measure. Open dataset.
No. Both are alert services. You get told a table opened and you book it yourself under your own account. That is also why neither is covered by New York's reservation-resale law, which targets services that offer or arrange bookings.
ReservationFinder: eight cities against our four, as of 19 October 2026. SnagRes tracks 284 rooms and publishes a measured open rate, release hour and slot pattern for each one, which is the trade.
Yes, and for a hard table in a city we both cover it is not unreasonable: two independent watchers on the same room. SnagRes watches two restaurants free; ReservationFinder starts with a seven-day trial.
ReservationFinder: eight cities. Platforms: Resy, OpenTable, Tock, SevenRooms. Price: Basic $9.99/mo for up to 4 restaurants, Pro $19.99/mo for up to 10 plus whole-city follows. Books on your behalf: No. Trial: 7 days, payment method required. Source: reservationfinder.io, checked 30 Sep 2026.
SnagRes: 284 restaurants in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago. Platforms: Resy, OpenTable, Tock, SevenRooms. Price: free for one restaurant, Plus $14.99 a month or $99.99 a year. Books on your behalf: never. Measured record: 61,530,416 availability checks, with a published open rate, release hour and slot pattern for every room.
Do you want to be alerted about a restaurant in a city we do not cover? If yes, ReservationFinder, and the rest of this page is moot. It watches the same four platforms we do across eight cities, and we cover four. That is not a close call and we are not going to pretend it is.
If the room you want is in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles or Chicago, the question changes to: do you want to know what the room actually does before you wait on it? That is where the two services stop being similar.
ReservationFinder tells you it is watching. SnagRes tells you what it has seen: across 61,530,416 logged availability checks, each of our 284 rooms has a published open rate for two and for four, the hour it releases, the earliest and latest times that appear, and the share of openings that fall in the prime dinner window. Carbone opened for two on 0% of dates checked, with 0% of its openings between 7 and 8:30 PM. Via Carota put 0% of its openings in that window.
That is not a feature ReservationFinder lacks by oversight. Publishing a measurement for a restaurant means having watched that restaurant, continuously, for months, and it is the reason our list is 284 rooms and not 45 cities. You can have breadth or you can have the record. Nobody has both yet.
ReservationFinder is $9.99 a month for up to four restaurants or $19.99 for up to ten, after a seven-day trial that needs a payment method (reservationfinder.io, checked 30 September 2026). SnagRes is free for one restaurant with email alerts, or Plus at $14.99 a month or $99.99 a year for up to 30 rooms, exact slot times and instant text alerts. For a single hard table, SnagRes's free tier gets you there. For a list of ten, they cost about the same and the difference is whether you want the measurement.
Miami, Austin, Las Vegas, Palm Beach, or anywhere that is not New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles or Chicago. A restaurant we do not track. A preference for a larger guide library. Those are real reasons and we would rather say them than have you find out after signing up.
A room in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles or Chicago, and a wish to know what you are waiting on. We text you the moment a table opens, name the exact time, and never touch your account: SnagRes has never booked a table on anyone's behalf, which is why we can publish the record instead of hiding the mechanism.
Does either service book the table for me? No. Both are alert services. You get told a table opened and you book it yourself under your own account. That is also why neither is covered by New York's reservation-resale law, which targets services that offer or arrange bookings.
Which covers more restaurants? ReservationFinder: eight cities against our four, as of 19 October 2026. SnagRes tracks 284 rooms and publishes a measured open rate, release hour and slot pattern for each one, which is the trade.
Can I use both? Yes, and for a hard table in a city we both cover it is not unreasonable: two independent watchers on the same room. SnagRes watches two restaurants free; ReservationFinder starts with a seven-day trial.
One restaurant free, no card. SnagRes alerts you and never books.
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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: watch a table free in New York City, or last-minute tables in NYC tonight, or see the hardest tables right now.