Last updated . Source: SnagRes availability record, 61,530,416 checks across 284 restaurants through 19 October 2026. How we measure. Open dataset.
Search the reservation platform with the party size set to one, which can reveal counter and bar seats that a search for two hides. Then aim at the hours that actually open: across 132 restaurants we measure, prime time between 7:00 and 8:30 PM is an average of just 26% of all openings, while 33% fall before 6:00 PM and 25% at 9:00 PM or later. If nothing appears online, call and ask about seating for one.
Probably, but we do not publish a number because we do not measure a party of one, and nobody else measures it either. We can say the usual reasoning is unreliable: across 284 restaurants a party of two found a table on 49% of dates and a party of four on 50%, so smaller is not automatically easier. The solo advantage that does hold up is flexibility, because most of what opens at hard restaurants is early or late rather than at 8:00 PM.
Yes. Resy, OpenTable, Tock and SevenRooms all let you set the party size to one before you search, which surfaces single seats you would otherwise miss. If a restaurant's online form starts at two, calling to ask about counter or bar seating for one often works, since that seating is frequently held for walk-ins and never enters the calendar at all.
The bar and the chef's counter. They usually serve the full menu, are often held for walk-ins rather than booked weeks ahead, and turn over faster than dining-room tables, so they are reachable on short notice even when the dining room is full. One caveat: because that seating is not listed, no availability tracker can see it, so the phone is the right tool there rather than a search.
Resy, OpenTable, Tock and SevenRooms all support a party size of one, and we watch all four. Setting the size to one before you search is the step people skip, and it can surface counter seats and single openings that never appear at a party of two.
That minimum usually applies to the dining room, not the bar or counter. Call, say you are one person, and ask whether the bar or chef's counter takes walk-ins or single reservations. It is also worth checking whether the room is empty for everyone: 16 of the 284 restaurants we track showed no date for any party size, and The Polo Bar has never shown one in 644,820 checks.
Before 6:00 PM or after 9:00 PM, midweek. Counted per restaurant, the single most frequently open slot falls at 9:00 PM or later at 53 of the 132 rooms we sample at the time level and before 6:00 PM at 37, against only 28 inside prime time. Via Carota is most often open at 3:00 PM, I Sodi at 4:30 PM, Carbone at 11:30 PM. Flexibility on the hour is the largest single advantage a solo diner has.
Almost certainly, but we are not going to hand you a percentage, because nobody has measured a party of one and we have not either. SnagRes checks availability at 284 restaurants in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago at two party sizes, two and four, and those are the sizes the platforms report in a form you can count. Our 61,530,416 availability checks contain no series for a single seat, so a percentage for solo availability is not something we can honestly give you.
What we can do is test the reasoning behind the claim, and the reasoning does not hold up. The usual argument is that smaller parties are easier because small tables are more numerous. Across the 284 restaurants where we hold both figures, a party of two found a bookable table on an average of 49% of dates and a party of four on 50%. Going up in size did not make booking harder. At 24 restaurants the four-top was materially easier than the two-top, and at one San Francisco room, Z & Y, we have never recorded an open date for two in 170,513 checks while a four-top showed on 77% of dates.
So the real advantage of eating alone is not the arithmetic of seat counts. It is that one person can say yes to a time and a date that a group cannot, and the openings that actually exist at hard restaurants are concentrated in exactly those hours. That is measurable, we have measured it, and it is the part of solo dining advice worth acting on.
The other half of the advantage is walk-in and counter seating, which never enters a reservation calendar at all. We will be equally plain about that: it is invisible to us, and to every other availability tracker, which is why this page tells you to pick up the phone for it rather than quoting you a figure.
Prime time is a minority of what a hard restaurant releases. Across the 132 restaurants where we have enough time-level samples, the window between 7:00 and 8:30 PM accounts for an average of 26% of every opening we record. An average of 33% of openings fall before 6:00 PM and another 25% at 9:00 PM or later.
Counted per restaurant, the single most frequently open slot lands at 9:00 PM or later at 53 of them, before 6:00 PM at 37, and inside prime time at only 28. At 14 restaurants prime time made up 0% of the openings we recorded, and at 39 it was 10% or less. These are the times a couple negotiates over and a group of four cannot agree on at all, and they are most of the supply.
The individual cases are more extreme than the averages. At Via Carota, 96% of what we see open falls before 6:00 PM and the most frequently open slot is 3:00 PM. At I Sodi it is 100% before 6:00 PM, most often 4:30 PM. Monkey Bar, a room whose calendar shows nothing at all for a party of two, has 95% of its openings before 6:00 PM, clustered at 11:45 AM. Carbone releases nothing in prime time and is most often open at 11:30 PM.
Read that list as a schedule rather than a disappointment. A solo diner who will eat at 4:30 or at 11:00 PM is bidding on a different and much larger pool of tables than everyone asking for 8:00 PM on a Saturday.
Via Carota: 96% of openings before 6:00 PM, most often 3:00 PM.
I Sodi: 100% of openings before 6:00 PM, most often 4:30 PM.
Thai Diner: 97% before 6:00 PM, most often 8:30 AM.
Carbone: 0% of openings in prime time, most often 11:30 PM.
House of Prime Rib (SF): 98% of openings at 9:00 PM or later, most often 10:00 PM.
San Ho Won (SF): 93% at 9:00 PM or later, most often 9:30 PM.
The bar and the chef's counter, and the reason is practical rather than romantic. They usually serve the full menu, so you are not trading the food for the access, and they are often held for walk-ins rather than released weeks in advance. That makes them reachable on short notice even when the dining room has been committed for a month.
Counter and bar seats also turn over faster than dining-room tables. A couple lingering over a tasting menu holds a two-top for hours, while a single stool can cycle through several diners across one evening. More turnover means more chances for your name to come up, which is what you want as one person trying to slip into a full house.
Here is the honest limit of our data. Everything we publish comes from the reservation calendar, so a bar that keeps its seats for walk-ins looks identical to a bar that has none. We cannot count what was never listed, and neither can any service that claims to watch tens of thousands of restaurants. Table Alert advertises 62,198 of them, and no tracker at that scale knows which of your 62,198 rooms holds its counter back. For counter seating, the phone call beats any tracker, including ours.
Set the party size to one before you search, then aim at the edges of service. Resy, OpenTable, Tock and SevenRooms all accept a party of one, and searching at that size can surface counter seats and single openings that never appear at two. Many diners assume a solo table is not on offer and never ask the system for it.
Then get the release right, because for the hardest rooms the drop is the only moment a table reliably exists. Across the 136 restaurants where we have observed releases, the booking window runs from 7 days ahead to 31, so the standard advice to book a month out is wrong at both ends. Of the 75 New York rooms where we have seen enough release events to name an hour, 20 add their dates at midnight, 13 at 10:00 AM and 11 at 9:00 AM, with the rest scattered through the day. Monkey Bar has released at 9:00 AM across 273 observed events, Carbone at 10:00 AM across 300, Ha's Snack Bar at noon, Don Angie at 3:00 PM.
After that it is attention, and attention is the thing worth automating. A single seat freed by a cancellation is gone in minutes, and no reasonable person spends an evening refreshing a page for it.
Search with the party size set to one first, since single seats often appear only at that size.
Aim at the hours the data says open: before 6:00 PM or after 9:00 PM, midweek.
Ask specifically for the bar or the chef's counter, which serve the full menu and are often kept for walk-ins.
Check the restaurant's own release window. Seven to thirty-one days is the real range, not thirty.
Set an alert for the nights you want, so a freed seat reaches you before someone else takes it.
If nothing shows online, call and ask about counter or bar seating for one.
A two-person minimum on the booking form usually applies to the dining room rather than the bar or the counter. Calling to ask about counter seating for one often works, because a single seat is easy for a host to place even when the reservation software will not sell it.
Be direct when you call. Say that you are one person, ask whether the bar or counter takes walk-ins or single reservations, and mention that you are flexible on timing. Restaurants would rather fill a seat than leave it empty, and a polite, low-maintenance request for one is an easy yes for a host to give.
It also helps to know when a calendar is genuinely empty rather than closed to you specifically. Sixteen of the 284 restaurants we track showed no bookable date for either party size, and seven of those have never shown one in any check we hold, among them The Polo Bar across 644,820 checks and 4 Charles Prime Rib across 645,420. At rooms like those, the form is not discriminating against a solo diner. There is nothing in it for anybody, and the release or a cancellation is the only way in.
Cancellations are where a solo diner has the clearest edge, and it is an edge of timing rather than of size. When a couple gives up a table they can no longer use, a single diner who will take the 5:15 or the 10:00 PM can accept it immediately while a group is still texting each other. The catch is that these tables surface at unpredictable hours and vanish within minutes.
SnagRes watches Resy, OpenTable, Tock and SevenRooms at 284 of the hardest restaurants in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, and texts or emails you the moment a watched date opens. You set the restaurant and the nights, and when something frees up you get the message and book it yourself. Watching two tables is free.
What we will not do is book for you. Services that sell the reservation rather than the alert are a different business: TableSwap charges $75 per successful reservation, which is the practice New York's 2024 reservation law was written to stop. Nothing we do puts a table in an inventory, holds it under someone else's name, or takes a seat you were not going to get anyway.
And if your plans are flexible in the other direction, read the party-size numbers before you assume a room is shut. The search you ran may have answered a narrower question than the one you meant to ask.
Measured: prime time is only 26% of what hard restaurants release. A solo diner who will eat at 4:30 or 11:00 PM is bidding on most of the supply. How to book a table for one.
What the availability data does and does not say about booking for one, the hours that actually open at hard restaurants, the best seats for solo diners, and how to book on Resy, OpenTable, Tock and SevenRooms.
Keep reading: Two against four, restaurant by restaurant · Booking for six or more · When a restaurant is fully booked · Getting a table without a reservation · How to get a last-minute table · Booking New York from out of town
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: watch a table free in New York City, or see the hardest tables right now.