Last updated . Source: SnagRes availability record, 61,530,416 checks across 284 restaurants through 19 October 2026. How we measure. Open dataset.
Among the 88 rooms we track with a confirmed rule, 9 AM is the most common release time (25 rooms), followed by midnight (17) and 10 AM (23). Times are in the restaurant's own city.
The median window is 21 days. 22 rooms open 30 days ahead, 20 open 14 days ahead and 15 open 21 days ahead. A few run longer or shorter, and some roll continuously with no fixed drop.
No. A release puts a whole night up at once on a schedule; a cancellation returns a single table at a random moment later in the window. Releases reward being there at the minute. Cancellations reward being told the second one appears.
Each rule is read from the restaurant's own booking page or platform listing and re-checked against the calendars we watch. Rules marked as assumed are the platform default rather than something the restaurant has stated.
Of the 284 restaurants we track in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, 88 publish or have confirmed a release rule: a time of day and a number of days ahead. Three times of day account for nearly all of them. 25 rooms release at 9 AM, 23 at 10 AM and 17 at midnight, each in the restaurant's own time zone. Noon covers 15 more. The most common single time is 9:00 AM.
The window is the other half of the rule. 22 rooms open exactly 30 days ahead, 20 open 14 days ahead and 15 open 21 days ahead. The median window across every room with a rule is 21 days. So the typical hard reservation in these four cities appears at 9 or 10 in the morning, three weeks before the night itself.
A release is not a cancellation. When the calendar opens, a whole night's tables go up at once and the popular ones are taken inside a minute. Cancellations arrive one at a time, at any hour, for the rest of the window. This page is about the first kind; the release table on this site is updated as rules change.
9 AM: 25 rooms, among them 4 Charles Prime Rib, Adda, Armitage Alehouse, Au Cheval and Au Cheval - Chicago.
10 AM: 23 rooms, among them Baby Bistro, Benu, COTE 550, Carbone and Chez Fifi.
Midnight: 17 rooms, among them 7 Adams, Bistrot Ha, Bong, Casa Mono and Cecchi's.
Noon: 15 rooms, among them Bridges, Cerdito Muerto, Dame and Foreign Cinema.
Work out the night you want, count back the window, and be on the booking page at the release minute with your party size already set. A 30-day room releases the night of the 31st on the 1st. A 21-day room that opens at 9 AM puts up three weeks from today at 9 this morning. The release table lists the exact date each room will next open, so nothing has to be counted by hand.
Be early by a minute, not by ten. Booking pages do not show the new night until the release runs, and reloading a page that is not there yet does nothing useful. Have the party size, the date and a time in mind, and take the first slot that fits rather than the perfect one; the perfect one is what everybody else is refreshing for.
If the release is at midnight, it is midnight in the restaurant's city. A San Francisco midnight release is 3 AM in New York, and a New York 10 AM release is 7 AM on the west coast.
Nights are released one at a time, so a room with a 30-day window opens one new night every day.
Party size changes what is shown. Set it before the release, not after.
The reminder on each release-times row texts members a few minutes before the drop.
A rule is a promise about when the calendar opens, not about whether you will get a table. At the most wanted rooms the release is over in seconds, and the tables that reach the public are the ones nobody on the waitlist took. What the rule gives you is the one moment in the month when every table exists at once.
Rules also drift. Restaurants move release times when they change platforms, extend a window before the holidays, or quietly switch to a rolling calendar. We re-check each room's rule against its own listing and note when a time is assumed rather than confirmed. When a room has no rule at all it is usually because its calendar rolls forward continuously rather than dropping on a clock.
Keep reading: Every release time, with the next drop date · When NYC and SF rooms release, by venue · How far ahead you can book · What to do when a restaurant is fully booked · What Resy Notify does and does not do · The easiest night to get a table
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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.