Last updated . Source: SnagRes availability record, 61,530,416 checks across 284 restaurants through 19 October 2026. How we measure. Open dataset.
Because at the hardest rooms there is often no public availability at all. As of 19 October 2026, across 61,530,416 logged checks of 284 restaurants in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, 39 rooms showed no bookable two-top on any date in their own booking window. On top of that, prime time is the scarcest slice of what does open, and most later openings are cancellations that appear at no fixed hour.
Because manual checking almost never coincides with the moment a table exists. Scheduled drops are claimed within seconds of the release time, and everything afterward is a cancellation surfacing at a random hour. Openings do happen: we logged 7,048 release events across the tracked list, including 273 at Monkey Bar over 22 days while its two-top calendar still read 50%.
In part, yes, and the resale market that sits behind them publishes its pricing. TableSwap lists $25 a month plus roughly $75 per successful reservation, which is a fee attached to a restaurant seat and the practice New York's 2024 reservation law was written to stop. You cannot outrace software at the drop, so the openings worth chasing are the later cancellations, which nothing can camp on.
Two things measurably help. Change the party size first: 31 of our 284 rooms open more often for four than for two, and Z and Y read 0% for two against 80% for four on the same day. Then watch the near edge of the calendar rather than the far edge, because the median nearest open date across 118 rooms was one day out, and 108 of them had an opening inside three days.
In New York it is close to it, and in San Francisco it often is not. The median New York room puts 16% of its logged open slots between 7:00 PM and 8:30 PM, and twelve rooms have never shown us one at all. The median San Francisco room puts 41% of its open slots in that same window, with Benu at 61% and Delfina at 59%.
It depends which city you are in, which is why so much advice misfires. 54 of our 80 New York rooms are on Resy, so one app covers most of that city. In San Francisco the 62 rooms split 25 OpenTable, 16 Tock, 13 Resy and 8 SevenRooms, so watching Resy alone leaves about four fifths of the hardest tables invisible.
No, and that is deliberate. SnagRes watches the calendar 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.
At the hardest restaurants the problem is not that you are too slow. It is that the calendar is taken before most people look. As of 19 October 2026 we had logged 61,530,416 checks of live booking calendars across 284 restaurants with a full record, 80 in New York and 62 in San Francisco, and 26 of those 284 rooms showed no bookable table for two on a single date inside their own booking window. Refreshing at random rarely lands on the moment a table appears, which is why the release time and an alert beat effort.
Twenty-two of those 26 rooms are in New York and four are in San Francisco, which is the first hint that difficulty is local rather than universal. And a zero is not always a flat zero. Sixteen of the 26 were closed to a party of four as well, but ten of them were not. Z and Y in Chinatown read 0% for two and 80% for four on the same day. Monkey Bar read 50% for two and 47% for four.
So the word hard is covering several different problems that happen to share a symptom. Tables arrive on a schedule and the good ones are gone in seconds. Prime time is the thinnest slice of an already thin supply. The room you want is often sitting on a platform you are not watching. And once a date sells out, nearly everything that comes back is a cancellation with no clock time attached to it.
Each of those has a different answer, which is why generic advice bounces off. The rest of this page is what we can actually measure about each one, with the sample each figure came from.
39 of 284 tracked rooms showed no bookable two-top on any date in their current booking window.
22 of those 26 are in New York. 4 are in San Francisco.
16 were closed to a party of four as well. The other 10 were open to four.
Behind those readings: 61,530,416 logged checks of live booking calendars as of 19 October 2026.
Prime time goes first, and at the hardest rooms it barely existed to begin with. We record every open time slot we find, so we can say what share of them falls between 7:00 PM and 8:30 PM. Across the New York list, the median room put 16% of its open slots inside that window. Twelve rooms have never shown us a single slot in it.
What is left over is the shoulder, and the shoulder is where a hard room lives. Carbone's most frequently open time is 11:30 PM. Torrisi's is 10:45 PM. Le Bernardin's is 10:30 PM. Monkey Bar's is 11:45 AM, and 95% of the open slots we have logged there fall before 6 PM, which means the room most people file under impossible is largely a lunch table nobody is asking for.
San Francisco behaves differently, and that is worth knowing before carrying New York habits west. The median San Francisco room puts 41% of its open slots in prime time against New York's 16%. Benu runs at 56%, Delfina at 59%, Zuni Cafe at 23%. In New York the 8 PM table is the thing you cannot have. In San Francisco it is frequently the thing that is there.
There is also a quieter reason a calendar reads dead. 74 of the 284 rooms have at least one weekday we have never once seen open, most often Monday at 50 rooms and Sunday at 40. That is usually a closing day rather than a hard night, and a service reporting one number per restaurant cannot tell you which it is.
Share of logged open slots between 7:00 PM and 8:30 PM: New York median 16%, San Francisco median 41%.
Most frequently open time: Carbone 11:30 PM, Torrisi 10:45 PM, Le Bernardin 10:30 PM.
Monkey Bar: 95% of logged open slots fall before 6 PM, most often at 11:45 AM.
74 of 284 rooms have a weekday we have never seen open. Monday at 50 rooms, Sunday at 40.
Partly, and the resale side of it is easier to describe than the bots are, because resale publishes its prices. TableSwap lists $25 a month plus roughly $75 for every successful reservation. That is a fee attached 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.
The practical consequence for you is narrow but real. You are not going to win a race against software in the second a batch drops, and planning around that is planning to lose. The openings a person can take are the ones that appear afterward at no particular hour, because nothing can camp on a moment it cannot predict.
We sit on the other side of that line deliberately. SnagRes watches calendars and tells you when something opens. It never books, holds, or resells a table. There is no per-reservation fee here and nothing standing between you and the restaurant's own booking page: you reserve it yourself, in your own account, at the restaurant's own price.
Because the platform mix is almost inverted between the two cities, and most reservation advice is written from New York. Of the 84 New York rooms we track, 56 sit on Resy. Watching one app really does cover most of the ground there, which is why the advice gets written that way.
San Francisco does not work like that. Of 60 rooms, 27 are on OpenTable, 15 on Tock, 10 on Resy and 8 on SevenRooms. Someone who learned to book in New York and then watches Resy in San Francisco is watching roughly a fifth of the city's hardest tables and concluding, quite reasonably, that nothing ever opens.
Tock is the sharpest version of the problem, because several Tock rooms do not run a rolling window at all. Lazy Bear's own listing says tickets are released monthly on the 15th at 10 AM for the following calendar month. Enclos releases on the last Friday of the month at noon Pacific, two months out. Miss the date and there is no second chance until next month.
New York, 80 rooms: 54 Resy, 11 SevenRooms, 9 OpenTable, 6 Tock.
San Francisco, 60 rooms: 27 OpenTable, 15 Tock, 10 Resy, 8 SevenRooms.
Lazy Bear: monthly on the 15th at 10 AM for the following month, per its own Tock listing.
Sons and Daughters, now on OpenTable: one month ahead on the 1st at midnight, per its own FAQ.
Openings cluster at the near edge of the calendar rather than the far one, and that is the single most useful thing in our data. Across the 118 rooms with a current in-window reading, the median nearest open date was one day out, and 108 of those 118 had an opening within three days.
That is the opposite of where the effort usually goes. Most people hunt the far edge, the date that just rolled onto the calendar, because that is what the advice says to do. The far edge is real, and for 49 of those 118 rooms the furthest open date sat right at the window's edge. But the dependable supply is tomorrow and the day after, which is cancellations, and no human refresh schedule catches those.
The second lever costs nothing: change the party size before you change the restaurant. 39 of the 284 rooms open more often for four than for two. 26 run the other way, Lilia among them at 63% for two against 33% for four, and 85 are identical for both. Check both rather than assuming either.
Then set an alert and stop watching. We have logged 7,048 release events across the tracked list, and the pattern at a hard room is not silence. Monkey Bar produced 273 of them over 22 days of observation while its two-top calendar still read 50%. Tables do appear at these restaurants. They simply do not wait for anyone to notice.
Median nearest open date across the 118 rooms with a current reading: 1 day out.
108 of those 118 had an opening within 3 days.
31 of 284 rooms open more often for a four-top than a two-top. 26 are the reverse. 85 are identical.
7,048 release events logged, including 273 at Monkey Bar over 22 days of observation.
Every number above exists because the list is small on purpose. Table Alert advertises 62,198 restaurants. We watch 284, continuously, which is how 61,530,416 logged checks pile up against a list this size.
Nobody covering 62,198 rooms can tell you that Monkey Bar's most frequently open slot is 11:45 AM, that Z and Y reads zero for two and 80% for four, or that 26 specific rooms had no public two-top at all on 19 October 2026. That is not a complaint about coverage. It is a different product, and if the restaurant you want is not on our list then a broad directory is honestly the better tool.
We would rather be the service that actually knows 284 rooms than the one that lists 62,198 and knows none of them. Everything here is a count of something we watched happen, and every figure carries the sample it came from.
Why Are Restaurant Reservations So Hard to Get? (2026) | SnagRes
Keep reading: How to get a hard New York table · How to get a hard San Francisco table · How far ahead you can book · The hardest New York reservations · The four platforms compared · Set a free availability alert
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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, or see the hardest tables right now.