Resy No-Show Fees Explained: Who Charges What, and Why

The direct answer first: Resy does not have a no-show fee. The restaurant does. Every penalty you can be charged through Resy, whether it is called a no-show fee, a late cancellation fee, or a deposit, is set by the individual restaurant, at an amount the restaurant chooses, under a cutoff the restaurant chooses, and the money goes to the restaurant, not to Resy. The platform's role is plumbing: it stores your card, displays the venue's terms on the booking screen before you confirm, and processes the charge if you break those terms. That is why there is no single number to quote. As of September 2026, real published figures at Resy and OpenTable venues run from $15 a head to the full price of dinner, and plenty of famous rooms charge nothing at all.

The second thing people actually want to know: you will not be charged for a no-show unless the booking told you so up front. The exact terms that bind you are the ones shown on the confirmation screen at the moment you book, repeated in the confirmation email. If that screen asked for a card and stated a fee, the fee is real and it will land on that card. If it did not, there is nothing to charge and nothing for Resy to invent later. Everything below is the mechanics: why the card is required, what the small $1 item on your statement is, what happens to the table you abandoned, and how to never pay one of these fees again.

Who sets the fee, and who gets the money

Resy sells software to restaurants, and the cancellation policy is one of the settings in that software. Each venue decides whether a card is required at all, which nights and party sizes require it, how long before the reservation you can still cancel free, and what a violation costs. Payments on the restaurant side run through Stripe, the same processor behind most of the internet's checkouts, which is why a penalty shows up on your statement under the restaurant's name or a Resy descriptor rather than as some mystery merchant. The practical consequence of all this: if you want a fee refunded, the restaurant is the only party that can decide to do it. Resy support can pass a message along, but the venue holds the switch.

Because every house writes its own rule, the spread is wide. Among policies these guides have verified from the restaurants' own published terms: Maple & Ash in Chicago charges $50 per person for a cancellation inside 24 hours or a no-show, LPM in Miami charges $50 per person past its one-day cutoff, Komodo in Las Vegas charges $35 per person with only a four-hour cancellation window, and Fonda San Miguel in Austin charges a $15 per guest no-show fee that it donates to the Central Texas Food Bank. At the other end, several of the hardest tables in New York publish no fee whatsoever. The venue by venue landscape, including how deposits differ from fees, is covered in restaurant cancellation policies.

Fee, deposit, or hold: three words the booking screen mixes up

The confirmation screen uses three terms that feel interchangeable and are not. A hold means the restaurant keeps your card on file and charges nothing unless you violate the policy; this is the most common arrangement at card-required Resy tables. A fee is the after-the-fact penalty, charged per person only when you cancel late or fail to appear. A deposit is money taken the moment you book, credited against your bill when you dine, and kept by the house if you miss the refund cutoff; some rooms attach it only to large parties or holiday dates. The distinction matters when something goes wrong, because a deposit dispute is about getting money back that already left your account, while a fee dispute is about a fresh charge you can question with a timestamp. When a date requires prepayment of the whole menu up front, that is effectively a ticket, and the cancellation terms tighten accordingly. Windows for all three follow the same booking calendar, which is mapped in when restaurant reservations open.

Why Resy wants your credit card at all

Two separate reasons, and it helps to keep them apart. The first is your account: Resy stores a card so that booking is instant, because at a hard restaurant the checkout happens in seconds and a diner typing digits loses the race every time. The mechanics of that race are in how the 10am opening works. The second is the restaurant's guarantee: on card-required reservations, the card is the enforcement mechanism behind the cancellation policy. Nothing is charged when you book a standard table. The card just sits on file as the thing the fee would hit if you vanish.

Restaurants do this because an empty reserved table is close to a total loss. A small dining room that runs two seatings a night cannot resell a four-top that no-shows at 8pm, and before card guarantees existed, prime Saturday books leaked ten to twenty percent of their covers to people who simply never came. The card requirement filters intent more than it collects revenue: most venues would rather you cancel in time than pay the fee, which is exactly why the fee exists. It converts silent no-shows into cancellations made before a deadline, and a cancellation puts the table back on sale.

The $1 charge on your statement is not a charge

This one generates a surprising amount of worry. When you add a card to Resy, or book a table that requires one, you may see a small pending item, typically $1 and sometimes $0, appear on the account. That is a card verification authorization, the standard way a payment processor confirms a card is real and active without billing it. It is a hold, not a charge: no money moves, and the pending item drops off your statement on its own, usually within a few business days depending on your bank. If a $1 item lingers past a week, that is a question for your bank's pending-transactions handling, not evidence that Resy took a dollar. An actual penalty looks nothing like this; it posts for the full stated amount under the restaurant's descriptor.

No-show versus late cancellation

Most policies treat them identically, and the wording on the booking screen usually says so in one breath: cancellations inside the window and no-shows are charged the same per person amount. A few houses add a wrinkle worth knowing. Some charge per missing guest when a party of six arrives as four, so shrinking your table late can cost money even though you showed up. Deposit rooms work in reverse: the money is taken when you book, applied to your bill when you dine, and forfeited rather than charged when you miss the cutoff. And tasting-menu counters are the harshest tier, where a missed seat can cost the full menu price, because a ten-seat counter cannot absorb an empty chair the way a hundred-cover dining room can.

Does a no-show get your Resy account banned?

Resy publishes no diner-facing strike rule as of September 2026, so the honest answer is that nobody outside the company knows a threshold. This is a real contrast with OpenTable, which openly states that four no-shows within twelve months can suspend an account. What is certain on Resy is quieter: restaurants see their own guest history, they tag serial no-shows in their notes, and a hard room deciding who gets a table when the book is tight is under no obligation to be generous to someone who has burned it before. The fee is the visible cost. The invisible one is standing.

What happens to the table you didn't use

Here is the part the help-center version of this topic never covers. A no-show kills the table: by the time the restaurant concedes you are not coming, usually fifteen minutes past your slot, the evening is underway and the seat mostly dies unless a walk-in is standing right there. A cancellation resurrects it: the moment you cancel through the app, the slot flows back into Resy's public availability for anyone watching. This is why fee cutoffs are the most predictable clock in the whole reservation game. People cancel just before the deadline to save their money, so returned tables cluster right around each venue's cutoff, and why they disappear again in seconds is covered in why Resy tables vanish instantly.

The two sides of the same fee

So the same policy that threatens your card is also the mechanism that frees up tables you want. If you hold a booking you cannot use, cancel through the app before the stated cutoff and the fee never touches you; even past the cutoff, cancelling is better than ghosting, since some venues waive the fee for a late cancel and almost none waive it for a no-show. If you are on the other side, hunting a sold-out night, those pre-cutoff cancellations are your opening, and catching one is a matter of being the person looking at the exact minute it appears. That is a watching problem, and watching is what software is for: SeatSwiper monitors the specific table you want on Resy, SevenRooms, or OpenTable and books the cancellation the moment it lands, on your own account and in your own name. The details are in how SeatSwiper works.

How to never pay a no-show fee

• Read the one paragraph that matters. The policy on the confirmation screen is the entire contract. Note the cutoff hour, not just the number of days.
• Put the cutoff in your calendar, not the dinner. The reservation you remember; the 3pm day-before deadline you forget.
• Cancel in the app, always. Calling the restaurant works too, but the app timestamps you on the right side of the deadline and returns the table instantly.
• Shrink your party early. Where per-guest rules apply, dropping from six to four the day before is free, and doing it at the door may not be.
• If you are charged unfairly, email the restaurant. A polite note with your cancellation timestamp gets more refunds than a card dispute, and it keeps your standing with a room you presumably want to return to.