Acuity Scheduling vs Square Appointments 2026: Per Account or Per Location

The verdict: per account against per location

Pick Square Appointments if you run one location, already take payments with Square, and want to start free. Pick Acuity Scheduling if you have several staff or locations, sell packages, memberships or gift certificates, need a BAA, or want to choose your payment processor. Square charges per location and lives on processing fees. Acuity charges per account. That difference decides most cases, and the rest of this comparison shows where it bites.

The two products come from different worlds. Acuity was founded in 2006 and has belonged to Squarespace since 2019; it is a standalone scheduler that works with any website or none. Square Appointments is a booking module inside the Square payments ecosystem, sold alongside payroll, hardware and point of sale. One is a scheduler. The other is a payments company. Square wins on free entry, hardware and one-company simplicity, while Acuity wins on multi-staff pricing, client tools and processor choice. Both handle classes.

Two pricing models, side by side

Acuity charges one price per account and limits calendars to 1, 6 or 36 ^[1]. Square charges per location, and on Plus and Premium the monthly fee applies to each location you run ^[2]. Square Free costs nothing beyond processing fees. So Acuity's bill grows with staff count, while Square's grows with locations and card volume. Texts, packages and the waitlist start at Acuity Standard, and HIPAA, the AI Booking Assistant and the API need Premium. On Square, the plan for growing teams adds cancellation policies and no-show fees, multi-staff booking and a waitlist, and Premium adds 24/7 priority phone support.

A free plan against a free trial

Square Free never expires; you pay card fees as you go, and Plus and Premium each come with a free 30-day trial with no credit card required. Acuity offers only a trial: seven days with no card, or 14 when attached to a Squarespace website, and that trial sends no emails or texts. Square gives you far longer to test. A new business can run on Square for months at zero subscription cost, paying only card fees, and move to a paid plan only when no-show fees or a waitlist become necessary. Acuity does refund an annual plan canceled within 14 days.

What each costs in real setups

One location, one person

A solo stylist pays nothing in subscription on Square Free, while Acuity Starter costs $192 a year on annual billing. A solo esthetician taking $100 services in person pays $2.75 per payment on Square Free, and for a practitioner who never needs deposits or packages, Square Free is hard to beat. The picture flips once you need no-show protection. Acuity can require full payment, a deposit or a card on file on every plan, while Square puts no-show fees on Plus. A solo tattoo artist who needs deposits pays $588 a year for Square Plus, against $192 on Acuity Starter, a $396 difference. Free is cheapest only while Free is enough.

A six-person salon

One salon with six stylists can stay on Square Free, which has no employee limit on staff calendars. But Free lacks no-show fees, multi-staff booking and the waitlist. With those, Square Plus costs $588 a year, while Acuity Standard covers six calendars, texts and the waitlist for $324. Acuity wins here. The exception is a large team at one location: a medspa with 12 providers pays nothing for staff calendars on Square Free and $588 a year for Premium on Acuity, because Acuity caps calendars by plan. That is the one case where unlimited staff schedules clearly beat calendar caps.

Several locations

Square prices every location separately. Three locations on Square Plus cost $1,764 a year, and Square Premium for three would cost $5,364. On Acuity, three locations with two staff each still fit the six calendars of Standard at $324 a year, a difference of $1,440 against Square Plus. A brand with ten locations of three staff each would pay $5,880 a year for Square Plus and $17,880 for Square Premium, while its 30 calendars fit one Acuity Premium account at $588 a year on annual billing. Above 36 calendars, Acuity needs Enterprise. Multi-site businesses save heavily on Acuity.

Processing fees and how the money moves

Square's card rates

Square sets its own card rates by plan ^[2]. In person you pay 2.6%, 2.5% and 2.4% plus 15 cents on Free, Plus and Premium. Online or invoice payments cost 3.3% plus 30 cents on Free and 2.9% plus 30 cents on paid plans, manual entry and cards on file cost 3.5% plus 15 cents on every plan, and cards issued outside the US add 1.5%. On $6,000 a month of in-person payments, Free charges about $156 plus 15 cents per payment and Premium about $144 plus the same. Upgrading for lower in-person rates alone only pays off at much higher volumes.

Online prepayment changes the math. On Square Free a $100 online booking costs $3.60 in fees, while the same $100 paid in person costs $2.75. A business that takes 300 online prepayments of $100 a month pays $1,080 in fees on Free and $960 on Plus, a $120 monthly gap that is larger than the Plus subscription itself. For that business, the upgrade pays for itself. Check where clients pay before picking a plan.

Acuity's processor choice

Acuity adds no fees of its own to payments; you pay whatever your processor charges your account. It lets you choose Stripe, Square or PayPal ^[3] and pair PayPal with Stripe or Square, though Stripe and Square cannot be connected together. If you connect Square, Square's rates apply. Choice is leverage. One Acuity customer said three processors helped them negotiate better pricing, and even a quarter of a percentage point saved on $500,000 a year of card payments is worth $1,250. Payout speed follows your processor, because Acuity cannot create payouts itself.

Afterpay and fast payouts on Square

Square offers Afterpay, so you get paid up front while the client pays four interest-free installments over six weeks. It costs 6% plus 30 cents per payment on every plan, so a $200 lash set paid that way costs $12.30 in fees, and Acuity cannot be used with buy now, pay later services like Afterpay or Klarna at all. Square also makes next-business-day transfers free and charges 1.95% for same-day or instant ones. On a $2,000 day of takings, an instant transfer costs $39. Across 20 working days, that is about $780 a month for speed alone.

Hardware, point of sale and the back office

Square is a point-of-sale company first, with hardware starting at $59 and native Tap to Pay. Acuity's point of sale, launched on November 5, 2025, is lighter: a Checkout tab for balances owed, Tap to Pay and card readers, US only. Acuity has no hardware of its own but works with Square readers in the United States. Only the magstripe reader, the contactless and chip reader and Square Stand are compatible; Square Terminal and Register are not. Check your devices. Acuity's own pages disagree on whether Tap to Pay works with Square, and its help center says it does.

The gap widens behind the counter. Acuity sells services, add-ons, packages and gift certificates but not physical inventory, and suggests Squarespace Commerce for products, so a spa selling skincare should weigh Square here. Square sells payroll starting at $35 per month plus $6 per person paid, while Acuity has no payroll and no commission tracking; its reports show appointments, revenue and tips per staff member. Teams paying commissions need another system with Acuity. Retail-heavy salons prefer Square. Service-only businesses are fine on Acuity.

Booking pages, staff and finding new clients

Square Free includes an online booking site, and its booking widget works on Squarespace, Wix, WordPress and other sites. Acuity offers more control. Its scheduling page carries your logo and colors, the style editor can build a palette from your logo, and the page can hide prices, durations and remaining spots and show in 12 languages. It embeds as a scheduler, a booking button or a booking bar, with a no-code Scheduling block on Squarespace. Square adds unlimited staff schedules on every plan and lets clients book any team member at any location, while Acuity holds several locations in one account as long as the calendars fit the plan.

Discovery splits the two. Acuity connects to Reserve with Google, so clients book from Search and Maps, plus Facebook and Instagram booking buttons, with one Business Profile per subscription on the Google link. The Square pages we read did not describe these channels. Square, in turn, runs a marketplace called Square Go, and Acuity has no client marketplace at all: clients reach you through your own link, website, QR code or Google. For a new business without a following, Square Go can help. Established businesses rarely need it.

Classes, packages and no-show protection

Both handle classes. Square schedules single sessions or recurring classes in a few clicks and sets price and capacity from the POS. Acuity goes deeper, with class series sold at one price, waitlists per session and resources for rooms, and a fencing club that once spent eight to ten hours a month scheduling lessons booked five months of them in two hours. For recurring revenue, Acuity is the safer choice. It sells packages, subscriptions and memberships on Standard and above, redeemable for appointments, minutes, dollars or unlimited bookings, plus digital gift certificates. The Square pages we read described neither packages nor gift cards for appointments.

A Pilates studio selling 10-class packs and monthly memberships needs packages, subscriptions and class capacity, which Acuity Standard covers for $324 a year on annual billing, with Stripe or Square as the processor for subscriptions. On Square, we could not confirm packs. Test both with a real pack. Waitlists cost money on both: Square lists one on its growing-team plan, while Acuity's arrived on May 28, 2026, on Standard and Premium for one-on-one appointments and texts waitlisted clients a booking link. Policies differ the same way. Acuity shows your cancellation policy with a checkbox on any plan, and Square ties policies to no-show fees on Plus.

Texts, marketing and intake forms

Acuity sends one text reminder per appointment on Standard and Premium with no additional fees. Square includes 500 texts a month on Plus, then 3 cents each, and 2,500 on Premium, then 1.5 cents. A salon sending 2,000 texts a month on Square Plus pays $45 extra a month, $540 a year. Marketing runs the other way. Square Plus adds unlimited email marketing campaigns and can collect Google reviews automatically after appointments, with Square Loyalty at an additional fee. Acuity cannot send mass marketing emails, so it syncs clients to Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Kit and others, and it has no built-in loyalty program.

Acuity's follow-up emails can still ask for reviews, and one barber gathered close to 100 Google reviews that way. Square automates reviews; Acuity needs a template. Intake forms are an Acuity strength: they come with every plan, with unlimited questions, file uploads up to 5 MB, consent checkboxes and internal SOAP notes, and different forms can attach to different services. The Square pages we read did not describe intake forms. Clinics, tattoo studios and groomers that collect details should test this first.

HIPAA, calendars and the technical side

Acuity signs a BAA on Premium ^[4], which costs $588 a year on annual billing, and a consultant validated it against the HIPAA Security Rule. HIPAA mode turns off Zapier, invoices and several calendar syncs. We found no BAA offer on the Square Appointments pages we read. For health care, Acuity Premium is the safer starting point. Ask Square for its HIPAA position in writing before choosing it, because a three-therapist practice needs a BAA before it stores any health information.

Calendars and video tilt the same way. Square syncs Google Calendar to block off personal events, while Acuity syncs two ways with Google, iCloud, Office 365, Exchange and Outlook.com and creates a unique Zoom, Google Meet or GoToMeeting link for each booking. The Square pages we read did not describe video links, so coaches and therapists who meet online should lean to Acuity. Acuity also connects to dozens of third-party applications plus Zapier, QuickBooks, FreshBooks and ClassPass, while Square integrates mainly with its own products. Its API needs Premium.

Support, terms and lock-in

Square Premium includes 24/7 phone support. Acuity has no phone support on any plan: email runs around the clock and live chat on weekdays. A salon whose booking system breaks on a busy Saturday can call Square at any hour on Premium, while an Acuity user can email at once but must wait until Monday for live chat. During a real outage, that matters more than any feature list. Neither locks you in by contract. Square lets you cancel or switch plans anytime, and Acuity has no fixed term, with annual plans renewing automatically after a reminder 15 days before.

The deeper lock-in is the ecosystem. Square bundles scheduling, payments, hardware, payroll and marketing, so a business running all of them has four systems to replace if it leaves. Acuity lets you change processors, but switching breaks active client subscriptions until cards are re-entered. Acuity imports clients and appointments from CSV files of up to 500 rows each, but packages, gift certificates, subscriptions, canceled appointments and payment details cannot be imported. Both exits take work. Plan a clean cut-over date.

Acuity scores well on the platforms where buyers review software and noticeably lower on Trustpilot. We did not collect review scores for Square Appointments, so there is no fair head-to-head on sentiment here. Use ratings as a tie-breaker, not a decision. Weigh them below the pricing model, the processor question and the features your clients will actually touch every week.

Who should pick which, or both

Pick Acuity if you run a team of two to six at one or several locations, a studio selling class packs and memberships, a clinic needing a BAA or a coaching practice that meets online, or if you want Stripe or PayPal or already use Squarespace. Acuity Standard at $27 a month billed annually covers most of them. Pick Square Appointments if you work alone and want to pay nothing upfront, already run Square hardware and payroll, sell a lot of retail, hope to be found on Square Go, or want phone support on Premium. Start on Free and upgrade per location when needed.

You can also run both. Acuity can use Square as its processor, so clients book in Acuity and payments land in your Square account, with in-person payments through Square readers in Acuity's app. That keeps the Square readers and payouts while adding packages, intake forms and texts. Many small studios do exactly this. Avoid the common mistakes: buying Square Plus for deposits that Acuity includes on Starter, paying per location for a business that fits one Acuity account, forgetting that Acuity's trial sends no texts, or ignoring online card rates on Square Free.

The bottom line

Square Appointments is the best free start for a single location inside the Square world. Acuity Scheduling is the better buy for teams, multiple locations, recurring revenue, health data and processor choice. Price your real setup on both pages, because the cheaper one on paper is not always cheaper in practice. Our Acuity pricing guide breaks down each plan, and our Acuity review covers the rest of the product.