FareHarbor won't tell you what it costs.

Every operator who has looked into FareHarbor has hit the same wall. There is no price on the website. The pitch is that the software is free to you and the fee rides on your customer's checkout total, and somewhere in the research you settle on roughly 6% because that is the number the internet repeats. We wanted to source that 6% properly before we built a comparison page around it, and we could not.

What we found instead is worth more than the number would have been. FareHarbor's own General Terms of Service for Providers is a long, specific, carefully drafted agreement. It names nine separate fees it may charge you or your customer. It contains exactly one percentage in the entire document, and that percentage is a change-of-control threshold, not a price. The place where the rate should be, in the definition of Commission, is a parenthetical that says the number will be communicated separately.

None of that is a scandal. Plenty of software is sold on a call, and a negotiated rate can genuinely be a better deal for a high-volume operator than a rate card. But it does mean something concrete for you: the figure you are budgeting against is not FareHarbor's figure. It is a competitor's estimate of FareHarbor's figure, and the competitors do not agree within a full percentage point on the simplest part of it.

Timber & Tackle's answer to all of this is boring on purpose. One flat monthly fee, published, the same for everyone, nothing added to your customer's total, and you owe nothing at all until you accept your first booking. You can read our price in three seconds without a sales call, which is the only real claim we make in this comparison.

WHAT WE CHECKED

We read the contract. Here is what is actually in it.

On August 22, 2026 we read FareHarbor's General Terms of Service for Providers 2025 (effective January 1, 2025) end to end — about 85,000 characters — along with the Commission Terms attached to it as Annex 1. This is the agreement an operator actually signs. Everything below is quoted from it directly, and you can open it and check us.

1. 01

   The whole contract contains one percentage, and it is not a fee

   We searched the full text for every percent sign and every spelled-out percentage. There is exactly one, and it governs what happens if somebody buys your business. No booking-fee rate, no processing rate, no commission rate appears anywhere in the agreement.

   “Provider must notify FareHarbor if a third-party acquires more than fifty percent (50%) of Provider's business and/or assets”

2. 02

   It names nine fees and prices none of them

   Section 1.3 defines two customer-facing Booking Fees: one on bookings your customer makes on your site, and one on in-person bookings you key in yourself on their behalf. Section 1.4 adds seven charged to you: the Processing Fee, an API Fee, a Private Events fee, an FH Dock staff-mode fee, a Distribution Network fee, a Hosted Sites fee, and a Performance Marketing fee. Three of the nine at least point you at a separate terms page. The other six don't — and that six includes the booking fee and the processing fee, the two that decide what this actually costs you.

   “Any specific terms and conditions which may apply to Additional Services will be communicated to the Provider separately, and such terms and conditions shall be deemed incorporated into these Terms as if fully set forth herein.”

3. 03

   The fee on your customer is optional in the contract. The fee on you is not.

   This is a wording difference, and we are not going to make it carry more than it can — but it is a real one, and it runs the opposite way to how the model is usually described. The customer-paid Booking Fee is something FareHarbor may charge. The Processing Fee billed to you is something it shall charge.

   “FareHarbor shall charge a fee to Provider for providing the IT infrastructure required for the technical integration of payment solutions that allow the Booker to pay for the Booking through the FareHarbor Booking System”

4. 04

   You can ask to move the fee off your customer entirely

   We had this wrong on this page until today, and so does most of the coverage. The customer-paid booking fee is not welded on. FareHarbor's terms describe an alternative Commission Model where you pay instead and your customer sees a single price. Read it carefully though: the contract gives you the right to ask, not the right to get it, and it does not say what the Commission costs either.

   “As an alternative to the standard Booking Fee model where FareHarbor charges a Booking Fee directly to Bookers, Provider may request FareHarbor to opt for an alternative structure where FareHarbor instead charges a fee (referred to as a ‘Commission’) to Provider.”

5. 05

   Even the commission rate is a blank in the contract

   This is the single clearest thing we found. Annex 1 defines Commission properly, in detail, with the timing and the tax treatment spelled out — and where the actual percentage belongs there is a parenthesis promising the number later.

   “an amount charged by FareHarbor to Provider on a monthly basis calculated as a percentage (to be communicated separately by FareHarbor to Provider) on the total amount of the Activity Price paid by Bookers to Provider during the previous calendar month for Activities that have actually been delivered to Bookers, inclusive of any applicable taxes”

6. 06

   On a partial refund, the booking fee stays gone

   Worth knowing before your first weather cancellation, because half-refunds are normal in this business. If you refund a customer in full, FareHarbor may return the whole booking fee to them and the processing fee to you. If you refund part of it, the processing fee is prorated back to you but the customer's booking fee is not returned at all.

   “If Provider issues a partial or prorated refund to a Booker, FareHarbor may pay back the equivalent partial or prorated amount of the Processing Fee to Provider, but shall retain the full amount of the Booking Fee.”

• Card processing is the cleanest contradiction. Bókun and TrekkSoft say 1.9% + $0.30. CaptainBook and Roverd say 2.9% + $0.30. That is a full point apart on the same fee, stated as fact by all four, and on a $850 trip it is the difference between about $16 and about $25 out of your pocket.
• “Up to 6%” and “6–8%” cannot both be describing the same fee. One is a ceiling and the other is a floor. Roverd is the only source that treats the rate as a range you negotiate, which is at least consistent with a contract that has no rate in it.
• TicketingHub contradicts itself inside one article, calling the ~6% a consumer-funded booking fee in one sentence and a credit card processing fee in another. FareHarbor's §1.3 and §1.4 make those two different fees charged to two different parties.
• Two of the six say plainly that the rate is unpublished, which is the part everybody skips. Roverd: “It is not published on their website and is only disclosed during a sales call.” TicketingHub: “FareHarbor doesn't have a public pricing page.”
• So we are not going to tell you FareHarbor's rate either, because we do not know it and neither does anyone writing about it. What we can tell you is to get your number in writing before you sign, ask specifically which of the nine fees apply to you, and ask what the Commission Model would cost.

Method: read fareharbor.com/legal/tos-providers/ in full on August 22, 2026 (General Terms of Service for Providers 2025, effective January 1, 2025), including the Commission Terms at Annex 1, and searched the complete text for every rate. Also checked fareharbor.com/pricing/, which did not render a number. Third-party quotes captured the same day from the pages linked above. Sources, quotes and dates for every competitor claim on this site live in docs/competitor-claims.md. If we have got something wrong, or if any of this has changed since we checked, tell us and we will correct it and say that we did.