Lilo Pro vs. Booksy: Barbershop Teams & Locations

Lilo Pro vs. Booksy: which fits a barbershop team or multiple locations?

For an owner running a team of barbers or more than one shop, the deciding question is how each platform charges as you grow and how much of the back office comes in the box. Lilo Pro is flat per location with unlimited team members and the suite included. Booksy is a per-staff subscription with every feature included at any team size, paired with a consumer marketplace that brings in new clients. As your chair count and location count rise, those two pricing shapes pull apart.

Booksy's genuine advantage is discovery. Its customer app and marketplace surface your shop to people searching for a nearby barber, and that drives real net-new bookings in a way pure back-office tools do not. We are not going to pretend otherwise. The rest of this guide goes dimension by dimension on what owners actually screen for: seat pricing, multi-location, payroll and comp, roles, HIPAA, reporting, and what is included. If you run a single chair instead of a team, read Lilo Booth vs. Booksy instead.

How does the team and seat pricing work?

Booksy prices per staff member; Lilo Pro prices per location. That one difference drives most of the cost gap for a team.

Booksy's official US pricing page lists $29.99/month plus tax for the base subscription, which includes the first staff member, then $20/month for each additional team member. Worked out, a 5-person shop is $29.99 plus four times $20, about $109.99/month, and a 10-person shop lands near $209.99/month, growing linearly with every chair you add. There is no unlimited-staff cap on the official US page. One secondary source (G2) cited an alternative tiered structure, $10 per added staff up to nine or unlimited staff for $119.99/month, but that does not appear on Booksy's current official page, so treat it as unverified.

Lilo Pro takes the opposite path: $59/month for the first location with unlimited team members, plus $49/month for each additional location, with the core suite included. A 6-chair shop or a 3-location group is exactly where Lilo pulls furthest ahead, because adding the seventh barber or the second site does not add a per-seat line. Credit where it is due: Booksy includes every feature at every team size with no feature paywalls, so the per-staff fee is the whole story, not a base price hiding upsells.

Who handles payroll and barbershop comp models better?

Neither runs full payroll, so the honest comparison is about commission tracking and comp models, not tax filing. Start with what Booksy does not do.

Booksy has no payroll product: no tax filing, no direct deposit, and no W2 or 1099 generation. This is confirmed by a competitor breakdown and by the absence of any payroll product on Booksy's own pages. What Booksy does provide is commission tracking and reporting. It auto-calculates staff commissions across tiered structures, retail versus service splits, and tips, then produces a downloadable Staff Commissions and Tips report, and each stylist gets a personal login to see their own commissions and tips in real time. That is reporting, not running payroll, so an owner still needs a separate provider like Gusto or ADP to actually pay and tax-file employees.

Lilo Pro includes payroll-lite at no extra fee: it supports the W2, commission, and booth-rental comp models, tracks hours, time off, and PTO, and generates pay reports (end of week, month, or year). Be clear on the limit, because we hold ourselves to the same honesty: Lilo also stops short of filing taxes or running direct deposit, so you pair a payroll provider for those. What Lilo adds that Booksy does not is a parent-to-child suite-rental model, where a parent account has read access across many Lilo Booth plans while each renter's clients stay fully siloed. For a barbershop that rents chairs or a suite landlord, that separation of concerns is the difference between oversight and snooping.

What about roles and permissions for a staffed shop?

Both ship real role-based access control, and this is a fair fight. Booksy is genuinely solid here for a booking app. It has five staff permission levels, Owner, Manager, Reception, Staffer, and Basic Staffer, with per-level customization for the lower tiers, and only the Owner and Manager can invite staff and assign permissions.

The detail is sensible for a shop. A Basic Staffer is locked to their own calendar, appointments, and notifications, can create client cards but cannot see other clients' contact info afterward or merge cards, and sees only a Personal Wallet of the payments they personally processed. Reception can access and edit the full client database, with logged, trackable client-data access that the Owner or Manager can restrict. A Manager has near-Owner permissions with a few exceptions. That is real access control, not a single on/off switch.

Lilo ships five roles out of the box, owner, admin, manager, provider, and front-desk, with fine-grained permissions you assign per person rather than only a fixed tier. The role-aware mobile app means a provider's phone view is not an owner's, so staff see what they need and nothing they do not. The practical difference is granularity: Booksy gives you strong tiered presets, Lilo layers per-person controls on top of role presets.

How do they handle multiple locations?

Lilo Pro fits true multi-location chains better, because Booksy is built around a single business account. There is no single-account, manage-all-locations-from-one-dashboard model in Booksy.

For an owner with multiple shops, Booksy documents two options. First, Merge Accounts: create a separate Booksy account per location and switch between them with one login, though they remain separate accounts with separate calendars and client bases. Second, Shared Location (formerly Umbrella Venue): multiple independent providers or businesses listed at one physical address under one marketplace profile, each keeping their own account, clients, and calendar. Neither gives a consolidated cross-location management view or a roll-up report.

Lilo Pro manages locations under one account at $49/month per added location and gives you an overview of aggregated metrics and health across the business, so you can read utilization and revenue trends across sites without switching logins. Crucially, oversight can be delegated through Lilo's roles rather than living in one owner login. If you run a multi-shop group and want a single pane of glass, this is the clearest structural difference between the two.

What about HIPAA and reporting?

Lilo has a HIPAA path and an AI layer; Booksy leads on breadth of reports for a single business. Take them in turn.

On HIPAA, Booksy does not advertise compliance or a BAA on its public pages, and it is not named among HIPAA-compliant med-spa platforms in industry roundups, which cite tools like Zenoti, Mangomint, Vagaro, and Pabau instead. Booksy is built for salons, barbershops, and beauty, not medical, so an owner running a med-spa or any team handling protected health information should not assume coverage and would need to confirm a BAA directly with Booksy. Lilo offers HIPAA-compliant storage, 256-bit encryption, and automatic backups, with a BAA arranged by going through Lilo rather than a self-serve toggle. This is general guidance, not legal advice.

On reporting, Booksy is strong for a single business: 50-plus detailed reports across sales and revenue, transactions, booking and cancellation trends, occupancy, clients, marketing, staff performance, commissions and tips, and stock, available as a real-time dashboard and exportable for tax prep. For teams, the per-staff performance and commission reporting is a real asset. The limit is that Booksy's reporting stays at the single-business and individual-staff level, with no multi-location roll-up. Lilo pairs full structured reporting with Lilo AI, which you query in plain English on every Pro plan: ask which barbers are underbooked next week or where revenue is trending across locations, and it returns the list, chart, or message instantly. Your data stays siloed and is never used to train the AI.

What is included versus an add-on?

Both bundle generously, and this is where Booksy holds up well. Booksy includes all features at every tier with no feature-gated upsells: marketing, memberships, packages, waitlists, and reports come with the base subscription, plus 2,000 free SMS per month. That is a real strength and worth saying plainly.

Where Booksy charges separately is acquisition and payments, not core features. Boost is a pay-for-performance marketplace channel with no monthly fee: you pay 30% of a new client's first-visit total, minimum $10 and maximum $100, then keep 100% of every repeat booking. Payment processing runs from 2.49% plus $0.10 for a card reader up to 2.69% plus $0.30 for keyed entry, with Fast Payouts at a 1.5% fee and hardware sold separately.

Lilo Pro includes the entire core suite at the flat per-location price: bookings, payments with tips, loyalty, memberships, referrals, email marketing with automations, digital intake and consent forms, inventory, no-show protection, reminders, and Lilo AI. SMS is the one up-charge, added through a $10/month dedicated number. Team and multi-location websites are built by Lilo's dedicated partner rather than a DIY builder. The honest framing: both bundle their core features, so the real differences are pricing shape (per-staff versus per-location), Booksy's marketplace discovery, and Lilo's HIPAA path and AI reporting.

Verified June 2026Lilo is listed by its own publisher; verify Booksy figures at biz.booksy.com and in the official help center before you buy.

Feature	Booksy	Lilo Pro
Team & seat pricing	$29.99/mo (first staff member included), then +$20/mo per additional team member; no unlimited cap on the official US page	$59/mo first location, unlimited team members
Booksy scales per staff: a 5-person shop is about $109.99/mo, a 10-person about $209.99/mo. Lilo Pro is one flat fee per location with no per-seat charge, so cost does not rise as you add chairs.
Multi-location	No single-account multi-location dashboard; either merge separate accounts and switch logins, or use a Shared Location listing (separate accounts/calendars)	$49/mo each added location; aggregated metrics + health overview across the business
Booksy is built around a single business account, so there is no consolidated cross-location management or roll-up reporting. Lilo Pro manages locations under one account with an overview.
Payroll & comp models	No payroll (no tax filing, no direct deposit, no W2/1099 generation); does commission tracking + a downloadable commissions/tips report	Payroll-lite included (hours/PTO + pay reports) across W2/commission/booth-rental; parent-child suite-rental. No tax filing/direct deposit
Honest split: neither runs full payroll, so you pair a provider like Gusto or ADP for tax filing and deposits. Booksy gives commission reporting; Lilo bundles the comp models, hours/PTO tracking, pay reports, and siloed suite-rental into Pro.
Roles & permissions	Five levels (Owner, Manager, Reception, Staffer, Basic Staffer) with per-level customization; only Owner/Manager invite staff	Owner, admin, manager, provider, front-desk; fine-grained per-person permissions
Both are genuinely strong. Booksy's role-based access control is real for a booking app; Lilo layers finer-grained per-person permissions on top of role presets.
HIPAA	No HIPAA claim or BAA on public pages; positioned for salons/barbershops, not medical	Available via signed BAA; HIPAA-compliant storage, 256-bit encryption, automatic backups
A med-spa or PHI-handling team should not assume Booksy coverage and would need to confirm a BAA directly. Lilo arranges a signed BAA by going through Lilo.
Reporting + AI	50+ reports (sales, staff performance, commissions/tips, inventory), real-time dashboard + export; no multi-location roll-up	Full business reporting plus Lilo AI reporting you query in plain English
Booksy's per-staff and commission reporting is a real asset; it stays at the single-business level. Lilo pairs structured reports with a natural-language assistant on every Pro plan.
Mobile app	Mobile-first for daily ops; registers, inventory, advanced reporting, and most back-office on web/tablet	Full parity with role-aware access (owner, admin, manager, provider, front-desk); run the team from the iOS/Android app, not a desktop
The suite (included vs add-on)	All features included at every tier (marketing, memberships, packages, waitlists, reports); 2,000 free SMS/mo. Boost is a separate acquisition channel	Loyalty, memberships, referrals, email marketing, intake/consent forms all included; SMS via a $10/mo number

So which should you choose?

Choose Booksy if its consumer marketplace is a meaningful source of new clients, you want a low-risk pay-for-performance acquisition channel in Boost, you value strong tiered staff permissions and per-stylist commission reporting, and you are comfortable with a per-staff bill that rises as you hire. It is a proven platform with real discovery, every feature included at every tier, and genuinely solid role-based access for a booking app. Its honest edge is putting your shop in front of new clients.

Choose Lilo Pro if you want flat pricing that does not climb with every new barber, the comp models (W2, commission, booth rental) with payroll-lite tracking and pay reports built in (plus the parent-child suite-rental model), roles and fine-grained permissions you can delegate, HIPAA available via a signed BAA, a true multi-location overview of aggregated health, and an AI assistant that reads your real numbers. Two honest caveats: Lilo has no consumer marketplace, so it will not surface you to strangers browsing a directory the way Booksy can, and neither platform runs full payroll, so plan to pair a payroll provider for tax filing and deposits. If you do switch, plan the move so you keep your history intact; here is how to switch without losing data, and Lilo offers free migration with no exit fees. You can see what is included on the pricing page. Both are fair tools; the deciding question for an owner is whether discovery or flat-rate, bundled-in scale matters more for the shop you are building.