By DK, Riverd Founder. Last updated: 2026-10-02. The honest answer to "what does massage therapy software cost in 2026" is somewhere between $0 and $149 a month in published subscription prices, before card processing, depending on what you book, what you charge, and which add-ons get tacked on at checkout. Most published pricing pages quote you the floor. The bill you actually pay each month includes payment processing, SMS, and seat fees that rarely show up next to the headline number.
This post is for solo Licensed Massage Therapists (LMTs) who are tired of "request a demo" pricing and want a real number per tool. Below: what a full software stack actually includes, the 2026 published prices for six tools (Riverd, MindBody, MassageBook, Acuity Scheduling, Square Appointments, Vagaro), the all-in monthly math at three session volumes, and the costs nobody puts on the comparison page.
What "massage therapy software" actually includes
A working stack for a solo LMT has six parts: scheduling, client records, SOAP notes, payments, SMS reminders, and email confirmations. Miss any one of them and you patch the gap with manual work, which is its own line item.
You can build the stack from generalist tools. A common cobbled setup runs roughly: Calendly Standard at $12/month for scheduling ($10 billed yearly), Square at 2.6% + 15¢ per in-person card payment, Notion Free or Plus at $0 to $10/month for client notes, and Twilio at about $0.0083 per SMS plus carrier fees. At 80 sessions a month with two SMS reminders each, that is around $1.33 in SMS plus the base subscriptions, so roughly $13 to $24/month plus payment fees. The catch: nothing is connected. Every booking is a fresh data-entry job, and SOAP notes live in a tool that was not designed for clinical documentation.
A built-for-massage tool collapses the stack into one bill. Riverd's free Brook plan covers scheduling, client records, payment tracking, email confirmations, and a public booking page for up to 20 appointments a month. Google Calendar sync (your Google events block those times in Riverd, and Riverd bookings copy to Google) and the Patient Book, with drawable body-map pages, are on Brook too, with up to 3 saved books. The paid River plan at $39/month, billed annually, lifts the cap to 50 sessions and adds text reminders to US and Canadian mobile numbers, more AI credits, and unlimited saved Patient Books. MassageBook starts at $20/month for its Transition plan ($15 for AMTA members) and goes up from there. MindBody publishes no price for any of its plans, so every number starts with a sales call. The honest read: at low volume, generalist tools are cheaper if you do not value your time. At any volume that resembles a real practice, a purpose-built tool wins on total cost once you price the manual work.
Real 2026 prices for the top 6 tools
Below are the published prices as of September 2026, pulled directly from each vendor's pricing page on 2026-09-22. We linked the source on every row so you can verify before you buy, since these change.
| Tool | Free tier | Starting paid tier | Top published tier | SMS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Riverd | Yes, Brook plan up to 20 appointments/month | $39/mo billed annually, or $59/mo month-to-month (River, 50 sessions/mo) | $49/mo billed annually, or $79/mo month-to-month (Fjord, unlimited) | Included on River and Fjord, to US and Canadian mobile numbers |
| MindBody | No | Quote only (Starter) | Quote only (Accelerate, Ultimate) | Reminder texts from Accelerate |
| MassageBook | No (30-day trial) | $20/mo (Transition; $15 for AMTA members) | $99/mo (Clinic) | Text reminders from Practice ($59/mo) |
| Acuity Scheduling | No (7-day trial) | $16/mo billed annually, or $20/mo monthly (Starter) | $49/mo billed annually, or $61/mo monthly (Premium) | Text reminders from Standard ($27/mo annually, $34/mo monthly) |
| Square Appointments | Yes, Free plan for solo professionals | $49/mo per location (Plus) | $149/mo per location (Premium) | Reminders included on Free |
| Vagaro | No (30-day trial) | $30/mo for one person ($23.99/mo for the first 6 months) | Priced by add-on; each extra calendar is $10/mo, up to 7 | Unlimited reminders included |
A few notes on what the table does not show. MindBody's pricing page lists Starter, Accelerate, and Ultimate with a "Let's talk" button on each and no dollar figure. Its FAQ says every plan includes unlimited users per location and the price rises with each location you add. Acuity is priced by the number of calendars (1 on Starter, 6 on Standard, 36 on Premium), so a solo practitioner stays on the cheap tier and a clinic with several therapists does not. MassageBook's pricing page opens on the AMTA member tab, which is why you may see $15, $44.25, and $74.25 there; the standard prices are $20, $59, and $99. Transition includes basic SOAP notes and basic marketing tools, while intake forms, premium SOAP notes, and text and email reminders start on Practice at $59. Schedulicity is no longer sold on its own: schedulicity.com now forwards to Vagaro with the line "Schedulicity is now Vagaro," so the Vagaro row covers it. Where a vendor only quotes "contact sales," we marked it as such.
The honest read on this row: nobody is being deceptive. Their starting price simply does not include the things that show up on your bill, and that gap is where shopping gets confusing.
The math: what you actually pay at 5, 15, and 30 sessions a week
The headline number tells you almost nothing. What matters is the all-in monthly cost at the volume you actually run. We modeled three solo-LMT scenarios at $100 per 60-minute session, with payments processed in person on a card reader. Numbers below are software plus payment processing, rounded to the nearest dollar. Riverd's figures are the subscription only: if you take cards through Riverd, you connect your own Square account and pay Square's processing rate, and Riverd's own fee of $1 per card charge on Brook (50¢ on River, 25¢ on Fjord) comes out of that payment. Volume add-ons (text reminders on a higher plan, extra staff) are flagged where they kick in.
5 sessions a week (about 22/month, ~$2,200/mo revenue). Most tools are at or near zero on the software line at this volume, because you fit inside a free tier. Riverd Brook is $0 up to 20 sessions a month; if your month tips above 20, you upgrade to River at $39/mo billed annually (which raises the cap to 50). Square Appointments is $0 software plus 2.6% + 15¢ on each in-person charge, about $61/mo in processing. MassageBook has no free plan: after the 30-day trial, Transition is $20/mo. MindBody, Acuity, and Vagaro have no free tier either, so they start at their floor prices, and for MindBody that floor is only available on a sales call.
15 sessions a week (about 65/month, ~$6,500/mo revenue). This volume sits above Riverd's River cap of 50 sessions, so the right tier is Fjord at $49/mo billed annually for unlimited. MassageBook Transition is $20/mo plus 2.6% + 15¢ in processing, about $199/mo all-in, or about $238/mo on Practice if you want text reminders. Acuity Starter is $20/mo ($16 billed annually) plus your processor's fees, and text reminders start on Standard at $34/mo ($27 billed annually). MindBody publishes no price, and its reminder texts start on the Accelerate plan. This is the volume where cobbled stacks start to break down, because a missed reminder or a misplaced clinical note costs more than the software itself.
30 sessions a week (about 130/month, ~$13,000/mo revenue). Riverd is $49/mo billed annually on the unlimited Fjord plan. MassageBook Practice is $59/mo, and Clinic at $99/mo adds unlimited staff seats and room assignment. Acuity Standard is $27/mo billed annually, $34/mo month-to-month (Premium is $49/mo billed annually or $61/mo monthly, and adds up to 36 calendars and a signed HIPAA business associate agreement). MindBody prices rise with each location, and every plan is quote-only. Square Appointments on the Free plan runs about $358/mo in processing alone at 2.6% + 15¢; Plus at $49/mo per location lowers the in-person rate to 2.5% + 15¢, about $394/mo all-in. At this volume, every tool is small money compared to the cost of one re-entered clinical note or a no-show that slipped through reminders.
Riverd does not always win on every row. MassageBook is cheaper than Riverd at the lowest paid tier. Acuity is cheaper if you only need scheduling and already process payments through your own Square or Stripe account. Where Riverd pulls ahead is the solo case at the free Brook plan (up to 20 sessions a month, with Google Calendar sync and up to 3 saved Patient Books included) and the River plan ($39/mo billed annually, up to 50 sessions) when you also want text reminders to US and Canadian mobile numbers and more AI credits in the same bill. For more on how the comparison shakes out, see Riverd vs Acuity Scheduling and Riverd vs MassageBook.
Riverd's free Brook plan covers up to 20 appointments a month, including Google Calendar sync and up to 3 saved Patient Books. The paid River plan at $39/mo, billed annually, adds text reminders to US and Canadian mobile numbers, more AI credits, and unlimited saved books. See Riverd pricing.
The hidden costs nobody puts on the comparison page
Five line items rarely show up next to the monthly price, and any one of them can flip the math.
Setup time. Migrating a year of client records, SOAP notes, and recurring appointments takes an afternoon at minimum and a long weekend at worst. A reasonable planning figure is 4 to 8 hours for a switch. If you value an hour of your time at what you charge for a session, $50 to $100, that is $200 to $800 of your time before you take a single new booking.
Switching cost when you outgrow it. You will outgrow at least one tool. Before you sign up, ask whether the tool lets you export client records and SOAP notes, and in what format another platform can read (CSV for client lists, PDF for notes). The cheapest tool with no export is the most expensive tool in year three.
Text reminders on a higher plan. On several tools the entry price does not include text reminders at all. MassageBook's text reminders start on Practice ($59/mo), Acuity's on Standard ($27/mo billed annually), and MindBody's on Accelerate. Vagaro includes unlimited appointment reminders on every plan, and Square Appointments includes reminders on its Free plan. Check which plan carries reminders before you compare starting prices.
Payment processor markup. "Processing fees" is a single line on the comparison page, but the real number is the rate plus per-transaction flat fee plus chargeback fees plus payout-speed surcharges. Square publishes its schedule (2.6% + 15¢ in person and 3.3% + 30¢ online on its Free plan), and MassageBook publishes 2.6% + 15¢. MindBody's pricing page lists no card rates, so ask it for the full schedule. Vagaro's US rates article lists 2.6% + 10¢ per in-person payment for businesses processing under $4,000 a month, and 2.29% + 19¢ plus $10 a month above that, with keyed-in and online payments at 3.5% + 19¢. MindBody's client app also takes 20% (capped at $30) of a new client's first purchase when the app delivered that client. To pressure-test a quote, run the per-session number through our free booking fee calculator.
Support that depends on your plan. Square includes phone support on its Free plan only for your first 90 days (weekdays, 6am to 6pm Pacific), while Premium has it around the clock. MassageBook lists real-time in-app chat support from Practice up. If you are a solo practitioner who needs help on a Sunday because your booking page broke, this matters more than the software line.
The biggest hidden cost, and the one we did not put in any table, is your time. If a tool saves you five hours a month, that is $250 to $500 at $50 to $100 an hour, which dwarfs every monthly subscription on the list. The better question is which tool gives you back the most hours to spend at the table.
For more on the cost side of running a solo practice, see the practice growth hub and the Riverd feature set for what a built-for-massage stack actually covers.
Key Takeaways
- Real 2026 published subscription prices run from $0 (Riverd Brook, Square Appointments Free) to $149/mo (Square Premium) before payment processing; MindBody publishes no prices at all.
- "Starting at $X" pricing usually does not include payment processing, text reminders, or add-ons. Always model the all-in number at your actual volume.
- Up to 20 appointments a month (about 5 a week), Riverd's free Brook plan costs $0; from 21 to 50 a month, River is $39/month billed annually with text reminders to US and Canadian mobile numbers and more AI credits; above 50, Fjord is $49/month billed annually.
- The biggest hidden cost is the time you spend wrestling with the wrong tool. Five hours a month of saved admin is worth more than any subscription.
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