FareHarbor Fees Explained (and How to Avoid Paying Twice for a Website)

How FareHarbor fees work for dive shops in 2026: the guest booking fee, the commission option, processing, the 2% API fee on OTA bookings, and website costs.

FareHarbor fees work differently from most software bills. Under the standard model a dive shop pays no monthly software fee. Instead, the diver pays a separate booking fee to FareHarbor at checkout, and the shop pays card processing on its side. On top of that, there can be a fee on bookings that come from online travel agencies, plus whatever you pay for a website.

FareHarbor does not publish its rates, so this guide sticks to what its own legal terms say and labels every third-party number as reported. I read FareHarbor's provider, customer, API fee and hosted site terms on October 9, 2026. The last section covers the part that trips up a lot of shops: paying for a website twice.

FareHarbor fees at a glance

Treat every rate marked "reported" as a starting point for your sales call, not as your price.

How the FareHarbor booking fee works

The booking fee is a charge to the diver, not to you. FareHarbor's provider terms (section 2.3) say that when someone books, they pay two separate amounts: the activity price you set, and the booking fee payable to FareHarbor. The customer terms say the amount is shown in the booking flow.

Here is how that looks on an example booking. The 6% rate is the commonly reported figure, used here only to show the math:

Three details are easy to miss:

• It is not only online bookings. The provider terms say the fee may apply to bookings the diver makes online and to bookings you create in the dashboard at the diver's request. FareHarbor calls these online direct and offline direct bookings. If you take a phone booking and run the card through FareHarbor, ask whether the fee applies.
• Partial refunds don't return it. On a full refund, FareHarbor may return the booking fee to the diver. On a partial or prorated refund, the provider terms say FareHarbor keeps the full booking fee. That matters for shops that refund the unused part of a course or a weathered-out second day.
• The guest sees it. Some divers notice an extra line at checkout and ask about it. Decide how your course pages and confirmation emails explain the total before the question comes up.

The commission model: when the shop pays instead

FareHarbor offers an alternative. Section 1.5 and Annex 1 of the provider terms describe a commission model you can request. Under it:

• The diver pays one activity price, and FareHarbor does not charge them a booking fee.
• FareHarbor charges you a commission each month, calculated as a percentage of the activity price paid for activities actually delivered the previous month. The terms say the percentage is communicated to you separately.
• On partial refunds, FareHarbor may return the matching share of the commission, which is friendlier than the standard model's rule on booking fees.

The trade-off is simple. The standard model keeps the cost off your books but shows the diver a higher total. The commission model gives the diver one clean price but comes out of your margin, unless you raise prices to cover it. Ask FareHarbor for both numbers in writing and run them against last season's bookings.

Processing fees: the part you always pay

Card processing is a separate fee charged to you. The provider terms (section 1.4) describe a "Processing Fee" for the payment infrastructure, and section 3 says Stripe or Adyen transfers the activity price to your account after deducting it. FareHarbor's public pages do not list the rate, so ask for your current rate before you sign.

The 2% API fee on OTA bookings

If you sell trips on online travel agencies that connect to FareHarbor, there is another fee. FareHarbor's API fee terms say the operator pays an API fee on bookings received from third-party websites through FareHarbor's API, in markets that have been notified.

What the terms say:

• The fee is calculated from the prices on your OTA price sheet in FareHarbor, so keep that sheet accurate. If your sheet shows a higher price than the OTA, you pay the fee on the higher price.
• It is invoiced within 10 days after each month ends and is not refunded after the invoice goes out, even if you fix your prices later.
• Changes and cancellations need to be made before the end of the month the activity took place.

FareHarbor's terms do not state the percentage. Arival reports it at 2% of the gross booking, introduced for European operators from early 2023 and later rolled out to US operators. That 2% is on top of whatever commission the OTA itself takes.

Other FareHarbor fees to ask about

Section 1.4 of the provider terms lists other services FareHarbor may charge for. Most shops won't use all of them, but it is worth asking which apply to your account:

• Private event bookings
• FH Dock (staff mode) bookings
• FareHarbor Distribution Network bookings from affiliates
• FareHarbor Hosted Sites (website hosting, optimization and support)
• Performance marketing and advertising services

FareHarbor website costs

FareHarbor sells websites as a separate product, FareHarbor Sites. Its Sites page says packages include hosting, maintenance, SEO support and 24-hour price sync with your dashboard, and that sites generally go live within 1 to 2 months.

FareHarbor does not publish Sites prices. Findstack reports Web Lite at $2,000 a year and Web Core at $5,000 a year or $499 a month. Get a quote before you treat those as your price.

The hosted site terms add a few points to read before signing:

• Onboarding fee. There is a non-refundable onboarding fee, credited toward your subscription once the service starts.
• Subscriptions. Monthly plans need 30 days' written notice to cancel. Annual plans renew automatically unless you cancel at least 30 days before the 12 months end.
• Missed payments. If a website payment fails and isn't fixed, FareHarbor may suspend the site and, where the law allows, raise your booking or processing fees on future bookings until the balance is recovered.
• Ownership. Your text, images and domain stay yours. FareHarbor's Sites page says the site itself and its WordPress theme belong to FareHarbor and are not transferred if you leave.

How to avoid paying twice for a website

The booking fee pays for bookings. It does not pay for a website. The double payment usually happens in one of these ways:

1. Two website bills. A shop signs up for FareHarbor Sites but keeps paying its old host or builder because email, a store or an old blog still lives there. FareHarbor doesn't host email, so check what you actually need before cancelling, then cancel everything else.
2. A builder plan with booking features you don't use. If FareHarbor already handles bookings, you don't need a website plan priced around its own booking or payment tools. You need clear course and trip pages with a FareHarbor link on each one.
3. Sending your own customers to an OTA. A diver who already searched for your shop by name but booked through an OTA can cost you the OTA's commission plus FareHarbor's API fee. A site that ranks for your shop name and has a booking button on every course page keeps those bookings direct.

The cheapest setup for most shops already on FareHarbor is a simple site they control, with every course and trip linking to their FareHarbor booking page. That is what we built ScubaDock to do: a mobile-first dive shop site for $99 a month, with no setup fee and no booking commission. Divers still book and pay on FareHarbor, so FareHarbor's own fees still apply. Sites live on yourshop.scubadock.com for now, and custom domains are coming soon. See how ScubaDock works with FareHarbor or the pricing page.

To compare every website option side by side, read how much a dive shop website costs in 2026 or run your own numbers in the dive shop website cost calculator.

Questions to ask FareHarbor before you sign

• What booking fee rate applies to my account, and does it apply to dashboard and phone bookings?
• Can I use the commission model, and what percentage would I pay?
• What is my processing rate?
• Does the API fee apply in my market, and on which channels?
• If I buy FareHarbor Sites, what is the onboarding fee, and what is the term?

Fees checked October 9, 2026 against FareHarbor's provider terms (last modified January 1, 2025), customer terms, API fee terms and hosted site terms (last modified June 1, 2025), plus the third-party sources linked above. This post is reviewed every six months. ScubaDock builds dive shop websites, so weigh our recommendation with that in mind.