In this guide
First Table lists 918 London restaurants and charges £6 to book one for two people. EatClub lists 1,069 and charges nothing to book — because you cannot book at all. Both are selling the same thing: the tables a restaurant cannot fill at 5pm on a Tuesday, at a discount that exists purely because an empty table earns nothing.
These apps suit one kind of diner: someone flexible about when they eat and relaxed about where. If you want a specific restaurant at 8pm on Saturday, none of this will help you.
Everything below was read off each app’s own site, listings and terms and conditions on 3 September 2026, with availability checked for Tuesday 15 and Friday 11 September.
💡 The Short Version: First Table is the biggest single discount — 50% off food for a £6 booking fee, at 918 London restaurants. The famous names go at 5pm; the newer ones still have 8pm and 9pm tables. EatClub is free, needs no booking, and takes 25–40% off the whole bill including drinks at 1,069 London venues — but it is walk-in only and cannot hold you a table. TheFork costs nothing and its loyalty scheme needs ten bookings to earn £20. Too Good To Go is not a dining app at all. And the line every one of them buries: the service charge is worked out on the bill before your discount.
⚠️ Nothing here stacks with anything else. Every app on this page forbids combining its offer with another discount, with a Tastecard, or with a restaurant’s own set menu — and EatClub says it detects and automatically removes them. Pick one per meal.
Restaurants give these tables away for the same unglamorous reason they run set lunch menus: a room that is half empty at 5.30pm costs the same to staff as a full one. The discount is real, and so is the condition attached — the earliest sittings, the last sittings, and midweek.
The comparison
| App | Cost | Discount | Slots | London reach | Main catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First Table | £6 to book for 2 | 50% off food only | 4pm to 10pm, 5pm commonest | 918 restaurants | Fee never refunded |
| EatClub | Free + 1–6% fee | 25–40% off total bill | Live, 7 days | 1,069 venues | No booking; you may wait |
| TheFork | Free | Up to 50% off food | Varies by day | 2,152 restaurants | 10 bookings earn £20 |
| Too Good To Go | Bag price only | ½ price or less | 1 collection window | 11 UK chains named | You collect; you don’t dine |
| OpenTable | Free | 0% off any bill | Any bookable time | 100–1,000 pts a booking | Points, not money off |
| Deliveroo Reservations | Free | £10 credit | Any bookable time | 14 venues listed | Credit is for delivery |
First Table
£3 or £4 per person to book. 50% off the food bill. 918 London restaurants.
You pay a booking fee, the restaurant halves your food bill, and drinks stay at full price. Availability appears 14 days ahead, released at midday, and the good tables go quickly. There is no minimum spend, you can book one to six people, and you can return to the same restaurant — just not twice in a row.
The London reality. Of 881 restaurant pages in First Table’s sitemap, 252 are in central London — 29%, concentrated in Covent Garden (49), Soho (43), Fitzrovia (27), London Bridge (26) and Shoreditch (24). The list is overwhelmingly independent and genuinely good: Manzi’s, Brindisa Tapas, INKO NITO, Chotto Matte, Kapara, Maresco and Aqua Kyoto in Soho alone, plus Bala Baya in Southwark, Josette in Clerkenwell, RE:1996 in Islington and Masala Zone at Piccadilly Circus.
We read the full fourteen-day grid for all ten Soho restaurants. Eight of the ten had tables on Tuesday, eight on Friday — and only four on the Saturday. It is Saturday, not Friday, that closes the door.
The 5pm sitting is what is left at the popular restaurants, not what the app offers. Across 448 slots on the Soho page, 5pm is the commonest at 16%, but 31% are at 8pm or later and the range runs 4pm to 10pm. Eight of the ten restaurants had tables at 7pm or later, and the ones with the most were the newer and less-booked names — Wild Heart, Polpo, Brother Marcus, Fadiga — while the hardest rooms to get into, Chotto Matte and Heliot Steak House, had nothing after six. If you are flexible about where rather than when, a normal Saturday dinner time is gettable.
The catches. The booking fee is never refunded — not for a cancellation, not for reducing your party. Bring more people than you booked and the offer is void and the fee forfeited. Arrive more than 15 minutes late and the restaurant need not honour it. Restaurants attach their own conditions, and they are enforced: Bala Baya’s, in First Table’s own data, is a minimum purchase of one beverage per diner.
Diners rate it very differently depending where you look: 4.9 out of 5 from 8,000 App Store ratings, against 3.0 out of 5 from 60 on Trustpilot, where 38% are one-star. The complaints are consistent — a reviewer on 13 July 2026 found the service charge worked out on the full pre-discount amount; another on 26 June 2026 was required to buy full-price drinks that cancelled the saving.
Verdict: the best discount here, if your food bill is big enough to make £6 trivial and you are willing to take the restaurant the app has, rather than the one you had in mind.
EatClub
Free app. 25–40% off the total bill, drinks included. 1,069 London venues.
Structurally the opposite of First Table. There is no booking — offers are walk-in only, and the app is explicit that “if the venue is busy, you may have to wait for a free table”. You set up an EatClub card in Apple or Google Wallet, walk in, order normally, and tap to pay; the discount comes off automatically and, in the company’s words, the venue “won’t even know that you are using an EatClub offer”. A reviewer on 14 May put it plainly: “you just walk in, order normally, and pay with the card”.
The London reality. 1,069 London venues out of 1,549 across the UK, and offers are live rather than scheduled, so what you see is what is quiet now. Real examples on 3 September: Chotto Matte Soho at 40%, Kanada-Ya Piccadilly at 35%, Maresco at 35%, Coqfighter at 35%, Kolamba Soho at 30%, Spagnoletti at 30%, Skylon at 25% and Quaglino’s at 25%.
It is not quite free. EatClub charges a service fee of 1% to 6% of the amount put through the card, minimum 20p, and its optional paid tier, EatClub Premium, “does not reduce or waive Service Fees”. Cancel after your stated arrival time and a £6 fee may apply. The discount excludes tips and service charges. One wrinkle from a reviewer on 16 August: the card shows the full amount at the till, with the deduction landing on your bank statement afterwards.
EatClub has no Trustpilot reviews at all — the profile exists and is empty. Its App Store rating is 4.3 out of 5 from 255. It is a new UK arrival, co-founded by Marco Pierre White, with no long track record here yet.
Verdict: the better deal on a drinks-heavy evening, and the worse one if you need certainty. 30% of everything often beats 50% of the food.
TheFork
Free to book. Up to 50% off food. 2,152 London restaurants. Owned by Tripadvisor.
Two things get muddled here. The first is genuine: percentage offers of 20%, 30% or 50% off food at selected times, currently badged “TheFork Summer” — seasonal, so check it still exists. The discount varies by day at the same restaurant: Agrodolce in Fitzrovia showed −50% on the Thursday and −20% on the Friday. Discounted in London on 3 September: Diwan in Marylebone, Cafe Pacifico in Covent Garden, Bengal Village on Brick Lane, PJ’s Chelsea Brasserie and Bob Bob Ricard City.
The second is the Yums loyalty scheme, where the arithmetic is worth doing. You earn 100 Yums per booking and need 1,000 for £20 off or 2,000 for £50, on minimum bills of £30 and £60. So £20 off costs you ten bookings — about £2 a meal. Yums last a year, land three days after you eat, and cannot be combined with any other promotional offer.
Verdict: take the percentage offers, ignore the points. Ten meals for £20 is a rounding error.
Too Good To Go
Not a restaurant app, whatever the listicles tell you.
You buy a Surprise Bag of surplus food at “½ price or less” and collect it from the shop in a fixed window. You cannot choose what is in it — the company states it has “no insights into the contents” — and the value shown is a minimum estimate of what the food would have cost unsold. Its named UK partners are bakeries, chains and supermarkets: Greggs, Pret, GAIL’S, Starbucks, Aldi, Morrisons, Krispy Kreme.
The terms are fair: cancel in-app any time before the end of the collection window, but miss it entirely and you are still charged.
Verdict: excellent for a cheap lunch or a bag of pastries, useless for dinner out.
OpenTable
Free, and it does not discount anything.
There are no percentage offers on OpenTable’s UK site — it sells access and points. OpenTable Regulars is free to join and pays 100 to 1,000 points a booking, redeemable at 1,000 for experience credit and 2,000 for an Amazon gift card. Points last three years provided you book once every twelve months.
The one genuinely valuable perk is structural: six completed bookings unlocks Gold status, including six months of Uber One free (provided by Uber, excluding existing members).
Verdict: a booking platform with a loyalty scheme attached, not a discount app.
NeoTaste
There is no pay-per-use option. NeoTaste’s terms are unambiguous: “Only Members with an in-force Subscription Agreement have access to the Deals”. At £6.99 a month or £71.88 a year it belongs to our restaurant discount cards guide rather than here.
One free part is worth a line: the Loyalty scheme is not a paid service. Any member can collect digital stamps by checking in at participating restaurants, one check-in per twelve hours, without paying a penny.
The rest, briefly
Deliveroo Reservations launched in London in 2026 and is the only genuinely new thing here. Book a table through the app, turn up, and claim £10 Deliveroo credit — no booking fee. The London list is strong: SUSHISAMBA, Duck & Waffle, Osteria Locatelli at the National Gallery, 50 Kalò, Beast, Parrillan at Coal Drops Yard. The catch: the £10 is delivery credit, not money off your meal.
Groupon carries 400+ London food and drink deals, and the list tells you who it is for — All Bar One at £36.95 against a £62.40 “was” price, Harvester at £35, Toby Carvery at £24.99, BrewDog at £23.95. You prepay a voucher, the saving is measured against the merchant’s own claimed price, and days are restricted. It works for a chain dinner; it will not get you into Manzi’s. Wowcher has no working London restaurant category at all — both URLs return 404.
Karma no longer competes here, having pivoted to selling restaurant point-of-sale software. Olio shares free food between neighbours rather than discounting restaurants. Resy takes bookings without public discounts, and SevenRooms is the plumbing behind Deliveroo Reservations rather than a consumer app.
What you actually save
Two people. £80 of food, £30 of drinks, 12.5% service charge. Same restaurant, three routes.
| Route | You pay | Saving |
|---|---|---|
| Full price | £123.75 | £0 |
| First Table, 50% off food | £89.75 | £34.00 |
| EatClub, 30% off the total | £91.66–£96.20 | £27.55–£32.09 |
Full price: £110 of food and drink, plus £13.75 service, is £123.75.
First Table: the food halves to £40, the drinks stay at £30, and the service charge is still calculated on the full £110 — £13.75. Add the £6 booking fee and you pay £89.75.
Notice what happened. Half of £80 is £40, but you only keep £34 of it. The fee takes £6, and the service charge clause takes £5 more — 12.5% of the £40 you never spent.
EatClub at 30%: £33 comes off the whole £110. Service is again charged on the pre-discount £110. Add EatClub’s 1–6% fee on the £90.75 going through the card and you pay between £91.66 and £96.20.
The lesson: First Table wins on a food-heavy bill, EatClub closes the gap the more you drink. At £80 of food and £60 of drinks, 30% of everything would beat 50% of the food outright.
Nothing stacks
We read every set of terms on this page, and they say the same thing. First Table: bookings “cannot be combined with any other offers, in-house specials, drink specials, discounts or promotion”. EatClub goes further, running automated checks for “instances where an Offer was stacked with competing platform deals”.
So no app combines with another app, none combines with a Tastecard or Gourmet Society membership, and none reliably comes off a restaurant’s own fixed-price lunch or pre-theatre menu. These are alternatives, not layers.
Worth knowing too: the same table is often sold through several apps at once. Chotto Matte Soho and Maresco both appear on First Table and EatClub; Kanada-Ya Piccadilly is on EatClub, NeoTaste and Deliveroo Reservations. Compare before you book — you cannot combine them, but you can pick the better one.
The catches worth knowing
- Service charge is calculated before the discount on both First Table and EatClub — about £5 you did not expect on a £110 bill.
- Minimum drink purchases are real. Bala Baya requires one beverage per diner, and compulsory full-price drinks can swallow a modest saving.
- Turning up with an extra person voids First Table’s offer and forfeits the fee. Amend the booking instead.
- First Table availability opens at midday, fourteen days out, and the best tables go the same afternoon.
- Show the booking before you order, not when the bill arrives. Every one of these schemes puts that burden on you.
- Saturday is the hard day, not Friday — only four of ten Soho restaurants had First Table slots on Saturday 12 September.
Continue planning your London trip
Paying less to eat out in London. A few different strategies, and they rarely combine — pick the one that fits how you eat:
- 🍽️ Set Lunch and Pre-Theatre Menus — the restaurant’s own fixed price, no membership, biggest single saving
- 💳 Restaurant Discount Cards — Tastecard and the rest, and why one costs £29.99 and its twin £79.99
- 🥂 Bottomless Brunch — 38 packages compared on price per minute, and what “bottomless” covers
- 👨👩👧 Kids Eat Free — every free and £1 children’s offer with a London branch
- 💷 Cheap Eats in London — good food under £15 with no offer, code or membership at all
- 🌙 Late Night Eating in London — for the Last Table crowd
- 🧭 London on a Budget
All fees, discounts, exclusions and venue counts were read off each app’s own website and terms and conditions on 3 September 2026, with availability checked for Tuesday 15 and Friday 11 September. Offers on these platforms change daily — confirm in the app before you travel.
Common questions
Is First Table worth the booking fee?
On a decent-sized food bill, comfortably. The fee is £6 for two people at most London restaurants, £3 or £4 per person, and it buys 50% off the food. On an £80 food bill you save £40 and pay £6, so you are £34 up. On a £30 food bill you save £15 and pay £6, which is a much thinner deal. The fee is charged per booking, not per person, and it is never refunded.
Does the 50% off include drinks?
Not on First Table. Its FAQ is blunt about it: the deal is "strictly 50% off food only, drinks are always full price". EatClub is the exception — its offers come off the total bill including drinks, which is why its headline percentages are lower. And watch for per-restaurant conditions: Bala Baya in Southwark requires a minimum purchase of one beverage per diner, so the drinks you buy at full price are effectively compulsory.
Do I have to leave early?
You have to arrive early rather than leave early. First Table sittings in London run from 4pm to 10pm. 5pm is the commonest single time and it is usually all that is left at the well-known restaurants, but roughly a third of all slots are 8pm or later, mostly at newer places. There is no stated time limit in First Table's terms, but the whole point of the first table is that the restaurant turns it. If you want a long evening, book the Last Table slots instead — those run to 10pm at some venues.
Can I use these apps for a group?
Up to a point. First Table takes one to six diners, with each venue setting its own range within that, and the fee rises with the party — £6 for two at Bala Baya, £9 for six. Booking two First Tables and pushing them together is expressly prohibited, and if more people turn up than you booked, the offer is void and the fee is forfeited. EatClub voids the offer if you exceed the guest maximum shown on it.
What happens if I cancel?
First Table refunds nothing. Its terms allow no refunds except where the restaurant cannot accommodate you, and bookings cannot be moved to another date, venue or time — so a cancellation costs you the booking fee. EatClub is gentler: free cancellation before your arrival time, after which a £6 fee may apply. Too Good To Go lets you cancel in the app any time before the end of the collection window.
Is the service charge worked out on the full price?
Yes, and this is the catch nobody advertises. First Table's terms say plainly that "any applicable service charges will be calculated on the whole bill and are not subject to the offer". EatClub's terms say its discount "excludes tips, service charges". So on an £80 food bill halved to £40, a 12.5% service charge is still levied on the £80 — costing you £5 more than you might expect.
