Free NYC Restaurant Reservation Alerts

How do restaurant reservation alerts work?

A reservation alert works by continuously checking a restaurant's booking platform (Resy, OpenTable, SevenRooms or Tock) for tables that match your date, time window and party size. DinnerElite runs these checks around the clock across 224 tracked NYC restaurants, catching two kinds of openings: newly released tables when a restaurant's booking window opens, and cancellations, which reappear unpredictably throughout the day. When a match is found, you get an instant email notification with a direct link to book, so you can claim the table before it's gone. Sought-after cancellations are often re-booked within minutes. You set your preferences once (restaurant, days of the week, time slots, party size, and whether short-notice tables count) and the tool does the refreshing for you. There is nothing to install: you create a free account, pick a restaurant, and the monitoring starts immediately.

Which restaurants can you track?

DinnerElite tracks 224 NYC restaurants: the ones where a table is genuinely hard to get. That includes the city's marquee reservations: Carbone, 4 Charles Prime Rib, Don Angie, Tatiana by Kwame Onwuachi, and Lilia are all tracked, alongside spots like Torrisi, Via Carota, L'Artusi and The Polo Bar. Coverage spans both Resy and OpenTable restaurants (plus SevenRooms and Tock where relevant), across Manhattan and Brooklyn neighborhoods from Greenwich Village and the West Village to Williamsburg and the East Village. Every tracked restaurant has its own page with availability monitoring and, for many, drop-time data showing how far in advance tables typically get claimed. Browse the sample below or search the full catalog after signing up. If a hard-to-book NYC restaurant is missing, you can request it and it's usually added within days.

How is this different from Resy Notify or OpenTable alerts?

Resy Notify and OpenTable's availability alerts do exist, and they're worth turning on, but each only watches its own platform, notifies many people at once for the same table, and the pushes are easy to miss in a busy notification tray. DinnerElite is different in three ways. First, it's cross-platform: one watchlist covers Resy, OpenTable, SevenRooms and Tock restaurants, so you don't need to remember which app a restaurant uses. Second, it layers on drop-time data: for each tracked restaurant, DinnerElite shows how far ahead tables typically get claimed, so you know when to book proactively instead of only reacting to cancellations. Third, alerts arrive by email with your exact date, time and party-size preferences applied, so every notification is actionable rather than noise. It's a complement to the native tools, not a replacement. Starting is free.

Comparing paid monitoring services instead? Read DinnerElite vs TablePass.

Is it really free?

Yes, the Free plan lets you watch 1 restaurant with full alert functionality: real-time monitoring across Resy and OpenTable, date/time/party-size preferences, and instant email notifications. No credit card is required to sign up, and the free watch never expires. If you want to track more than one restaurant at a time, Premium is $10/month (or $100/year) and adds unlimited watches plus priority monitoring. Most people start free with the one restaurant they most want (say, Carbone or 4 Charles Prime Rib) and upgrade only if they find themselves hunting several tables at once. There are no per-notification fees on any plan: you're never charged for the alerts themselves, only for how many restaurants you can watch simultaneously.