TL;DR:
- Retreat Guru is two things: a large wellness-retreat marketplace that brings you travellers for a 14% commission, and separate booking software for retreat centres priced at 0.8–1% of bookings with monthly minimums from $220.
- SquadTrip is a booking page you own: deposits, automatic instalments, Klarna/Affirm/Afterpay, registration forms, waivers and group chat. Free for the host; guests pay one 6% processing fee and you receive your full price.
- Retreat Guru solves reach. SquadTrip solves conversion and control. They are not the same job, and most established hosts use one of each.
- Choose Retreat Guru alone if you have no audience yet; choose SquadTrip alone if you do; use both if you want discovery without paying commission on your own guests.
SquadTrip is the better choice for retreat hosts who have their own audience and need payment plans, BNPL and a booking page they control; Retreat Guru is the better choice for hosts who need to be discovered, or who run a retreat centre with rooms and sessions to manage. They are not interchangeable. Retreat Guru's main product is a marketplace: you list your retreat, travellers who are already browsing find it, and Retreat Guru takes 14% of each booking it produces. SquadTrip is a booking page you own: you bring the guests, and the platform handles the deposit, the payment plan, BNPL, registration and communication for free, with a 6% processing fee paid by the guest at checkout. The right choice depends on one question — where do your guests come from today?
This comparison covers what each does well, where each falls short, the fees in plain numbers, and how hosts combine them.
Two Different Origins
Retreat Guru started as a directory of retreats. Its marketplace is one of the largest in wellness and spiritual travel, searchable by type, location and date, with traveller reviews. It later added booking software aimed at retreat centres — permanent venues with rooms, beds and a session calendar — sold as a monthly subscription alongside the listing.
SquadTrip started as a group travel payment platform. The booking page, deposit and instalment plans, BNPL checkout, registration forms and group chat were built from day one around the needs of organisers who sell trips to their own audience — retreat hosts, coaches, wedding planners, tour leaders. There is no marketplace; SquadTrip's job is to convert the people you send to it and to collect the money without you chasing anyone.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | SquadTrip | Retreat Guru |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free for host; guest pays 6% processing fee (includes Stripe's card fees) | Marketplace: free to list, 14% commission collected as the guest's deposit. Software: 1%, 0.9% or 0.8% of bookings with $220, $440 or $880 monthly minimums (as of 30 Sep 2026) |
| Discovery / marketplace | ✗ You bring your audience | ✓ Large wellness-retreat directory with reviews |
| Booking page | ✓ Branded, your own URL | ✓ Marketplace listing (their branding) |
| Deposit + payment plans | ✓ Automatic instalments with reminders | ✗ Marketplace; ⚠ limited in software |
| BNPL (Klarna / Affirm / Afterpay) | ✓ Guest finances, host paid in full | ✗ |
| Registration forms | ✓ At checkout, custom fields | ⚠ Basic |
| E-signed waivers | ✓ | ✗ |
| Room types / packages / add-ons | ✓ | ⚠ |
| Room and bed inventory | ⚠ Packages, not bed-level | ✓ In centre software |
| Session scheduling | ✗ | ✓ In centre software |
| Guest dashboard | ✓ Balance, documents, itinerary | ✗ |
| Group chat | ✓ | ✗ |
| Control of checkout & guest data | ✓ Full | ✗ On marketplace |
| Traveller reviews | ✗ | ✓ |
| Built for | Hosts who travel to a venue | Centres with a venue; hosts who need discovery |
Choose SquadTrip if you have an audience and need payment plans, BNPL and control of your checkout. Choose Retreat Guru if you need to be found, or you run a centre with rooms and sessions to manage. Choose both if you want marketplace reach and a booking page you own.
Where Retreat Guru Is Stronger
Discovery
Retreat Guru's directory is where a meaningful number of people go to find a retreat, and it is searchable in the ways travellers actually search — yoga, meditation, detox; Bali, Costa Rica, Portugal; this month, next quarter. A new host with a good listing can get bookings from strangers, which SquadTrip cannot do on its own.
Reviews
Traveller reviews on the listing build trust for hosts without a track record of their own. A booking page you own can show testimonials, but not third-party reviews in a format travellers recognise.
Centre operations
If you run a permanent venue, Retreat Guru's software manages the calendar, availability and room inventory that a traveling host never needs. See retreat centre vs traveling host software for that split.
Where SquadTrip Is Stronger
Owning the booking
Your page, your URL, your branding, your guest list. You can email past guests about the next retreat because you have their details; on a marketplace you often do not.
Payment plans that collect themselves
A $2,200 retreat with a $500 deposit and three instalments is four transactions per guest. SquadTrip charges each one automatically to the card on file, sends the reminder first, and shows you who is behind. Retreat Guru's marketplace does not support host-managed payment plans, so a host listing there typically takes full payment or handles instalments by hand.
BNPL
Klarna, Affirm and Afterpay at checkout let a guest spread the cost while you are paid in full — the single feature that most often closes a higher-priced retreat for a guest who wanted to come but could not pay the deposit today. No retreat marketplace offers it.
Group communication and paperwork
Registration form and e-signed waiver collected during checkout; group chat attached to the booking for arrival times and packing lists; a guest dashboard with balance and documents. On Retreat Guru these live in your inbox.
Price
Free for the host. The 6% processing fee is added on top of your price and paid by the guest, and it already includes Stripe's card fees, so a $2,000 seat pays you $2,000. On the marketplace, a $2,000 seat pays you $1,720.
Have an audience of your own? Create your retreat booking page on SquadTrip — deposits, payment plans and BNPL, free to start.
The Fees in Plain Numbers
Sixteen guests at $2,000:
| SquadTrip | Retreat Guru marketplace | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue booked | $32,000 | $32,000 |
| Platform cost to host | $0 | $4,480 (14%) |
| What the host receives | $32,000 | $27,520 |
| What each guest pays | $2,120 (price + 6% fee) | $2,000 |
The honest framing: on SquadTrip the guest pays the fee as a visible line at checkout; on Retreat Guru the host pays it out of the payout. Some SquadTrip hosts fold the 6% into their price instead — the pricing calculator shows the exact amount — and end up in the same place with the fee invisible to the guest. Either way the gap on a full retreat is the difference between a marketing cost you chose to pay for discovery and one you paid on guests who were already yours.
Keep your full price on the guests you already have
Send your list, your students and your marketplace enquiries to a page you own. Deposits and instalments collect themselves.
Start planning freeWhen Retreat Guru Makes Sense
- You are launching your first retreat with no email list, no following and no past guests, and you need strangers to find it.
- You run a retreat centre with rooms, beds and a session calendar, and you want the listing and the software from one vendor.
- Your retreat has flexible dates and you are happy to fill it from marketplace demand, paying 14% on what it brings.
When SquadTrip Makes Sense
- You teach, coach or lead a community and your guests come from your own audience.
- Your retreat costs enough that guests need a deposit, instalments or BNPL to say yes.
- You want waivers, registration details and communication handled at booking, not in your inbox.
- You want to keep the guest list and sell the next retreat to the same people.
Using Both
The setup most experienced hosts arrive at, and the one we recommend when you want reach without paying commission on your own guests:
- Make your SquadTrip booking page the primary place to book. Every email, post and bio link points there.
- Keep a Retreat Guru listing for discovery, written for a stranger.
- Where the marketplace lets travellers contact you before booking, answer them there: Retreat Guru invoices its 14% on marketplace guests even when they book with you directly, so report those bookings.
- Use SquadTrip's affiliate tracking to see which source each booking came from, and decide after two retreats whether the listing earns its fee.
For how the other marketplaces compare, see the best retreat booking platforms compared and retreat booking sites, and the head-to-heads SquadTrip vs BookRetreats and SquadTrip vs Bookinglayer.
Moving From Retreat Guru to Your Own Booking Page
Hosts usually make this move after the second or third retreat, when the marketplace has done its job — there is now an email list of past guests and a following that asks "when is the next one?" — and 14% on every booking from people who already know you starts to look like a marketing cost with no marketing attached. The switch takes an afternoon:
- Export your guest list from wherever it lives — past bookings, your inbox, your spreadsheet — and put it in an email tool. Those people are your first launch audience.
- Create the retreat on SquadTrip. Itinerary, packages and room tiers, add-ons, the deposit amount and instalment dates. Turn on BNPL. Add your waiver and registration questions so they are collected at checkout.
- Announce to your own audience first, with an early-bird price capped at a few seats. Most hosts fill a third to half of the retreat from this alone.
- Keep the Retreat Guru listing and point it, wherever the platform allows, at your booking page. What the marketplace still brings, you pay commission on; what your audience brings, you keep.
- Watch the source of each booking in SquadTrip's dashboard. After one cycle you will know whether the listing still earns its fee.
The guests notice the difference before you do: one link with their package, their balance and the itinerary, reminders that arrive before each instalment instead of a message from you, and a checkout that lets them pay over time. How to host a retreat covers the rest of the sequence if you are setting this up for the first time.
Final Thoughts
Retreat Guru sells reach and charges 14% for it. SquadTrip sells a booking page you own — payment plans, BNPL, forms, waivers and chat — and charges the host nothing. Ask where your next sixteen guests will come from: if the answer is "people who already know me", build the page; if it is "people searching for a retreat", list; if it is both, do both, and make the page the place everyone pays.
Own your retreat bookings. Start free on SquadTrip — booking page, payment plans, Klarna, Affirm and group chat included.
