Bookline vs Heep: Honest Comparison of Two Restaurant AI Agents

We get asked to compare ourselves with Bookline all the time. The comparison fits on one line: the two products don't take enquiries on the same channels.

Bookline covers the inbound phone. Heep covers the written channels, meaning WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and email, and recovers a missed call by WhatsApp, then by SMS. Everything else in this comparison follows from that line: the languages, the booking-system integrations, the access prerequisites. I'll take them one at a time, including where Bookline is ahead.

• 40% of restaurant calls go unanswered on average (Industry data 2024)
• 62% of guest enquiries arrive outside opening hours (observed across the Heep base)
• 98% WhatsApp open rate (vs 20% email) (Meta Business Index 2025)

Bookline and Heep: two takes on the same problem

Both tools answer the same core pain: stop losing bookings because nobody replied. The difference is the primary channel, and it is structural.

Bookline. Launched in Barcelona in 2019, positioned on voice from day one. The agent takes the call in 10 languages and handles booking creation, modifications and cancellations. When the call doesn't land, Bookline sends a WhatsApp message with a pre-filled link to the booking system: 24/7 voice coverage, with WhatsApp as overflow.

Heep. Launched in France, positioned multichannel-first. The agent replies to inbound messages on WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and email, in the guest's own language, and writes the booking straight into the reservation system (Zenchef or SevenRooms via official integrations). Heep's scope is the written channel: a missed call comes back as a message, WhatsApp first, SMS after, so the enquiry still ends in a booking.

Honest feature-by-feature comparison

When Bookline is the right call

Three situations where Bookline is ahead, and I'll say so plainly.

1. Your phone is saturated. If you take 30+ calls a day, the team is interrupted mid-service and 30 to 40% of calls go unanswered, that's their reference scenario. Voice has been their core craft since 2019, and the product is mature on tonal nuance: intonation, fluidity, handoff to a human when in doubt.

2. You also run a hotel or campsite. Bookline covers hospitality broadly, not just restaurants, which matters if your estate mixes the two.

3. Your guests call you in several European languages. EN, ES, PT, NL, IT, DE, FR and a few more: enough for most European inbound tourism, provided the channel stays voice.

When Heep is the right call

1. Your guests message you mostly on WhatsApp and Instagram. If your Instagram gets 50 booking DMs a week, that's volume voice never captures, because it never reaches the phone line. Heep is built for that inbound, asynchronous, multi-turn conversation.

2. You have a strongly international clientele. The gap in language coverage only matters if your guests write in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic or Russian. Otherwise it is theoretical.

3. You use SevenRooms or Zenchef and want an official integration. Heep is listed on both vendors' partner pages, with real-time booking creation, synced modifications and source tagging for attribution. On SevenRooms, check first that your contract opens API access in your region: without it there is no direct write, and the widget alone is not enough.

4. You want clear public pricing. €99/month excl. VAT per 1,000-message pack, no commitment. Bookline is quote-based, which suits enterprise groups but slows down an independent who wants to test fast.

See a 20-minute Heep demo

The hybrid scenario: should you take both?

For some very high-volume restaurants, Michelin-starred Parisian groups or 200-cover city-centre brasseries, the honest answer is yes. Bookline absorbs the phone, Heep absorbs WhatsApp, Instagram and email, and both push into the same book without collision, provided each account writes with a distinct booking source.

That setup costs more. It holds up when the missed revenue on a single channel already reaches £900 to £2,800 per month per venue.

For a single venue, 80 to 150 covers per service, moderate phone volume, one tool is enough. The question becomes: where do you lose the most enquiries today?

How to decide in 3 questions

Question 1: how many calls do you miss per day?

Past 10 a day, if that's your main pain, Bookline is the right option.

Question 2: how many WhatsApp or Instagram messages stay unanswered after 24 hours?

Past 10, and if that volume keeps growing, Heep is the right option.

Question 3: is your clientele local, or international?

More than 30% of guests who write in neither English nor French: that's where replying in their own language earns its keep.

Verdict

Bookline and Heep aren't head-to-head competitors. They're two products covering two distinct zones of the same problem: one takes the call, the other takes the written enquiry and brings the missed call back as a message.

If your top pain is a phone ringing into silence during service, choose Bookline. If it's a WhatsApp or Instagram inbox piling up, and your guests are often international, choose Heep.

Before you sign, whichever tool you pick, check two things with your booking-system vendor. That your contract opens API access in your region, without which no agent will write into the book. And that your software's own call feature, Zen Call on Zenchef for instance, is switched off if another tool already handles the same enquiry: two systems writing on the same slot produce duplicates, and you're the one who finds them during service.