Massage establishments are a separate category on this site, with their own listings and their own board section, and that separation is deliberate. They operate differently enough from escort listings that treating them as the same thing is how people end up somewhere they did not intend to be.
Most municipalities in the GTA license massage establishments, and the licence is a real regulatory instrument: it covers premises, hours, signage and staff registration, and it is inspected. A licensed establishment is a business with an address and a filing cabinet, not an individual with a phone.
This is the practical difference behind everything else. The business, not the person, sets the rules.
Most establishments take walk-ins, which is the largest single difference from an escort listing. Some take appointments as well, and appointments are worth making at the busier ones, but the baseline assumption is that you can arrive.
There is no screening in the sense the escort side uses the word. That is not laxity — a staffed business with a reception, cameras and other people on the premises is a fundamentally different risk picture from somebody meeting a stranger alone.
Every establishment has them and they vary. Common ones: no phones past reception, shower first, cash only, no negotiating at the desk, and firm session lengths. They are posted or explained on arrival, and they are not negotiable — asking is the fastest way to be shown out.
Tipping norms differ from the escort side and differ between houses. The board's massage section is the useful place for that, because the answer is genuinely local.
Concentrated heavily in North York — Yonge north of Sheppard, Willowdale, and the industrial blocks around Keele and Steeles — with a substantial second cluster in Richmond in the Vancouver market. The Toronto and Vancouver pages both filter to massage separately from escort listings.