This paper studies the critical and near-critical regimes of the planar random-cluster model on $\mathbb Z^2$ with cluster-weight $q\in [1,4]$ using novel coupling techniques. More precisely, we derive the scaling relations between the critical exponents $\beta $ , $\gamma $ , $\delta $ , $\eta $ , $\nu $ , $\zeta $ as well as $\alpha $ (when $\alpha \ge 0$ ). As a key input, we show the stability of crossing probabilities in the near-critical regime using new interpretations of the notion of the influence of an edge in terms of the rate of mixing. As a byproduct, we derive a generalisation of Kesten’s classical scaling relation for Bernoulli percolation involving the ‘mixing rate’ critical exponent $\iota $ replacing the four-arm event exponent $\xi _4$ .