Eventbrite alternatives in 2026: do the fee math before you switch

Eventbrite charges 3.7% + $1.79 per paid ticket plus 2.9% payment processing per order, according to its organizer pricing page as of October 2026. On a $25 ticket that is about $3.44, or roughly 13.8% of the face price. That single number is why most people go looking for Eventbrite alternatives - and why the right choice depends less on feature lists than on what you charge per ticket. Below we run three ticket prices through four platforms' published rates, and name the cases where moving saves you nothing.

We compared the platforms' own pricing pages, read on 23 October 2026. We have not run events on any of them, so everything here is posted rates and our reading of them, not test results.

What Eventbrite costs, and who owns it now

Eventbrite's posted organizer rate has two parts: a service fee of 3.7% + $1.79 on each paid ticket, and 2.9% payment processing per order, both listed on its pricing page. Free events carry no platform fee at all - the same page says you can publish unlimited free events at no cost. Fees are passed to ticket buyers by default, and organizers can choose to absorb them per ticket type.

The subscription is separate and is sold on marketing email volume. Eventbrite Pro starts at $15/month and raises the daily email cap, which matters if you market events to a list rather than relying on Eventbrite's own search traffic.

Ownership changed this year. Eventbrite is now part of Bending Spoons, which dates the acquisition to March 2026 on its own products page and lists Vimeo, Evernote, WeTransfer, Meetup, StreamYard and Brightcove in the same portfolio. The same page says it acquired Meetup in January 2024 and introduced a free plan for organizers there. Nothing in Eventbrite's published rates has moved as a result, as far as we can see - but the same page describes what it did after buying Meetup - refreshed the brand, redesigned the apps, introduced a free plan for organizers - and in our view an owner that repackages what it acquires is a reasonable prompt to know your per-ticket cost before anyone changes it.

The fee math on a $10, $25 and $100 ticket

The table below is our arithmetic on each platform's published rates, for a single-ticket order paid by card in the US. Eventbrite and TicketLeap post their own processing fees. Tito and pretix do not: they pass the processor through, so we have used the 2.9% + $0.30 US Stripe example quoted on Tito's pricing page for both. Processing is calculated on the ticket price; some processors charge on the total including fees, so treat these as the floor.

Two things fall out of that table. First, the gap is widest on cheap tickets: a $1.79 fixed fee is 18% of a $10 ticket and 1.8% of a $100 one, so a flat-fee platform punishes low-priced community events hardest. Second, the ranking flips as prices rise: on a $100 ticket TicketLeap's $1 + 2% beats Tito's flat 3%, because a percentage keeps growing while a fixed dollar does not.

At volume the difference is real money rather than rounding. On 200 tickets at $25, our figures put Eventbrite at about $688 in fees, TicketLeap at $450 and Tito at $355 - a $333 spread on a $5,000 gate, whether you absorb it or your attendees do.

Two caveats before you act on those percentages. Fees are quoted per ticket but processing is charged per order, so a crowd that buys in pairs pays one order fee instead of two and every platform looks slightly cheaper than the table says. And caps cut in at different points: TicketLeap's ticketing fee stops at $20, Tito's at €25 and pretix's at €15, which only matters once tickets run into the hundreds - at which point the cap, not the percentage, is the number to compare.

Who pays changes the optics but not the arithmetic. Eventbrite's pricing page and TicketLeap's both say fees can go to the buyer or be absorbed by the organizer; passing them on protects your margin and raises the price shown at checkout. Absorbing them does the opposite, and on a $10 ticket at Eventbrite's rate that means handing back about a quarter of the face price.

Four Eventbrite alternatives, and who each one suits

TicketLeap: the simplest swap for US paid events

TicketLeap's pricing page posts $1 + 2% of the ticket price per ticket, with the ticketing fee capped at $20, plus a 3% online transaction fee with no cap. Tickets at $5 or less drop to a flat $0.49 plus the 3%. Box office sales are $1 per ticket, and the 3% applies only to card payments, not cash or check. There is no subscription, no contract and no prepaid credits, and free events carry no fees. Payouts land in your bank account 4-7 business days after the event ends, which is the detail to weigh if you need cash before you pay suppliers.

Skip it if your tickets are expensive and your margins thin: at $100 and up the percentage components do most of the work, and the gap to the others narrows.

Tito: built for conferences and recurring meetups

Tito charges 3% per ticket on paid plans, capped at €25 per ticket, with no setup fee, no monthly subscription and no charge for premium features. Free events are free. Charity, community and non-profit events can apply for 2.5%. Payment gateway fees are separate and go to Stripe or PayPal - Tito's page quotes 1.4% + €0.25 for European cards and 2.9% + €0.25 for non-European ones, and notes support for 139 currencies anywhere Stripe or PayPal operates.

In our view Tito is the strongest pick for a recurring paid meetup or a single-track conference: one flat percentage, nothing to subscribe to between events, and no fixed fee to crush a $10 ticket. Skip it if you need high-value tickets priced in dollars - the cap is denominated in euros, so check what it means for your currency.

pretix: the lowest posted rate, and self-hosting if you want it

pretix Hosted charges 2.5% of the ticket price excluding tax, never more than €15 per ticket, with your payment provider's fees on top. Free tickets cost €0.50 each, but the first 500 per calendar year are included, and every paid ticket you sell adds another free ticket to that quota - so a small community program can run at no platform cost. There are no monthly fees, no minimum term and unlimited users. The same page says you can instead install pretix on your own server and maintain it yourself.

Skip it if you want the platform to find your audience. pretix is a shop and box office, not a marketplace, and it is priced and documented for European organizers first.

Meetup: for recurring free groups, not ticketed events

If your events are free and the point is a standing group rather than a one-off sale, ticketing fees are the wrong question. Meetup is a membership and discovery platform, and its owner Bending Spoons says it introduced a free plan for organizers after acquiring it in January 2024. Organizer plan prices vary by country and billing term, so check the current ones in your own account before you commit a group to it.

The conference end of the market works differently again. Cvent, Bizzabo, Swapcard and vFairs are all listed in our Events & Ticketing category - 72 products as of October 2026 - and they are bought on registration workflows, exhibitor tooling and sales conversations rather than a posted per-ticket rate. They are out of scope for a fee comparison, which is the honest way to say it. The same goes for music-first platforms such as DICE.fm: we found no public organizer rate card to put in the table, so we have not guessed at one.

When staying on Eventbrite is the right answer

Three cases, and they are more common than switching posts admit.

1. Your events are free. Eventbrite's pricing page puts no platform fee on free events, so there is no fee to save. Moving buys you control and a different RSVP experience, not money.
2. Discovery is doing real work for you. Eventbrite is a consumer marketplace as well as a ticketing tool, and neither pretix nor Tito advertises a discovery audience on its pricing page. In our view no fee saving compensates for a drop in walk-up sales you cannot measure in advance.
3. You sell a handful of expensive tickets. At $100 and up, the fixed $1.79 stops mattering and the spread narrows to a few points. Switching is weeks of work for a small number.

We would move for cheap tickets at volume, for white-label checkout, or because you want attendee data in a system you control. We would not move because a comparison post said a competitor was cheaper without naming your ticket price.

How to run the math on your own event

1. Take your actual ticket price and your realistic ticket count - not your best case.
2. Work out the platform fee per ticket, then the payment processing fee, then add them. Keep them separate: processing is usually charged by Stripe or your bank, not the ticketing tool, and it follows you when you switch.
3. Multiply by ticket count, then by the number of events you run a year. Annualizing is what turns a 4% difference into a decision.
4. Decide who pays. Passing fees to buyers protects your margin but raises your displayed price; absorbing them does the opposite. Both are legitimate, and the arithmetic is the same.
5. Check the three things no fee table shows: when you get paid, whether you can export your attendee list, and whether refunds return the fees.

That last point is where comparisons go stale fastest, so verify it on the vendor's own page on the day you decide. The same discipline we applied to choosing a newsletter platform by list size rather than feature list applies here: the right alternative is the one that is cheapest at your numbers, not in general.

What to do next

Pick your two likeliest candidates, put your real ticket price through both, and only then compare features. Our Events & Ticketing category lists 72 products as of October 2026, from Weezevent and Ticket Fairy to Kommunity and Zuddl, and Payments & Banking has 124 - worth a look, because the processor you choose can cost more than the ticketing tool. If you build event software yourself, you can list it on Upfynd for free.