The 8 best US ticketing platforms for event organizers

The first page of Google results for "best US ticketing platforms" is mostly affiliate roundups, which tend to favor whoever pays the best commission, and AI summaries that compress each platform into a line or two. In our opinion that's not great for actually telling you what a $75 ticket costs in fees, or what happens to your money when an event gets cancelled. So we thought we'd do some digging, evaluate some platforms and give our take.

Most of these platforms we cover handle the basics, from multiple ticket types and promo codes to mobile check-in and Stripe payments, so the differences that matter are narrower than any feature table makes them look, and that's really why we wanted to get into a more comprehensive overview.

To pull this together we used AI to collect the latest pricing, features and reviews from each platform's own pages and from review sites, then recalculated every fee ourselves and added what we've learned from years of working with organizers. All the fees below are for a single-ticket order including card processing, using prices as we found them in November 2026. They do change, so it's worth checking the live numbers before you make your decision!

1. Ticket Tailor

• Low flat fees: our all-in cost is the lowest of the six platforms in our fee table below at $25, $50 and $150 tickets.
• The features most events need: reserved seating, a free check-in app, built-in GA4 and Meta Pixel tracking and free email broadcasts.
• Support reviewers praise: 4.7 on Trustpilot and 4.9 on Capterra, with reviews that name the person who helped.
• A planet-minded business: we're a certified B Corp™, donate 1p to climate charities for every ticket sold and are carbon neutral.

We started in the UK and are still independently owned, but the US is now a big part of what we do, with more than 30,000 organizers across the country selling tickets through us. Our fee is a flat amount per ticket, so it doesn't change whether the ticket costs $10 or $150, and we're a certified B Corp™.

Price is the main reason most organizers pick us. Our fee is flat, so it stays the same whether a ticket costs $10 or $150, and you only pay it when you sell: from $0.30 per ticket if you pay upfront with credits, or $0.85 if you pay as you sell, plus Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30 on top. There's no monthly plan or contract, your first five paid tickets are free, and free events cost nothing up to 5,000 free tickets a year. On a $50 ticket our fee plus Stripe comes to $2.05 and on a $150 ticket $4.95 in total, against $5.20 and $11.90 on Eventbrite, which adds up to $695 for every hundred $150 tickets when you pay upfront.

If your event is for a good cause, the fee drops further. Registered charities pay half ($0.15 a ticket on credits), PTAs, B Corps and not-for-profits get 20% off ($0.24), and tickets under $5 are eligible for a 50% discount.

The next reason is simplicity: you get what most events need without working your way up through plans. Reserved seating, a free check-in app, built-in GA4 and Meta Pixel tracking, free email broadcasts to your attendees, memberships, gift vouchers and payment plans all come as standard, and the same per-ticket fee applies whichever you use (seated tickets and payment plans use one extra credit each). It's simple enough for a one-off class and built to handle repeat bookings running at around 1,000 tickets a day, and there's an open API for organizers who want to build on top of it.

Support is the reason people stay. Our review scores are 4.7 on Trustpilot and 4.9 on Capterra, and what we're proudest of is how many of those reviews name the person who helped. Support is available 24/7 and we typically reply in under five minutes, which matters most on the day of an event, when a problem can't wait until Monday. Amy LaBelle of LaBelle Lights in New Hampshire, for example, told us the switch improved the guest experience and made her team feel more comfortable on the night.

Control matters to a lot of our organizers too. Payments go through your own Stripe, PayPal or Square account straight to you when a ticket is sold, and we never see or touch your buyers' money. If you want the checkout to look like your own, you can connect a custom domain for $8 a month or go fully white-label for $49 a month.

The last reason is less about the product and more about how we run the business. We were the first independent ticketing platform in the world to become a certified B Corp™, we donate 1p from every ticket sold to our climate charity partners through Penny for the Planet, and we're carbon neutral.

There are things we leave out on purpose and things we haven't built yet. We don't run a discovery marketplace, because our own research hasn't turned up much evidence that one sells tickets for most event types, and organizers who bring their own audience tend to do better sending their own traffic (we dig into that in the event discovery myth). A custom domain and full white-label cost a little extra, reserved seating takes one additional credit per paid seat, and some organizers would like more design flexibility in event pages and emails than we offer today. First-time organizers may also not know us as readily as they know Eventbrite or TicketSpice. Our pricing page has a calculator for your own ticket prices.

2. Eventbrite

Eventbrite is the name most first-time organizers already know, and the one the rest of this list tends to be measured against. Since March 10, 2026 it has belonged to Bending Spoons, an Italian software company that paid around $500m for it and also owns Evernote, Meetup, WeTransfer, Komoot, Vimeo and Miro. Bending Spoons has a habit of trimming teams and reworking pricing soon after it buys something, which is why Eventbrite organizers are watching fee announcements closely. We looked at what the deal could mean for organizers here.

US pricing is a 3.7% + $1.79 service fee per paid ticket, with 2.9% processing charged on the full order, service fee included. That makes a $30 ticket cost about $3.85 in fees (12.8%), a $75 ticket about $6.87 (9.2%) and a $150 ticket about $11.90 (7.9%), while free events stay free. The percentage falls as tickets get more expensive, yet the fixed $1.79 means low-priced tickets feel the sharpest bite.

What you get for those fees is the largest audience of ticket browsers in the category. That helps most when strangers are likely to search for what you run, such as a walking tour, a local attraction or something listed under "things to do this weekend". If you're selling to your own mailing list or community, the marketplace adds much less, a point we make in the event discovery myth.

Reviews are the weak spot. Trustpilot averages roughly 1.1, and the same four grievances keep coming up: slow or messy refunds on cancelled events, trouble reaching a person at support, Boost ad charges that organizers say they didn't approve, and locked accounts. Capterra is kinder, probably because it's written mostly by organizers using Eventbrite as a business tool rather than by someone stuck in a refund dispute. Our summary of Eventbrite reviews gathers more of what people say.

• 3.7% + $1.79 plus 2.9% processing: around 8% to 13% of the ticket price on tickets from $30 to $150.
• The largest marketplace around: valuable for walk-up tourist events, less so with your own audience.
• Trustpilot near 1.1: refunds and reachable support top the complaints.

3. TicketSpice

TicketSpice is the US-native platform most American organizers have actually heard of, owned by Webconnex (the company behind RegFox and GivingFuel) and popular with festivals, fundraisers and volume-heavy organizers. Pricing is $0.99 per ticket, flat, dropping to $0.49 on tickets of $5 or under, plus 2.9% + $0.30 payment processing, with no monthly fee. On a $50 ticket that's $2.74 all-in and on a $150 ticket $5.64, which is roughly half what Eventbrite costs at that price but still above our $0.30 flat fee. If you're weighing us against TicketSpice directly, our comparison page sets out the detail.

Where TicketSpice stands out is the tooling around the door and the event page. The drag-and-drop page builder supports 40+ field types with conditional logic, the box office iOS app has a kiosk mode that turns a spare iPad into a self-serve entry point, and Mobile Pay Pass adds cashless RFID payments at 25 cents a transaction, which is rare at this price. Dynamic pricing is also included on the standard plan.

The catches are mostly about what costs extra. TicketSpice is US and USD only, email marketing is a paid add-on at $9 a month plus 2 cents per recipient, SMS marketing is $19 a month plus 2 cents, and a custom domain or white-label adds $150 a year, whereas email broadcasts to your attendees are free with us. Those add up, so it's worth adding them to the headline fee when you compare, particularly if you email your audience often. For US festivals and fundraisers with real volume that like the flat-fee model and want a US-native platform with a domestic support team, it's a sensible pick.

• $0.99 flat per ticket: plus 2.9% + $0.30 processing and no monthly fee, so $2.74 all-in on a $50 ticket.
• Event page builder and box office app: 40+ field types with conditional logic, plus an iOS app with kiosk mode.
• Add-ons cost extra: email from $9 a month, SMS from $19 a month and a custom domain at $150 a year.

4. Humanitix

Humanitix started in Australia, operates worldwide, and sells mostly to charities, schools, universities, museums and community groups in the US. Its model is unusual: it's a nonprofit ticketing company that gives all of its booking-fee profit to children's education charities. The US standard rate is 2.1% + $0.99 per ticket plus Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30, and registered charities and schools pay 1% + $0.99 plus Stripe, which on a $50 ticket comes to $3.79 and $3.24 all-in.

Reviewers bring up the charity link themselves rather than it feeling like a sales pitch, and many of the Trustpilot reviews we read single out the support team by name, including custom walkthrough videos for fiddly setups. Beyond that, the platform offers a public REST API with Swagger docs and a sandbox, multi-currency selling across the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, Canva-powered event pages and accessibility features on seating charts.

Humanitix has no custom domain and no white-label option, and when an event is cancelled the refund argument lands on the organizer, which is common with marketplace-style platforms but leaves some buyers writing unhappy reviews if the organizer is slow to reply. Because it markets itself as charity-first, commercial organizers can miss how capable the general product is. Charities, schools and mission-driven groups get a lot out of the profit model and the support, while anyone comparing purely on price will find a mid-range percentage platform.

• All booking-fee profit goes to charity: something reviewers mention without being prompted.
• Support named in reviews: among the best-reviewed on this list.
• No custom domain or white-label: and cancelled-event refunds fall to the organizer.

5. Universe

Universe is Ticketmaster's self-service product for independent organizers, which puts it inside Live Nation, the company a federal jury found liable on every antitrust count on April 15, 2026. The court now has to decide the remedy, and the options being discussed include damages and even a breakup of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, so organizers on Universe may want a backup plan.

The Get growing plan charges 2.5% + $1.99 per ticket (capped at $19.95) and bundles card processing through Universe Payments, while Start small is 2% + $0.59 with fewer features. That's $3.24 on a $50 ticket and $5.74 on a $150 one. The cap is Universe's best-known feature, but it only kicks in around the $700 mark, so most tickets are charged like they would be on any percentage platform. At the very top end, bundled processing can bring Universe level with a flat fee plus Stripe, or even tip it Universe's way, so organizers selling premium tickets may want to price their own case.

Developers are better served than most: there's a public GraphQL API on every plan with a live GraphiQL explorer, the best documented on this list. Other strengths are an embeddable checkout widget, Mailchimp integration on all plans and no fees on free events.

Reviews are less flattering. Trustpilot sits around 2.2, and refunds for cancelled events are the most frequent complaint. Team permissions, payment plans and tiered ticketing sit behind higher plans, and on tickets between $30 and $100 the fee works out higher than a flat one. Anyone uneasy about the ownership or the court case has plenty of alternatives elsewhere on this list.

• 2.5% + $1.99, capped at $19.95: the cap only helps on tickets above about $700.
• GraphQL API on every plan: the best documentation of any platform here.
• Ticketmaster ownership: Live Nation lost on every antitrust count in April 2026 and the remedy is still being decided.

6. SimpleTix

SimpleTix is US-native, based in Ohio, and quietly one of the deepest-featured mid-tier ticketing platforms in the country, popular with museums, gardens, attractions and any organizer who needs memberships alongside timed entry. It's under-marketed relative to the product, which is why it's often overlooked. Pricing is 2% + $0.79 per ticket, capped at $9.99 (a cap that only comes into play above roughly $460), plus your own processor's fees, which on Stripe means 2.9% + $0.30. On a $50 ticket that's $3.54 all-in and on a $150 ticket $8.44, and verified 501(c)(3) nonprofits pay $0.71 + 2%.

The depth is the point. There's a full memberships module with member discounts and management, Flex Pass timed entry with self-rescheduling (the museum and garden use case), and bring-your-own merchant support across Stripe, Square, PayPal and Authorize.net, so the money lands directly in your own account. Tap to Pay on iPhone and Socket scanner hardware are supported, and there's an audit log, multi-factor authentication and custom registration pages with attendee selfies for higher-security events. The reserved seating chart builder is free rather than an add-on, and abandoned cart recovery and email blast tools are built in.

The weak spots are mostly about reach and documentation. There's no native marketplace, multi-currency support is unclear from the published docs and probably US-only in practice, and the marketing is thin relative to how much the product does. For museums, gardens, historic sites and other timed-entry venues, and for anyone whose events need memberships and tickets in the same system, that's an easy trade-off to accept.

• 2% + $0.79 per ticket, capped at $9.99: plus your own processor's fees, so $3.54 all-in on a $50 ticket.
• Memberships and timed entry: Flex Pass self-rescheduling and a full memberships module in one system.
• No marketplace, US-only in practice: you drive your own traffic, and multi-currency support is unclear.

7. Luma

Luma began in San Francisco and has become the default for tech meetups, founder dinners, creator communities and anyone who wants a good-looking event page. Its pricing has two modes, and which one is better isn't obvious. The free plan takes a 5% platform fee on top of Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30, so a $50 ticket costs $4.25 and a $150 ticket $12.15. Luma Plus costs $69 a month ($59 if billed annually) and drops the platform fee to 0%, but messaging is capped: 500 invites and newsletters a week on free, 5,000 on Plus, and extra sends start at $50 a month for 10,000 and rise to $800 a month for 100,000.

Messaging is where bills creep up, since it's built into the product and goes out automatically. Luma sends three default messages to each attendee, so 2,850 attendees means roughly 8,500 emails, and with weekly limits it's easy to end up paying to contact your own guests. When we ran the numbers for our Luma reviews summary, those costs brought Luma much closer to a flat fee and, in many cases, erased the difference.

On the plus side, people find events by following a calendar rather than searching a marketplace, which suits series and recurring meetups. Luma also sends SMS, WhatsApp and push alongside email, has some of the cleanest event pages on this list, and includes waitlists and approval or token-gated sign-up on the free plan.

Where it runs out of road is bigger events. There's no reserved seating, no custom domain outside Plus, no white-label, and no easy way to add tracking scripts, so linking GA4 or Meta Pixel to see which ads sell tickets is hard. If yours is a community gathering where looks and a loyal follower base matter more than depth, that's a fair deal, but larger or more complicated events, and anyone buying ads, will feel the limits. We've compared Luma with Ticket Tailor in more detail here.

• 5% on Free, 0% on Plus ($69 a month): with email limits that push heavy senders up a tier.
• Followable calendars: discovery built around subscribers rather than search.
• No seating charts or tracking pixels: and no white-label.

8. Zeffy

Zeffy is a ticketing and donation platform for registered nonprofits only, available in the US and Canada (and now the UK), and it charges the organization nothing: no platform fee, no subscription and no processing fee. It's funded instead by an optional contribution it asks ticket buyers to add at checkout. Zeffy says around two in three supporters leave one and that the average is about 4%, but on the event pages we looked at the contribution came pre-filled at roughly 15% to 17%, so what a supporter actually pays depends on whether they notice it and change it. We've worked through the numbers in our piece on whether Zeffy is actually free.

Because the contribution is a percentage of the order, it grows with the ticket price, while a flat fee stays put. For a nonprofit selling 500 tickets with our fee passed on, Zeffy's 4% average works out lower for supporters on tickets up to roughly $41 to $51, depending on which of our rates applies, and a flat fee plus card processing works out lower above that.

Where Zeffy genuinely does more is fundraising. Recurring donations, a donor database, peer-to-peer campaigns, auctions and raffles all sit in the same system as ticketing, and for a nonprofit that wants everything in one place that can be worth more than a difference in ticket costs.

The ticketing side is lighter. Reserved seating is a workaround rather than a seating chart (you upload an image and create a ticket type for each row), Zeffy's help center says you can't add a Meta Pixel directly to a form, and its Google Analytics integration is limited to US-based accounts and doesn't track clicks or conversions. Support runs 9am to 5pm Eastern every day, with a phone line as well as email. It's also a for-profit, venture-backed company rather than a charity, which some supporters don't realize until they meet the contribution at checkout, and the pre-filled amount is the most common complaint we see in reviews. Our Zeffy comparison page sets the two side by side.

• $0 to the nonprofit: the cost moves to supporters through an optional contribution, pre-filled at 15% to 17% on the pages we looked at.
• Fundraising in the same place: donations, a donor database, peer-to-peer campaigns, auctions and raffles alongside tickets.
• Nonprofits only: and the ticketing side is lighter on seating charts, pixel tracking and support hours.

How much do US ticketing platforms cost per ticket?

On a $50 ticket, all-in fees range from $2.05 on a flat-fee platform to $5.20 on Eventbrite, and the difference grows as tickets get pricier: on a $150 ticket it's $4.95 against $11.90, which is $6.95 a ticket, or $695 across a hundred tickets sold.

Every figure is the platform fee plus card processing for a single-ticket order, using Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30 where the platform doesn't bundle processing in, and Eventbrite's processing is charged on the full order including its service fee. Universe is left out because its bundled processing and fee cap make a single line misleading, and Zeffy because it charges the nonprofit nothing and funds itself through the supporter contribution described above.

What should decide which ticketing platform you pick?

Which ticketing platform should you choose?

Any of the eight can work, so a useful route is to start from your average ticket price, pick the fee model that suits it, and then check whether one of the specialist needs above applies to you. Most of these platforms also only charge at the point of ticket sale, so we'd recommend setting up an event on your shortlisted platforms and seeing whether they cover what you need in the real world. Where it's neck and neck, a flat fee tends to come out ahead, and by more as ticket prices rise, so that could be the final determination. Our pricing page has a calculator for your own numbers, and our Eventbrite comparison lays out what a switch looks like in detail.