8 best Eventbrite alternatives for 2026, matched to what you actually run

Most alternatives roundups rank platforms as though every organiser wants the same thing. They don’t. A theatre selling assigned seats on a Tuesday and a touring band selling standing tickets in six cities have almost nothing in common except that both are overpaying Eventbrite.

So this list is organised by what you run. Pricing is current as of May 2026 and shown in both USD and GBP where the platform operates in both. Payment processing is included in every figure, because a platform fee on its own is meaningless.

If you only want the fee tables, our lowest-fee comparison has them. This piece is about fit.

Quick match

1. Ticket Tailor - best all-rounder on cost

$0.30 per ticket prepaid, $0.65 pay as you sell. £0.22 + VAT prepaid, £0.60 + VAT pay as you sell. Payment processing goes through your own Stripe, PayPal or Square account at standard rates.

The pitch is simple: it’s the lowest flat per-ticket fee published in the category, and because you connect your own payment processor, ticket money lands in your bank as tickets sell rather than being held by the platform until after the event. There’s no monthly subscription at any tier.

Worth knowing: it’s a B Corp, registered charities get 50% off, schools and PTAs 20%, and free events are free up to 5,000 tickets a year. The feature set covers what most organisers need - customisable box office pages, reserved seating chart designer, recurring events and time slots, offline-capable check-in app for iOS and Android, embeddable checkout for WordPress, Squarespace and Wix, discount codes, gift cards, Meta and TikTok pixels, 96 currencies, Zapier, and native Mailchimp, HubSpot and ActiveCampaign sync. White-label custom domains are available for a small charge.

Honest limits: no discovery marketplace, so you bring your own audience. No native email marketing platform - it integrates rather than replacing. And it isn’t built for stadium-scale operations needing complex accreditation and access control.

Best for: general admission events, workshops, gigs, conferences, community events, and anyone running enough volume that per-ticket cost compounds.

2. Zeffy - best for US and Canadian nonprofits

$0. Genuinely. No platform fee, no transaction fee, no card processing passed to the organisation. Zeffy covers processing costs from optional contributions suggested to your buyers at checkout, which the buyer can edit down to zero.

Beyond ticketing it does donation forms, peer-to-peer fundraising, auctions, memberships, raffles, a donor CRM, and automatic tax receipts for US 501(c)(3) and Canadian charities.

Honest limits: US and Canada only, registered nonprofit status required, and the tip prompt at checkout isn’t to every organisation’s taste. Fewer enterprise integrations than the paid platforms.

Best for: any eligible nonprofit. If you qualify, start here and only move if something specific is missing.

3. SimpleTix - best for reserved seating and timed entry

$0.79 + 2% per online ticket, capped at $9.99. $0.25 for in-person box office sales. $0.71 + 2% for verified 501(c)(3) nonprofits. US only.

SimpleTix has the deepest reserved-seating implementation among the affordable platforms: a free seat-map builder, in-order seat changes, hold management for comps and accessibility, and season passes with member-level discounts. Timed entry is built for attractions - zoos, museums, farms, drive-ins. It integrates natively with Square, plus Stripe, PayPal and Authorize.net, and pays out immediately to your merchant account.

The $9.99 fee cap makes it genuinely competitive on high-value tickets: a $500 gala seat costs $9.99 where a percentage platform would take $20 or more.

Honest limits: US only, no discovery marketplace, and on cheap general-admission tickets the 2% plus processing stacks up.

Best for: theatres, museums, attractions, performing arts venues, and anyone already running Square hardware.

4. Weezevent - best for European festivals

2.5% + £0.99 in the UK, 2.75% + $0.99 elsewhere, taxes and card processing included. No subscription, no setup fee.

Weezevent’s differentiator is on-site infrastructure: RFID cashless wristbands and smart cups, mobile payment terminals, NFC access control, and staff accreditation. That’s the stuff that decides whether a 20,000-capacity site runs smoothly, and it’s mature here in a way it isn’t on most of this list. Reserved seating supports 2D and 3D plans with virtual queuing.

Because processing is bundled, the headline looks higher than it is: £1.74 all-in on a £30 ticket puts it second only to Ticket Tailor in the UK.

Honest limits: less brand presence outside Europe, RFID adds hardware cost, and the interface carries more complexity than a small organiser needs.

Best for: festivals and large outdoor events in the UK, France, Spain, Belgium and Germany.

5. TicketSource - best for UK arts and community venues

7% + VAT per booking through TicketSource Payments, minimum £0.25 + VAT, card processing included. Or 4.5% + VAT if you bring your own Stripe. Free events and in-person sales cost nothing.

The unusual feature is that TicketSource staff will handle telephone bookings for your event, which no other platform on this list offers and which still matters for an audience that phones the box office. Add an interactive seating designer, waiting lists, Apple and Google Wallet tickets, printed ticket options, and refund protection on cancelled events.

Honest limits: the percentage is punishing on expensive tickets - £7.00 on a £100 ticket versus £1.92 on a flat-fee platform. Fewer marketing integrations and less developer tooling.

Best for: UK theatres, amateur dramatics, community venues and arts organisations selling mostly sub-£20 tickets, especially with an older audience.

6. TicketSpice - best for complex registration

$0.99 flat per ticket, $0.49 for tickets under $5 and for box office sales. Bring your own merchant account. USD only.

The RealView builder is the reason to choose it: drag-and-drop pages with 40+ field types and conditional logic, so pricing and questions can branch based on what the registrant selects. Add cashless Mobile Pay Pass, a mobile box office with cash and card, SMS ticket delivery, fraud detection on scanning, and a new iOS box office app with kiosk mode as of April 2026.

Honest limits: USD only. Email marketing is $9/month plus $0.02 per recipient, SMS $19/month, custom domain $150/year, and third-party processors add 1%. Critically, free events still cost $0.99 per ticket unless you also run paid events - so free-only organisers should look elsewhere.

Best for: conferences, fairs, fundraisers and anything with a genuinely complicated sign-up flow.

7. Luma - best for free community events

Free plan with 5% on paid tickets. Luma Plus at $59/month billed annually removes the cut. Free events are free on every plan.

Luma’s event pages are the best-designed in the category and the calendar-first model is a real advantage for recurring communities: people subscribe to your calendar and receive every event automatically. Setup takes about a minute. Zoom integration creates the meeting and tracks attendance.

Honest limits, and this one matters: newsletter sends are metered at 500 a week free, 5,000 on Plus, and $50 to $800 a month above that. If you email a large list, Luma becomes expensive fast. There’s also no reserved seating, no box office hardware, Stripe-only processing, and the API and Zapier are Plus-only.

Best for: free meetups, tech and creator communities, and anyone whose events are the front door to a community rather than a revenue line.

8. Posh - best for US nightlife

10% + $0.99 per paid ticket, processing included. Free and RSVP events are free.

Posh is the only platform here with a native consumer discovery app built for nightlife, which means genuine organic attendees for club nights, parties and social experiences. It has promoter tools, affiliate links, group buys and audience analytics. Since a May 2025 FTC ruling, pricing is all-in: the buyer sees one number with no fees added at checkout.

Honest limits: the highest headline fee in this comparison, and it isn’t designed for conferences, seated events or fundraising. US-focused.

Best for: club nights, parties, run clubs and nightlife promoters who value the discovery feed enough to pay for it.

Also worth knowing about

Universe (2.5% + $1.99 US, 5.5% + £0.99 UK, capped) is owned by Ticketmaster and offers Ticketmaster distribution on its Pro tier, which is unique among independent platforms. It also has the best-documented API here, a full GraphQL implementation with a public developer portal.

Humanitix(2.1% + $0.99 US, 4.67% + £0.46 UK) donates its booking fee profits to children’s education charities, with discounted rates for charities and schools.

TicketLeap ($1.00 + 2%, capped at $20, plus a further 3% per order) has strong reserved seating with best-seat logic and is free to organisers if you pass fees to buyers.

RSVPify (1.95% + $0.90 per ticket, subscriptions from $39/month for RSVP features) is the pick for weddings, galas and corporate invitations where guest experience and form logic matter more than public sales.

See Tickets / Eventcube is quote-based. Anyone publishing specific percentages for it is guessing.

What to check before you switch

1. 1. Model your actual ticket price and volume, not a generic $50 example. The ranking changes below about £10 a ticket.
2. 2. Check whether processing is bundled. A 7% bundled rate and a 2% unbundled rate are not comparable until you add card fees to the second.
3. 3. Check who holds the money. Platforms that connect to your own Stripe, PayPal or Square pay you as tickets sell. Others pay out after the event, which is a cash flow problem if you’re paying deposits.
4. 4. Check free-event terms if that’s most of what you run. TicketSpice is the outlier that charges.
5. 5. Check the extras. Email sends, SMS, custom domains and seat maps are billed separately on several platforms.
6. 6. Add VAT if you’re a UK organiser and not VAT-registered. Several platforms quote fees excluding it.

Frequently asked questions

Which Eventbrite alternative is cheapest?

Ticket Tailor on prepaid credits, at $0.30 / £0.22 + VAT per ticket plus your own processing. For eligible US and Canadian nonprofits, Zeffy is free.

Do any alternatives have a marketplace?

Posh for nightlife, Luma for community calendars, Humanitix and Universe to a lesser degree. None approaches Eventbrite’s scale. If discovery is genuinely driving your sales, that’s the trade-off to weigh.

Which alternatives support reserved seating?

SimpleTix and TicketLeap have the strongest implementations, Weezevent supports 2D and 3D plans, and Ticket Tailor, TicketSource, Humanitix and Eventcube all offer it. Ticket Tailor charges seats via credits. Luma and Posh don’t offer it.

Can I keep my own payment processor?

Yes with Ticket Tailor (Stripe, PayPal, Square), SimpleTix (Stripe, Square, PayPal, Authorize.net), TicketSpice (any merchant account, +1% for third-party) and TicketSource (Stripe route). Luma is Stripe-only. Posh, Universe and Eventbrite use their own.

Is switching disruptive?

Not particularly. Finish the current event where it is, build the next one on the new platform, and change the link in your emails, bio and site. Buyers click a button and don’t notice which platform is behind it.