Cheapest ticketing platforms – 2026 price comparison

Every ticketing platform calls its fees "low." Almost none of them show you the arithmetic.

The problem is that most published rates are a percentage plus a fixed amount, which means the number you actually pay depends on your ticket price — and nobody quotes it that way. A 3.7% fee sounds modest until you notice the $1.79 sitting next to it. On a $10 community ticket, that's not 3.7%. It's closer to 22%.

So here's the comparison with the math done. Same event, four price points, platform fees only.

The comparison: 500 tickets sold

Platform fees only. Card processing (roughly 2.9% + $0.30 through Stripe) is excluded because nearly every platform on this list charges it at a similar rate — including it would lift every row by about the same amount and obscure the actual difference between platforms.

Two things jump out of that table.

The flat-fee platforms draw straight lines. TixFox, TicketSpice and Eventzilla Basic charge the same whether the ticket is $10 or $100, because selling a $100 ticket isn't more work than selling a $10 one. Everyone else draws a slope.

The slope gets steep. At $100 a ticket, Eventbrite's service fee on this event is $2,745 against TixFox's $195 — a difference of $2,550 on a single sold-out show. Sell out four times a year and that's over $10,000 that stayed in the event instead of leaving it.

What TixFox actually charges

• $0.39 per paid ticket, flat, at any ticket price

• $0.30 per ticket on tickets priced under $5

• $0 for free events — no platform fee, no processing fee, nothing

• No monthly fee, setup fee, or contract

• Stripe's standard processing (2.9% + $0.30) is separate and goes directly to Stripe

You choose whether to absorb the fee or pass it to buyers at checkout. At 39¢, absorbing it is realistic — which is the practical difference between a flat fee and a percentage. When the platform takes $5.49 off a $100 ticket, absorbing stops being an option and your checkout price inflates instead.

A note on payment processing

Some platforms bundle card processing into a single headline rate, which makes direct comparison harder. It doesn't usually make them cheaper — it just moves the line item.

TixFox runs payments through your own Stripe account. That means two things: you pay Stripe's published rate rather than a marked-up internal one, and money lands in your account on Stripe's payout schedule instead of being held by a ticketing company until after your event. For anyone paying a venue deposit before the doors open, that timing matters as much as the rate.

Feature comparison

Low fees only matter if the platform actually runs your event.

Where we're not the answer. TixFox doesn't do visual reserved-seating charts. If you're a proscenium theater selling seat by seat, or a venue running integrated box-office point-of-sale across multiple gates, SimpleTix and TicketSpice are built for that and we aren't. We'd rather say so here than after you've built your event page.

TixFox is built for independent organizers running 50 to 2,000-ticket events — festivals, comedy nights, workshops, fundraisers, conventions, class reunions — who bring their own audience and don't need to rent someone else's marketplace.

Why our fee is this low

We don't operate a discovery marketplace. Eventbrite's higher rate partly buys you a storefront with millions of browsing buyers, and for some organizers that's a fair trade. If your audience already finds you — through your mailing list, your socials, your venue's regulars — you're paying a marketplace premium for traffic you generated yourself.

We also don't hold your money. Payments go organizer-to-Stripe directly, so we're not earning float on your ticket revenue between the on-sale date and the show. Take away the marketplace and the float, and 39¢ covers the actual cost of the software.

How we compared

We pulled every figure from each platform's published US pricing page or help documentation in August 2026. Where a platform offers multiple tiers, we used the entry-level pay-as-you-go plan, since that's what most organizers land on. Percentages are applied to the ticket face value, and payment processing is excluded across the board.

Ticketing fees change often — Eventbrite has raised its US rate repeatedly over the last several years. Verify current rates on each platform's own pricing page before you build a budget. We'd rather you check than take our word for it.

FAQs

Which ticketing platform has the lowest per-ticket fee? TixFox charges $0.39 flat per paid ticket ($0.30 under $5) with no percentage component, which is the lowest published self-serve platform fee we're aware of in the US market. Platforms funded by optional buyer tips, like Zeffy for registered nonprofits, can reach $0 — a different model worth knowing about if you qualify.

Is TixFox cheaper than Eventbrite? On platform fees, substantially. Eventbrite's US service fee is 3.7% + $1.79 per ticket plus 2.9% processing. On a $50 ticket that's $3.64 in service fees against $0.39. Across 500 tickets, $1,820 versus $195.

Is there a genuinely free ticketing platform? For free events, yes — TixFox and most competitors charge nothing when the ticket price is $0. For paid events, someone always pays: either the organizer, the buyer, or a tipping mechanism. What varies is how visible that is.

Can I pass fees on to ticket buyers? Yes. You choose per event whether to absorb the fee or add it at checkout, and buyers see an itemized breakdown either way.

What's the catch at 39¢? No reserved seating charts, and no marketplace sending you strangers. Everything else — check-in app, add-ons, discount codes, analytics, branding, private events, fee control — is included at the same rate. There are no feature tiers to upgrade into.

Fees accurate as of August 2026. Competitor pricing sourced from published US rate cards and subject to change.