Eventbrite charges 3.7% + $1.79 per paid ticket sold, plus a 2.9% payment processing fee per order. On a $50 ticket, that adds up to roughly $4.44 in fees. You can’t eliminate these fees entirely while staying on Eventbrite, but you can shift who pays them, reduce their impact, or switch to a platform that charges nothing.
How Eventbrite’s Fees Work
Every paid ticket sold through Eventbrite in the United States gets hit with two separate charges. The service fee is 3.7% of the ticket price plus a flat $1.79 per ticket. On top of that, there’s a 2.9% payment processing fee applied to the total order amount. These two fees combine to take a meaningful cut, especially on lower-priced tickets where the flat $1.79 hits harder as a percentage.
For a $25 ticket, the math looks like this: the service fee is $2.72 (3.7% of $25 plus $1.79), and the processing fee adds another $0.73. That’s $3.45 total, or about 13.8% of the ticket price. For a $100 ticket, the combined fees come to about $6.79, or roughly 6.8%. The cheaper your tickets, the larger the percentage Eventbrite takes.
Free events have no fees at all. If your event doesn’t charge admission, you can publish unlimited free events on Eventbrite at no cost.
Pass the Fees to Ticket Buyers
The most common approach is to shift the fees to your attendees. When you set up your event, Eventbrite gives you the option to add fees on top of the ticket price so buyers see and pay the service and processing charges themselves. Instead of absorbing the $3.45 fee on a $25 ticket, your buyer pays $28.45 and you keep the full $25.
This doesn’t reduce the total fees charged. It just changes who pays them. For popular events where demand is strong, most buyers won’t blink at a few extra dollars in fees since they’re used to seeing service charges on concert and event tickets. For price-sensitive audiences or community events, though, the visible surcharge can discourage purchases or generate complaints.
Set Your Ticket Price to Account for Fees
If you’d rather show a clean, all-inclusive ticket price, you can absorb the fees but build them into your pricing from the start. Instead of listing a $25 ticket and losing $3.45 to fees, price the ticket at $29 and treat the fee as a cost of doing business. Your attendees see a single price with no surprise add-ons at checkout.
To calculate the right price, work backward. Divide your target revenue per ticket by 0.934 (which accounts for the combined 6.6% in percentage-based fees), then add $1.79. If you want to net $25 per ticket: $25 รท 0.934 = $26.77, plus $1.79 = $28.56. Rounding to $29 gives you a small buffer. This approach works well when you’re setting prices for the first time and haven’t already advertised a specific number.
Collect Payment Outside Eventbrite
Eventbrite only charges its service and processing fees on paid tickets sold through its platform. If you use Eventbrite purely as an event listing and registration page with free tickets, then collect payment separately, you sidestep the fees entirely. You could collect cash or checks at the door, send attendees a payment link through Venmo or PayPal, or use a separate invoicing tool.
At-the-door payments processed through Eventbrite’s own organizer app still incur fees, though they’re lower: $1 per paid ticket plus 2.9% processing on credit card sales. Cash collected at the door with no app involvement carries no Eventbrite fee at all.
The tradeoff is real, though. Handling payment outside the platform means more manual work, no automatic confirmation tied to ticket purchase, and a higher risk of no-shows since people who haven’t paid yet are less committed to attending. For small or informal events this can work fine. For larger events, it gets unwieldy fast.
Use a Free Ticketing Platform Instead
If the fees are a dealbreaker, several platforms charge zero ticketing or processing fees. The catch is that most of them are designed specifically for nonprofits and fund themselves through optional tips from donors or attendees rather than mandatory fees.
Zeffy is the most prominent option. It charges no platform fees and no transaction fees, absorbing the Stripe payment processing costs itself. It sustains this model by prompting donors and ticket buyers to leave a voluntary tip at checkout. GiveLively operates similarly, offering free ticketing for nonprofits funded by optional donor tips. GalaBid also charges no platform fees and uses the same tip-based model.
For nonprofit organizers, these platforms can save hundreds or thousands of dollars on a large event. For commercial event organizers, the options are more limited since most zero-fee platforms restrict their services to registered nonprofits. You’ll also give up Eventbrite’s larger built-in audience and discovery features, which can matter if you rely on the platform to help people find your event rather than just process tickets for people you’ve already reached.
Negotiate a Custom Rate for Large Events
If you’re selling a high volume of tickets, Eventbrite offers custom pricing through its sales team. The public pricing page doesn’t list specific discounted rates, but directs high-volume organizers to contact sales for a custom solution. If you’re regularly selling thousands of tickets or running multiple events per year, it’s worth asking. Even a small reduction in the per-ticket percentage adds up quickly at scale. The worst they can say is no, and you’ll still have the standard pricing as your fallback.
Combine Strategies for the Best Result
These approaches aren’t mutually exclusive. A common setup for mid-size events is to pass fees to buyers for general admission tickets (where attendees expect service charges) while absorbing fees on VIP or premium tickets (where the higher price gives you enough margin to cover them). You might also use Eventbrite for online pre-sales and collect cash at the door for walk-ins, eliminating fees on that portion of your revenue.
For recurring events, track how much you’re paying in fees each month. If the total consistently exceeds a few hundred dollars, that’s your signal to either negotiate with Eventbrite or test one of the free alternatives for your next event and compare the experience.