Eventbrite Fee Calculator

Eventbrite's published rates as of September 2026

Eventbrite's fee structure has two components that are always charged separately, and it is worth keeping them straight because they apply to different things. The service fee is charged per sold ticket. The payment processing fee is charged on the total order. That distinction is why a four ticket order does not cost exactly four times a one ticket order.

For Canadian organizers, the Eventbrite Canada help centre publishes a service fee of 3.5 percent plus C$1.29 per sold ticket and a payment processing fee of 2.9 percent of the total order. Sales taken through the Organizer app at the door are cheaper: C$1 per paid ticket plus the same 2.9 percent processing on card transactions. Free events carry no fees to the organizer or the attendee.

For United States organizers the online rate is 3.7 percent plus $1.79 per sold ticket, plus the same 2.9 percent processing per order, with at the door sales at $1 per paid ticket. The structure is identical, the numbers are not.

• Canada, online: 3.5% + C$1.29 per sold ticket, plus 2.9% per order processing
• Canada, at the door via the Organizer app: C$1 per paid ticket, plus 2.9% on card sales
• United States, online: 3.7% + $1.79 per sold ticket, plus 2.9% per order processing
• Free events: no ticketing fees, in either country
• All figures from Eventbrite's help centre as of September 2026

The Canadian rate is not the rate on Eventbrite's Canadian marketing page

This is worth calling out because it trips up organizers who budget from the wrong page. Eventbrite's Canadian pricing marketing page at eventbrite.ca/organizer/pricing displays 3.7 percent plus $1.79 service fee per ticket and 2.9 percent payment processing per order. Eventbrite's Canadian help centre article on ticketing fees, at eventbrite.ca/help, publishes 3.5 percent plus C$1.29 per sold ticket for Canada.

The marketing page appears to be showing the United States figures without localising them. The help centre article is the document that specifies Canada by name and gives the amount in Canadian dollars, so that is the figure we use throughout this page. In practice, the number that actually applies to your account is the one shown in your own Organization settings, and Eventbrite's documentation directs organizers there for exactly this reason.

The gap is not trivial. On a $30 ticket the difference between the two published figures is about 56 cents, which across 2,000 tickets is over $1,100. If you are modelling a season, check your Organization settings and budget from that number rather than either public page.

• eventbrite.ca marketing page: 3.7% + $1.79
• eventbrite.ca help centre, Canada section: 3.5% + C$1.29
• Your account's actual rate: shown in Organization settings, and that is the one that binds
• Verified 10 September 2026

How to calculate your Eventbrite fee, step by step

Work it in three steps. First, the percentage part of the service fee: multiply the ticket price by 0.035. Second, add the fixed C$1.29. Third, add the processing fee, 2.9 percent of the order total. For a single ticket order you can shortcut all three into one multiplication, because 3.5 percent plus 2.9 percent is 6.4 percent.

So for a single ticket: total fee = price x 0.064 + 1.29. A $50 ticket gives $3.20 plus $1.29, which is $4.49, an effective rate of 9.0 percent. A $100 ticket gives $6.40 plus $1.29, which is $7.69, an effective rate of 7.7 percent.

For a multi ticket order the fixed C$1.29 and the 3.5 percent apply once per ticket, while the 2.9 percent applies once to the order total. Four $50 tickets in one order carry 4 x ($1.75 + $1.29) in service fees, which is $12.16, plus 2.9 percent of $200, which is $5.80, for $17.96 total. That is slightly less than four times the single ticket figure of $4.49, but only slightly, because the processing fee is proportional rather than flat.

• Single ticket in Canada: fee = price x 0.064 + 1.29
• Per ticket component: price x 0.035 + 1.29, charged once per seat
• Per order component: order total x 0.029, charged once per transaction
• The fixed C$1.29 is what makes cheap tickets expensive in percentage terms

The fixed component is what actually costs you

The headline 3.5 percent is not the number that hurts. The C$1.29 is. Because it is a flat amount charged regardless of ticket price, its weight as a percentage falls as the ticket price rises, which means Eventbrite is disproportionately expensive on low priced tickets.

On a $10 ticket the total fee is $1.93, an effective rate of 19.3 percent. On a $250 ticket the same structure produces $17.29, an effective rate of 6.9 percent. That is nearly a threefold difference in effective rate driven entirely by the fixed component. If you sell $10 workshop passes, class drop ins, community fundraiser tickets or anything else in the sub $20 range, this is the single most important number in your ticketing economics.

It also means the standard advice to compare platforms on their percentage is misleading. Two platforms at 3.5 percent with different fixed components will produce very different bills at low ticket prices. Compare total dollars at your actual ticket price and your actual volume.

Who pays: absorb the fee or pass it to attendees

Eventbrite lets you choose. By default the fees are added at checkout and paid by the attendee on top of your ticket price, so a $30 ticket displays as $33.21 at the payment step and you receive the full $30. The alternative is to absorb them, in which case the attendee pays exactly $30 and you receive $26.79.

There is one exception worth knowing: payment processing fees cannot be passed on when you are selling onsite through the Organizer app. Those come out of your side regardless.

Which way to go is a pricing decision, not a fee decision. Passing fees on keeps your advertised price clean and your revenue predictable, but it means attendees see a total higher than the price they clicked, and abandonment at that step is real, particularly on low priced tickets where the effective rate is high. Absorbing fees keeps the checkout honest and often converts better, but you have to price for it up front. A common middle path is to raise the ticket price to cover most of the fee and absorb the remainder, so the displayed price is the price.

• Pass on: attendee pays price + fee, you receive the full ticket price
• Absorb: attendee pays exactly the ticket price, you receive price minus fee
• Onsite Organizer app sales: processing fees cannot be passed on
• The choice is made per event in your event settings

Free events, refunds and payouts

Free events are genuinely free on Eventbrite. There are no ticketing fees charged to the organizer or the attendee on a zero priced ticket, and you can publish unlimited free events at no cost. If your programme is mostly free registration with occasional paid tickets, this matters more than the paid rate does.

Refunds are the area where organizers most often get surprised. When you refund an attendee, the ticket revenue goes back to them, but the fee treatment depends on the specifics of the refund and the timing, and it is not always the case that everything is returned to you. If you run an event type with a high refund rate, model that explicitly rather than assuming refunds are cost neutral.

Payouts on Eventbrite are generally held and released on a schedule tied to the event date rather than settling to you as sales come in. That is a working capital consideration separate from the fee: money you have sold is money you do not have yet. Platforms that run payments through your own Stripe or Square account behave differently, because funds settle to your account on the processor's normal schedule rather than being held by the ticketing company.

Eventbrite Pro and other costs beyond the per ticket fee

The per ticket fee is not the whole bill. Eventbrite Pro, the marketing and email add on, starts at CAN $21 per month for sending up to 10,000 emails per day, and scales up from there with your contact volume. If you are using Eventbrite as your audience database and mailing tool as well as your ticketing system, that subscription is part of your true cost per event.

Larger or more complex operations are typically moved onto tailored packages negotiated through Eventbrite's sales team rather than the published rate card. Eventbrite's own documentation references this for large or complex paid events. If you are at meaningful volume, the published rate is a starting position rather than a fixed price, and it is worth asking.

Worth budgeting alongside the fee: any add on marketing spend through Eventbrite's promotional tools, and the practical cost of your attendee data living in a system you do not control. Neither shows up on the fee calculator, and both are real.

• Eventbrite Pro email marketing: from CAN $21 per month
• Larger events: tailored packages via sales, not the published rate
• Optional promotional spend through Eventbrite's own ad tools
• No setup fee, and no monthly charge on the base ticketing product

What the fee costs you across a season

A per ticket fee of a few dollars is easy to wave off. It is worth doing the annual arithmetic, because the number is usually larger than organizers expect.

Take a studio or community organization running 24 events a year at 120 attendees each, average ticket price $35. That is 2,880 paid tickets. Eventbrite's Canadian rate produces a fee of $35 x 0.064 + $1.29, which is $3.53 per ticket, or $10,166 across the year. At a flat $0.85 plus Stripe's 2.9 percent plus $0.30, the same volume costs $1.015 plus $0.30 plus $0.85, or $2.17 per ticket, which is $6,250. The difference is about $3,900 a year.

The gap widens sharply at lower ticket prices. The same 2,880 tickets at $15 each cost $1.30 per ticket on Eventbrite's percentage alone plus the $1.29 fixed, or $2.25 each, which is $6,480 on ticket revenue of $43,200, an effective rate of 15 percent. That is the scenario where the fixed component genuinely changes whether an event is viable.

Eventbrite compared with other ticketing platforms

Here are the per ticket platform fees across the main options as of September 2026, before card processing, which is broadly comparable across all of them at around 2.9 percent plus 30 cents. Comparing platform fees alone is the fair comparison, because processing is a pass through cost that no ticketing company controls.

At a $50 ticket, Eventbrite Canada's platform fee is $3.04. Ticket Tailor charges C$1.00 pay-as-you-go, or C$0.82 down to C$0.40 on prepaid credits. Humanitix charges 2.1 percent plus $0.99, which is $2.04. Showpass charges 1 percent plus $0.59 on Essential, which is $1.09, or 2.5 percent plus $1.69 on Professional, which is $2.94. Luma's free plan takes 5 percent, which is $2.50. Universe charges 2 percent plus $0.59, which is $1.59. Dice charges a 10 percent booking fee to the buyer in Canada, which is $5.00. Eventist charges a flat $0.85 regardless of price.

The pattern to notice is that the flat fee platforms and the percentage platforms cross over. At $10 a ticket, Luma's 5 percent is 50 cents and Eventist's flat fee is 85 cents, so Luma is cheaper. At $200 a ticket, Luma takes $10 and Eventist still takes $0.85. Where your average ticket price sits determines which structure wins, which is why the honest answer is to run your own numbers rather than take a ranked list.

• Eventbrite (Canada): 3.5% + C$1.29
• Eventbrite (US): 3.7% + $1.79
• Ticket Tailor: C$1.00 pay-as-you-go, C$0.82 to C$0.40 on prepaid credits
• Humanitix: 2.1% + $0.99
• Showpass Essential: 1% + $0.59; Professional: 2.5% + $1.69
• Universe: 2% + $0.59
• Luma free plan: 5%
• Dice (Canada): 10% booking fee, charged to the buyer
• Eventist: $0.85 flat, no percentage

What Eventist charges instead

Eventist charges a flat $0.85 CAD per paid general admission ticket. There is no percentage on the platform fee, no monthly subscription and no setup fee, and free events are always free. Card processing runs through your own Stripe account at 2.9 percent plus $0.30 CAD, or through Square at its own rate, on your account rather than ours, so funds settle to you on the processor's normal schedule.

That produces $2.60 in total cost on a $50 ticket against $4.49 on Eventbrite Canada, and $8.40 on a $250 ticket against $17.29. Like Eventbrite, you can absorb the fee or pass it to the buyer.

Two event types have their own packages because the software does substantially more work. Festivals are $4.99 CAD per ticket, dropping from $2.99 at volume, covering multi day scheduling, site mapping, vendor and volunteer management. Competitions are $9.99 CAD per ticket, covering entries, heats, scoring and results. Those are higher than the general admission rate on purpose, because they replace software you would otherwise buy separately.

• $0.85 CAD flat per paid general admission ticket, no percentage
• Free events: always free
• No monthly subscription, no setup fee
• Processing on your own Stripe (2.9% + $0.30 CAD) or Square (2.8% + 30¢ online) account
• Festival package: $4.99 CAD per ticket, from $2.99 at volume
• Competition package: $9.99 CAD per ticket
• Fee can be absorbed or passed to the buyer

When Eventbrite is still the right choice

It would be dishonest to publish a fee comparison without saying where Eventbrite genuinely wins, so here it is. Eventbrite has a consumer discovery marketplace with real traffic. If a meaningful share of your attendees find you by browsing Eventbrite rather than arriving from your own channels, the fee is buying you distribution and the comparison is not fee against fee, it is fee against customer acquisition cost. One ticket sold through discovery pays for a lot of $1.29s.

It is also the default that attendees recognise, which reduces friction on cold audiences, and it has a mature integrations ecosystem. For a one off event with no existing audience and no owned channels, those are real advantages.

Where the case falls apart is repeat programming with an owned audience. If your attendees already know you, come back regularly and arrive from your own site, email list or social channels, you are paying a discovery fee for discovery that already happened. That is the situation where the annual arithmetic in the section above becomes hard to justify.

Moving off Eventbrite

The practical blockers are usually not technical. Attendee data exports cleanly, and any serious platform will import it. The real considerations are timing and links.

Switch between event cycles rather than mid sale, so you are not running two systems for the same event. Keep your Eventbrite event page live until the last ticket is scanned, then redirect. Audit anywhere your old Eventbrite links are embedded, which is usually more places than you remember: your site, your email footers, your social bios, printed material and any partner or venue listings.

Budget a cycle of overlap. The first event on a new platform always takes longer than the tenth, and the saving is annual rather than immediate.

• Export attendee and order history before you close anything down
• Switch between cycles, not mid sale
• Audit every place your old ticket links are embedded
• Expect the first event on a new system to take extra setup time

Eventbrite fees for Canadian organizers by ticket price

Eventbrite fees for Canadian organizers by ticket price, using the rate published in Eventbrite's Canadian help centre as of September 2026: 3.5% + C$1.29 service fee per sold ticket plus 2.9% payment processing per order. Assumes a single ticket order. Eventist figures are $0.85 CAD flat plus Stripe processing at 2.9% + $0.30 CAD. All amounts in Canadian dollars.

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