Ticketing fees,
explained.
What organisers pay, what buyers pay, what we absorb, and how your money reaches your bank.
6.5%
Buyer booking fee on each ticket, minimum 50p per ticket
2%
Organiser platform fee on Starter, deducted at settlement
Nothing
What free and RSVP events cost, for organisers and buyers
Platform fee by plan
The organiser fee only. Buyers pay a 6.5% booking fee, minimum 50p per ticket, whatever the plan.
| Plan | Platform fee | Availability |
|---|---|---|
| Starter (free plan) | 2% of ticket face value | Available now. Every organiser selling paid tickets is on Starter today. |
| Pro | Planned at 1% | Not available yet. Not on sale. |
| Scale | Planned at 0% | Not available yet. Not on sale. |
| Enterprise | By agreement | Annual licence, by arrangement. Contact us to discuss it. |
One flat platform fee
On Starter the platform fee is a flat 2% of ticket face value, deducted at settlement. It does not change with your payout currency or country, and there are no route surcharges.
The 6.5% booking fee and refunds
The buyer pays the booking fee on top of the ticket price, and it is never deducted from what you receive, with one exception: if you cancel an event, refund or remove tickets yourself, or we remove your event for breaking our rules, the booking fee refunded to buyers comes out of your settlement. Change-of-mind refunds and refunds after a reschedule return the ticket price only, and if a refund is our error, we refund the booking fee ourselves.
Founding Organisers pay less
The first 50 organisers pay 1 percentage point below the published rate for their plan in years 1 to 3 (1% on Starter), 0.5 points below in year 4, and the published rate from year 5. The full terms are in the Founding Organiser section of the organiser documentation.
Pro and Scale are not on sale yet
The Pro and Scale rates in the table are planned, not offered. We will announce them before they can be bought. Until then, Starter is the plan for paid ticketing and Enterprise is by agreement.
Who pays what
Here is exactly what the buyer is charged, what comes out of your revenue, and what we pay for out of our own margin.
The buyer covers
Charged at checkout, once.
- The ticket price
- The face value the organiser set, exactly as advertised.
- A 6.5% booking fee, minimum 50p per ticket
- Worked out on each ticket's price, with a minimum of 50p per ticket (or a set equivalent in other currencies), and shown as its own line before payment. Nothing else appears at checkout.
- Nothing on free or RSVP events
- Free and RSVP tickets carry no booking fee at all.
The organiser covers
Taken at settlement, not up front.
- The platform fee, 2% on Starter
- Deducted from ticket face value at settlement. Founding Organisers pay less for the first four years of the founding programme, as set out above.
- Refunds and chargebacks on your tickets
- When a buyer is refunded or their bank reverses a payment, the ticket amount comes back out of your revenue for that event. You are not charged our platform fee on money that went back.
- The booking fee, only when the refund was your decision
- If you cancel an event, refund or remove tickets yourself, or we remove your event for breaking our rules, the booking fee refunded to buyers is deducted from your settlement.
- Nothing on free or RSVP events
- Free and RSVP events cost you nothing.
We absorb, out of our own margin
None of the following is passed on to the buyer as an extra charge or deducted from organiser revenue. It comes out of the booking fee and the platform fee we already collect.
- Stripe card processing
- The booking fee is what pays for card processing. When a card costs more than that to process, we absorb the difference.
- Currency conversion
- Where Stripe converts a charge into a currency we settle in, that conversion cost sits with us, not with your payout.
- Stripe payout and Connect fees
- The per-payout and connected-account fees Stripe charges us for paying you out.
- The processing fee kept on a refund
- Stripe keeps the original processing fee when a sale is refunded. We carry that loss so a refund does not become a second cost for you.
- Card-network dispute fees
- Stripe charges a dispute fee on every chargeback, whether or not it is later won. We pay it, and we carry the cost of handling and contesting disputes.
Worked examples
How fees split between organiser and buyer on a single ticket sale.
| Scenario | Ticket price | Buyer pays | Platform fee | You receive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter, GBP | £40 | £42.60(+6.5%) | £0.80 (2%) | £39.20 |
| Starter, GBP, low-priced ticket | £5 | £5.50(+50p minimum) | £0.10 (2%) | £4.90 |
| Starter, USD | $50 | $53.25(+6.5%) | $1.00 (2%) | $49.00 |
| Starter, EUR | €30 | €31.95(+6.5%) | €0.60 (2%) | €29.40 |
| Starter, CAD | CA$60 | CA$63.90(+6.5%) | CA$1.20 (2%) | CA$58.80 |
| Founding Organiser on Starter, years 1 to 3 | £40 | £42.60(+6.5%) | £0.40 (1%) | £39.60 |
Figures are illustrative. The booking fee is 6.5% of each ticket's price, with a minimum of 50p per ticket (or a set equivalent in other currencies), and the platform fee is a percentage of ticket face value. Stripe processing comes out of our share, not yours.
Where a £100 ticket actually goes
One ticket, priced at £100, sold by an organiser on Starter.
| Step | Amount | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Ticket price set by the organiser | £100.00 | The face value shown on the event page. |
| Buyer booking fee, 6.5% | + £6.50 | Added on top at checkout. Nothing else is added. |
| Buyer pays | £106.50 | The total charged to the card. |
| Platform fee, 2% of face value | - £2.00 | Starter rate, deducted at settlement. |
| Organiser receives | £98.00 | Transferred to your Stripe account at settlement, then paid to your bank by Stripe. |
And what happens to the £8.50 we collect
The £8.50 is the £6.50 booking fee plus the £2.00 platform fee. Out of it we pay Stripe's card processing fee, any currency conversion, Stripe's payout and Connect fees, and the cost of refunds and disputes. What is left funds the product and the people who support it.
Card processing cost varies by card type and issuing country, so the amount left over moves with every sale. We cannot tell which card a buyer will use before the charge, so the booking fee stays at 6.5% (minimum 50p per ticket) either way.
How payouts work
From your first paid event to money in your bank.
- Request paid ticketing
- Paid ticketing is opened business by business. Request it from Create Event and our team reviews each request. We can only approve a business whose payout bank account is in a country we can pay out to.
- Set up payouts with Stripe
- Payouts run through a Stripe Connect Express account for your business. Stripe carries out its own identity and bank checks, and you accept Stripe's Connected Account Agreement during onboarding.
- Where we can pay out
- We can currently pay out to bank accounts in the United Kingdom, the United States, the 27 EU member states, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Canada. Payouts to Caribbean bank accounts are not available yet; if your only bank account is elsewhere, you can still run free and external events.
- When you are paid
- Each event is settled after it ends, and a settlement is released no earlier than 72 hours after the event ends. Our team reviews the first payout for each business before it is released; later payouts are released automatically within internal limits.
- Holds
- We can hold a payout while there are open disputes or refund requests, or during a fraud or compliance review.
- Arrival in your bank
- Once a payout is released, Stripe pays it to your bank on Stripe's own schedule, so we cannot promise an exact arrival date.
Refunds and disputes after a payout
Buyers are refunded to their original payment method, usually within 5 to 10 working days. If that happens after your event has been paid out, this is what follows.
- A balance owed, not a surprise charge
- If a refund or chargeback happens after an event has been paid out, the amount becomes a balance owed and is recovered from your next payout or payouts.
- After 30 days
- If the balance is still outstanding after 30 days, we may reverse the original Stripe transfer for that event. We may also write a balance off at our discretion.
- No rolling reserve
- We do not hold back part of your payouts against future refunds. Each event is settled on its own.
- Chargebacks
- The chargeback amount is recovered from you in the same way as a refund. The card-network dispute fee is ours.
The binding terms are in the Merchant Agreement and the Refund and Cancellations Policy.
What the platform fee funds
The platform fee is not just the cost of taking a card payment. It pays for the services that run your event, the rails that get your money to you, and the people who pick up the phone when something goes wrong.
AI event tools
Event descriptions, listing copy and the organiser assistant that drafts them for you.
What it costs us: Every generation is a metered call to a paid model API, provided by Anthropic.
Email and notifications
Ticket delivery, receipts, refund confirmations, reminders and attendee campaigns landing reliably in inboxes.
What it costs us: Charged per message by our transactional email provider, Resend.
Payments and payouts infrastructure
Card acceptance in multiple currencies, nightly reconciliation, settlement runs and payouts to your bank through Stripe.
What it costs us: Stripe processing, payout and Connect fees.
Tickets, QR codes and wallet passes
Branded PDF tickets, scannable QR codes and passes that add straight to a phone wallet.
What it costs us: Headless browser rendering on our own workers, plus the paid developer programme wallet passes require.
Your event data and images
Event pages, ticket designs and uploaded artwork stored, served fast and backed up.
What it costs us: Database and object storage on Supabase, billed on volume.
Verification and sales integrity
Phone verification for organisers, inventory locks that stop the same seat being sold twice, and rate limiting that keeps a busy on-sale standing up.
What it costs us: Twilio per verification message, and Redis for locks, holds and caching.
Hosting and background workers
The API and the jobs that run around the clock: reconciliation, settlement, notifications and scheduled sends.
What it costs us: Continuous server and worker capacity, not just while your event is on sale.
Organiser support
People to talk to about settlement, payouts, scanning and problems on the day.
What it costs us: Support and settlement operations time, including the review of every business's first payout.
We do not publish a per-organiser cost for any of the above, because we have not measured one. The list is here so you can see what the fee is buying, not to imply a precise split.
Know your numbers before you sell.
Compare plans side by side, or head back to the knowledge base for more guides.