Ethical Ticket Sales Options
Ticketing providers with charitable, co-operative, certified or purpose-locked structures
There is no single test for whether a ticketing provider is ethical. This guide lists documented company structures, certifications, funding models and source licences. It does not give providers an overall ethical score.
A charitable structure does not remove per-ticket fees. B Corp certification does not determine how attendee data is used. Open source code does not, on its own, say who owns a company or where its income goes.
Some providers publish a pledge to donate a share of their booking fee or profit instead of, or alongside, a company structure. The guide to where ticketing money goes sets out how to read those pledges against the fee they are taken from.
Purpose-locked and charitable organisations
Chobble Tickets
Chobble Tickets is provided by Chobble CIC, a UK community interest company limited by guarantee without share capital, so it has no shares to sell. Its asset lock restricts how company assets can be transferred, and a CIC can stop being a CIC only by dissolving or by becoming a charity. Chobble's social impact page says it donates 10% of income to the Against Malaria Foundation; the linked foundation fundraiser describes the policy as 10% of profits.
Chobble's income comes from flat hosting fees and technical work, not advertising or attendee data sales. The complete ticketing product is open source and can be self-hosted.
Managed hosting costs £50/year or £5/month, with a £25 annual price for charities, community groups, artists and musicians. Chobble adds no per-ticket platform fee, while payment providers charge separately.
Humanitix
Humanitix is a registered charity. It states that 100% of its profits go to education, healthcare and community projects.
The service is funded by a percentage and fixed fee on each paid ticket. It has a lower rate for registered charities and schools, and free events have no fee.
Humanitix also runs an event-discovery marketplace and makes personalised recommendations. It stores attendee data on its servers. Its privacy notice says direct marketing is sent only when an attendee explicitly opts in.
Dandelion
Dandelion is provided by Symbiota Ltd. Symbiota describes itself as a not-for-profit worker co-operative, and Companies House records it as a company limited by guarantee without share capital.
Dandelion has no annual subscription or mandatory fee on tickets sold through the platform. It normally asks organisers for a voluntary 1% contribution, asks buyers for donations, charges for some events that send buyers elsewhere, and sells boosts in its public listings.
Its marketplace creates platform profiles and uses past bookings and shared gatherings to recommend events and people. Its source can be inspected and run for internal use, but new versions cannot be used to offer a competing commercial service for two years.
Certified B Corps
A certified B Corporation is a company assessed against B Lab's social and environmental standards. Certification is different from being a charity, co-operative or community interest company.
Ticket Tailor
Ticket Tailor is independently owned and B Corp certified. Its current B Lab profile lists no investors.
It charges a fixed fee for each paid ticket, with lower prices for prepaid credits and discounts for charities, PTAs and B Corps. Ticket Tailor runs a public Discover events area but states that it does not email attendees about other organisers' events.
Resident Advisor
Resident Advisor describes itself as independent and is B Corp certified. Companies House lists two founders as its only active people with significant control, but this does not establish complete founder ownership. Its ticketing service is part of a wider electronic-music publication and event marketplace.
Resident Advisor says promoters pay no ticketing fee because buyers cover a service fee on each ticket. It does not publish a general rate schedule. RA markets platform content and other events through listings, recommendations, email and push notifications.
Donation pledges without a documented purpose lock
Ticketpass
Ticketpass describes itself as an ethical ticketing platform. Its terms record that Fanex Group Ltd acquired the Ticketpass business on 9 October 2025 and now operates the platform. That company's entry on the Companies House register of people with significant control records one person holding 75% or more of the shares and voting rights, with the right to appoint and remove directors.
Paid tickets carry a booking fee and a separate service fee at the same published rate, 1.9% + £0.20 each on the Essentials plan and 3.5% + £0.35 each on Pro, both excluding VAT. Free events have no fee, and organisers can absorb the charges or pass them to buyers.
Ticketpass donates up to 50% of the booking fee, but not the service fee, to a project the organiser or the attendee selects. Its terms describe the pledge as a commitment rather than a binding contractual obligation. It also runs an event marketplace, requires buyers to create an account, and says it may send marketing about Ticketpass and selected parties in line with a user's preferences.
Open source and independent projects
Open source licences let organisers inspect code and may allow them to run it themselves. The projects below have relevant ownership or funding facts, but the linked comparisons do not record a charitable structure or B Corp certification for them.
- Pretix describes itself as owner-led and says it operates without pressure from investors or creditors. Its Community edition is open source, while several enterprise features use paid proprietary plugins.
- alf.io is an open source community project with public finances on Open Collective. Open Collective lists two project administrators and Open Source Collective as its fiscal host. Swicket is the separate managed enterprise service built on alf.io.
- Hi.Events is operated by Hi.Events Ltd and maintained mainly by Dave Earley. Public sources reviewed on 25 July 2026 did not establish its funding status. Free self-hosting requires visible attribution, while removing it requires a commercial licence.
Questions to compare
- Is the organisation a charity, co-operative, community interest company, certified business or standard company?
- Does income come from subscriptions, per-ticket fees, advertising, donations, data sales or a mixture of these?
- Does the provider market other events to an organiser's attendees?
- Can organisers export their data, inspect the source code or run the software on infrastructure they control?
- Which useful features, support services and marketplace benefits would the organiser give up by choosing another model?