Where Ticketing Money Goes
What the reviewed providers charge, who pays it, and what their pledges and structures cover
Ticketing providers describe where their money goes in different ways. Some donate a share of the fee charged on each ticket. Some donate a share of annual profit. Some publish their accounts, and some carry a legal structure that restricts what can be done with the money.
This guide sets those claims beside the charges that fund them. Figures come from the linked comparison pages and were reviewed in July 2026.
Providers funded by a share of each sale
For these providers, income rises with the number of tickets sold. Where the charge is a percentage it rises with ticket price as well. Some let the organiser choose whether to absorb the charge or add it to the ticket price, and some always charge the buyer.
- Humanitix charges 4.67% + £0.46 on each standard paid ticket, including payment processing, and 3.33% + £0.25 for registered charities and schools.
- Ticketpass charges a booking fee and a separate service fee at the same rate, 1.9% + £0.20 each on Essentials, so 3.8% + 40p combined. The organiser chooses who pays.
- EVENTIM.Light charges 8% per ticket in the UK with processing included, which is £1.20 on a £15 ticket.
- Pretix charges 2.5% of ticket value on its hosted service, capped per ticket, with processing separate. Its Community edition is open source and can be run by the organiser instead.
- FIXR is free to organisers, and buyers pay 4.99% + £0.49 plus VAT with a £1 minimum, or 3.99% + £0.49 on the student and charity tier. Organisers can choose to absorb it.
- Resident Advisor says promoters pay no ticketing fee because buyers cover a service fee, so the buyer always pays. It does not publish a general rate schedule.
- Ticket Tailor charges a fixed amount rather than a percentage, so its charge does not rise with ticket price: 60p per paid ticket, falling to about 22p with the largest prepaid credit bundles.
Providers funded another way
These providers publish no mandatory share of each sale. The money comes from voluntary payments, paid extras, a subscription that does not change with sales, or a negotiated quote.
- Dandelion asks organisers for 1% of completed sales, asks buyers for a donation at checkout, charges £25 for events that send buyers elsewhere, and sells listing boosts. None of the ticket charges are mandatory.
- alf.io is an open source project that keeps its finances on Open Collective, where every payment into and out of that account is published. Swicket, the separate managed service built on it, is priced by quote, and what that quote contains is not published.
- tickts takes no commission and charges for feature tiers instead, at £290 or £690 a year. It has stated plans to add sponsorship and advertising on category and venue pages.
- Chobble Tickets charges £50/year or £5/month, or £25/year for charities, community groups, artists and musicians, and takes no share of ticket income.
What the pledges cover
A pledge applies to a specific part of what a provider collects, and the part it leaves out is where most of the money usually is.
Ticketpass donates up to 50% of its booking fee. The service fee, which is charged at the same rate as the booking fee, is not included. On a £15 Essentials ticket that is up to about £0.24 donated out of about £0.97 charged, or up to about £121 across 500 tickets.
Humanitix states that 100% of its profits go to education, healthcare and community projects. Its registered-charity status requires it to apply its resources to its charitable purposes, though a charity can still hold reserves and pay its own running costs, so the specific pledge and the legal duty are not the same thing. Chobble donates to the Against Malaria Foundation, funded from hosting fees and paid technical work. Its own two statements of the pledge disagree: the social impact page says 10% of income, and the linked fundraiser says 10% of profits.
Several providers reduce the charge instead of donating a share of it. Ticket Tailor takes 50% off for registered charities and 20% off for PTAs and B Corps, Humanitix has a lower charity and school rate, FIXR has a student and charity tier, and Chobble charges £25/year.
A pledge is a policy, a legal form is a constraint
Ticketpass states the difference in its own terms, which describe the Give Back 50 pledge as "not a binding contractual obligation but a commitment in line with Ticketpass's ethos of social responsibility". The same terms record that Fanex Group Ltd acquired the Ticketpass business on 9 October 2025, so the company making the pledge is not the company that started it.
Legal forms restrict what a company may do rather than what it intends to do. Humanitix is a registered charity, and Ticket Tailor and Resident Advisor are certified B Corporations assessed against B Lab's standards. Symbiota, which provides Dandelion, describes itself as a not-for-profit worker co-operative and is recorded at Companies House as a company limited by guarantee.
Pretix describes itself as owner-led and says it operates without pressure from investors or creditors. That describes how the company is run now rather than restricting what a later owner could do.
Chobble CIC is a community interest company limited by guarantee without share capital, so control cannot be acquired by purchasing a stake. Its asset lock stops assets being transferred out below market value except to another asset-locked body, and under section 53 of the Companies (Audit, Investigations and Community Enterprise) Act 2004 a CIC can stop being a CIC only by dissolving or by becoming a charity.
What 500 tickets at £15 costs
Working the charge out at a realistic volume shows what a pledge is a share of. These figures use the rates above, assume one ticket per payment, and exclude VAT. Where a provider charges VAT on its fees, add 20% to the figures below.
- EVENTIM.Light: £600 in platform fees, at 8% of £7,500 in sales
- Humanitix: about £580 at the standard rate, about £375 for charities and schools
- Ticketpass Essentials: about £485, of which up to about £121 is donated
- Ticket Tailor: £300 at the pay-as-you-go rate, or £205 for a 500-credit bundle, plus payment processing. Its lowest rate of about 22p needs a larger bundle bought upfront
- Chobble Tickets: £50, or £25 at the community rate, plus payment processing paid to the organiser's own provider
These are the rates before VAT, and payment processing is included in some of them and separate in others. The platform fee calculator applies each rate to a ticket price and annual volume. Two of the rates in it are estimates rather than published prices: Resident Advisor does not publish a rate schedule, and DICE negotiates its fees per partnership without disclosing them. The calculator states this next to those providers.
Questions to compare
- What is the total charge on a typical ticket, including every fee, VAT and payment processing?
- Who pays that charge, the organiser or the attendee?
- Which part of the charge does the pledge apply to, and is the share fixed or capped by "up to"?
- Is the pledge measured on revenue, on booking fees, or on profit calculated after the company's own costs? Small companies and micro-entities can file accounts without a profit and loss account, so the figures behind a profit share are not always public.
- Who controls the company, and could a change of owner end the pledge?
- Would a lower fee, a charity rate, or donating directly send more money to the cause than the pledge does?
The ethical ticket sales options guide lists the documented structures, funding models and source licences of the providers named here.