What Are Ticketing Fees? How Booking Fees Actually Work

11 Jun 2026 · 6 min read · Ticketable

Buy a ticket online and the final price is often higher than the headline — that gap is the fees. Here’s a plain-English breakdown of every fee on an event ticket, who pays it, and which ones you can actually avoid.

The two fees on every paid ticket

Almost every paid ticket carries two distinct costs, and it pays to keep them separate:

Platform / booking fee — what the ticketing company charges to use its software and sell your ticket. It’s usually a percentage plus a fixed amount (for example 6.95% + 59p), and it’s often added to the buyer’s total at checkout. This is the avoidable one.
Card processing fee — what the payment processor (e.g. Stripe) charges to take the card payment, around 1.5% + 20p per transaction in the UK. This is unavoidable on paid tickets — but you can avoid paying any markup on it.

Some platforms also charge a subscription, or add extra “service”, “facility” or “handling” fees on top. Those are worth watching for when you compare.

Who pays the booking fee?

It depends on the platform and your settings. Many platforms add the booking fee to the buyer’s total at checkout — which raises your effective price and can dent conversion. Others let the organiser absorb it out of the ticket price. On a 0%-commission platform there’s no booking fee to assign either way.

A worked example

Take a £25 ticket. A typical platform fee of ~6.95% + 59p (Eventbrite’s rate) is about £2.33 per ticket — across 500 tickets, roughly £1,165. A 0%-fee platform charges nothing for the platform fee, so you’d pay only Stripe’s processing (about £290 at cost), keeping around £875 more.

Which fees can you actually avoid?

Platform / booking fee — yes, by choosing a 0%-commission platform.
Subscription — yes, by choosing one that doesn’t charge a monthly fee.
Card processing — no, on paid tickets — but avoid any markup by using a platform that passes Stripe’s rate through at cost.
All fees — on genuinely free events (£0 tickets) there’s no payment, so there’s no fee at all.

The takeaway

The only unavoidable cost of selling a paid ticket is card processing. Everything else — booking fees, service fees, subscriptions — is a choice the platform makes. Ticketable charges a 0% platform fee and passes Stripe through at cost, so the booking fee simply isn’t there. See the best free ticketing platforms in the UK for how the options compare.

Frequently asked questions

What is a booking fee on a ticket?

A booking fee (also called a service fee) is the cut the ticketing platform takes for selling your ticket. It's usually a percentage plus a fixed amount per ticket, and it's often added to the buyer's total at checkout. It's separate from, and on top of, the card-processing fee.

Can you avoid ticketing fees?

You can avoid the platform/booking fee by using a 0%-commission platform. You can't avoid card processing on paid tickets — the card networks charge to move money — but you can avoid any markup on it by choosing a platform that passes Stripe's rate through at cost.

Who pays the booking fee — the organiser or the buyer?

Either, depending on the platform and your settings. Many platforms add it to the buyer's total; some let the organiser absorb it. On a free platform there's no booking fee to assign in the first place.