How to Sell Event Tickets Online Without Fees
You can sell event tickets online without paying any booking fee or commission — by using a ticketing platform that charges 0% and lets you pay only the card-processing fee, at cost. Here’s how ticketing fees actually work, and how to keep 100% of your ticket revenue.
Why do ticketing platforms charge fees?
Most well-known ticketing platforms make their money by taking a cut of every ticket you sell — a booking fee or service fee, often a percentage plus a fixed amount per ticket. It’s convenient, but on a busy event it adds up fast, and it’s usually bolted onto the buyer’s total, nudging your effective price up.
The two types of fee (they’re not the same)
It helps to separate the two costs involved in selling a ticket:
- Platform / booking fee — what the ticketing company charges to use their software. This is the fee you can avoid.
- Card processing fee — what the payment processor (e.g. Stripe) charges to take a card payment. This is unavoidable on paid tickets, but you can avoid paying any markup on it.
A typical marketplace platform bundles both into one headline rate (for example ~6.95% + £0.59 per ticket). A free platform charges £0 for the first and passes the second through at cost.
How to sell tickets without booking fees
- Choose a 0%-commission platform. Look for one that explicitly takes no per-ticket cut and no monthly subscription.
- Connect your own payment account. The best free platforms have you connect your own Stripe account, so money lands directly in your bank and the platform never holds your funds.
- Pay processing at cost. Check the platform passes the card fee through without a markup (in the UK, Stripe’s headline rate is 1.5% + 20p per transaction for European cards).
- Decide who covers processing. Absorb it, or pass it to the buyer at checkout — your call.
Can you avoid card processing fees entirely?
Not for paid card transactions — someone has to pay the card networks. The realistic goal isn’t zero processing cost, it’s zero markup: no platform fee on top, and processing charged at the processor’s actual rate. (Genuinely free events, where tickets cost £0, involve no payment and so cost nothing at all.)
What to look for in a free ticketing platform
- 0% platform fee and no monthly subscription, clearly stated.
- Your own Stripe account, with payouts direct to your bank (ideally daily).
- Processing passed through at cost, with no hidden markup.
- The essentials included free: QR check-in, mobile wallet tickets, automatic confirmation emails, and refunds.
- You keep your attendee data — it’s your customer list, not the platform’s.
Ticketable is built exactly this way: 0% platform fees, your own Stripe, daily payouts, and the full toolkit included. See how it stacks up in our free Eventbrite alternative comparison, or the wider cost-of-selling-tickets guide.
Frequently asked questions
Is it really possible to sell event tickets with no fees?
You can sell with no platform or booking fee — that's the cut a ticketing company takes. You can't avoid card processing entirely (the card networks and your payment processor charge to move money), but you can avoid any markup on top of it by using a platform that passes processing through at cost.
Who pays the card processing fee?
By default the organiser absorbs it, but most platforms let you pass it on to the buyer at checkout if you prefer. Either way, with a 0%-commission platform that's the only fee involved.
Can I pass booking fees on to attendees?
On fee-charging platforms, the booking fee is usually added to the buyer's total automatically — which raises your ticket's effective price and can hurt conversion. On a free platform there's no booking fee to pass on in the first place.
Is free ticketing worth it for paid events?
Yes — that's where it saves the most. On a £25 ticket a typical 6.95% + £0.59 platform fee is about £2.33 per ticket; across a sold-out event that's hundreds of pounds you keep instead.