Which ticketing platform has the lowest fees? What you keep per ticket

3 November 2026 · 7 min read · By eventflo

The platform with the lowest headline fee is not always the one that leaves you the most. What matters is net per ticket: the money left after the platform fee, payment processing and anything you add or get back, and who pays each one.

This post gives you a method, a worked example with two made-up platforms, and a checklist you can run on any quote. It is not a fee table. For current headline rates, see Ticketing fees in Australia compared. Fees change, so work from each platform's own page on the day you decide, and write that date next to every figure.

Why the lowest fee is the wrong question

A headline rate answers one question: what does the platform charge? The question you need answered is what you keep.

What separates quotes is everything around the fee: whether you or the punter pays it, who pays processing, whether you can add your own booking fee, who keeps a fee when a ticket is resold, and whether a rebate is real money or your own money handed back with strings attached.

A platform that looks dearer on paper can leave you with more per ticket. The reverse happens too.

The four things that come off a ticket

Every paid ticket has up to four moving parts. Get each one in writing.

• Platform fee. What the platform charges per ticket or per order. Is it a percentage, a flat amount or both? Is there a minimum or a cap?
• Payment processing. The card fee. Some platforms bundle it into their fee, others charge it separately. Ask who pays it and what it is charged on.
• Who pays. A fee is either added on top of your price (the punter pays) or taken out of your price (you pay). That one setting can change your net more than the rate does.
• Your own fee and any rebate. Some platforms let you add a booking fee of your own and keep it. Others offer a rebate or a share back. One is yours to set. The other can come with conditions.

Also ask whether each figure includes GST. It changes the maths.

Worked example: one $50 ticket

This is an example with invented numbers. Platform A and Platform B are hypothetical and match no real offer. Say you sell 500 tickets at $50.

• Platform A charges a $3.00 platform fee on top of your price, paid by the punter. Processing is $1.50 a ticket, paid by you.
• Platform B advertises a lower fee of $2.00, taken out of your price. Processing is also $1.50, paid by you.
• To keep the arithmetic readable, processing is a flat $1.50 here. A processor may charge on the full amount the punter pays, so rerun it with your own quote.

Compare like for like first. Row one against row two looks like a $2.00 win for A, but that is only the who-pays setting: A's fee is passed on and B's is absorbed. Put B on the same setting (row three) and you keep exactly the same $48.50 on both, while the punter pays $1.00 less on B.

Once who-pays matches, the real differences are the ones left: processing, your own booking fee, rebate conditions and resale fees. Here, your own $1.00 fee adds $500 over 500 tickets, and a rebate adds $250 if its conditions are fine. If one platform's processing were $1.00 instead of $1.50, that would be another $250. Resale fees are not modelled here, so ask about them.

The catch is the punter's side. On A with your own fee, they pay $54.00 against $52.00 on B with the fee passed on. That is the trade you are making.

Pass it on or absorb it?

• Pass it on. Your net holds, but the punter sees a bigger total. Check at which screen the punter first sees the fee, and put the all-in price on your artwork.
• Absorb it. The price looks clean, but the fee comes out of your margin. A flat $1.00 fee is five percent of a $20 ticket and one percent of a $100 ticket, so flat fees weigh most on cheap tickets.
• Refunds. Ask whether the platform refunds its fee when you refund an order, and what the punter gets back.
• Resale. Ask whether a fee applies when a ticket is resold, and who keeps it.

You can also split it: absorb on an early-bird to get the first sales moving, pass it on for later releases. Check that the platform lets you set this per ticket type.

Check the rebate and any add-on fees

A rebate is your own sales money with conditions attached, so ask three questions before you count it as income:

• What is it paid out of?
• Is it tied to volume, exclusivity or a term?
• What does it cost to leave early or sell fewer tickets?

Then look at the other direction: your own fee. Ask whether you can add a booking fee, whether there is a cap, whether it applies on resale, payment plans and door sales, and whether you keep all of it. A fee you set and keep sits in your column of the table. A rebate someone else sets sits in theirs.

If you are weighing up options before you ask, our guides to Eventbrite alternatives and the best ticketing platforms in Australia cover what each one is like to sell on.

Questions to ask any platform

Run this checklist on every quote, and write the answers down.

1. What is my ticket price and expected volume? Use real numbers.
2. What is the platform fee: percentage, flat or both, with any minimum or cap, per ticket or per order, GST in or out?
3. Who pays by default, and can I switch it per ticket type?
4. Who pays processing, at what rate, and on what amount?
5. Can I add my own booking fee, and do I keep all of it?
6. Does my fee still apply on resale, payment plans and door sales?
7. What is the rebate or advance conditional on, and what does it cost to leave?
8. When does the money reach my bank, and whose account does it sit in first?
9. What happens to fees on free tickets and on refunds?
10. Can I export my buyer list and email it next time?

Then build your own version of the table above: punter pays, you keep per ticket, you keep across your volume. The platform with the highest number in the last column wins for you, whatever its headline says.

Where eventflo fits

eventflo is a ticketing platform for independent promoters. You can add your own per-ticket booking fee within an allowed range and keep all of it, and it also applies to tickets resold through FloMarket, to payment-plan orders and to door sales. On the standard setup, ticket money goes into your own Stripe account when the fan pays, and Stripe pays it to your bank on your account's payout schedule. Our own platform fee goes in your table like any other: 2% per ticket, minimum $1, capped at $5, paid by the organiser, not the fan.

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