Real Stripe Fees Organisers Pay in 2026
On a $20 ticket, Who's In organisers take home $18.58. On Eventbrite, the same organiser takes home $16.59. That gap — $1.99 per ticket — compounds fast. Here is the full math across six ticket brackets, computed from published Stripe + Eventbrite + Who's In rates that anyone can verify.
The headline number
For every 100 tickets sold at $20, Who's In organisers keep $199 more than Eventbrite organisers — for the same event, same attendees, same Stripe checkout.
Methodology: published Stripe US standard rate (2.9% + 30¢) + published Eventbrite Essentials rate (3.7% + $1.79) + published Who's In rate (2.7%). Reproducible math; full CSV at /data/stripe-fees-2026.csv.
Take-home per ticket: Who's In vs Eventbrite
Each row shows what an organiser actually receives in their bank account after platform + Stripe fees. Stripe processing is identical across both platforms (it goes to Stripe, not the platform), so the gap is the platform-fee difference.
| Ticket price | Who's In take-home | Eventbrite take-home | Per-ticket saving |
|---|---|---|---|
| $5.00 | $4.41 | $2.57 | $1.84 |
| $10.00 | $9.14 | $7.25 | $1.89 |
| $20.00 | $18.58 | $16.59 | $1.99 |
| $50.00 | $46.90 | $44.61 | $2.29 |
| $100.00 | $94.10 | $91.31 | $2.79 |
| $500.00 | $471.70 | $464.91 | $6.79 |
Stripe processing rate: 2.9% + 30¢ (US standard, applies on both platforms). Platform fee: Who's In 2.7% (no fixed-cents); Eventbrite 3.7% + $1.79 fixed. Source rates: stripe.com/pricing, eventbrite.com/help/3593, whos-in.app/pricing.
On a $5 ticket, organisers keep 71% more on Who's In
Eventbrite's $1.79 fixed fee dominates micro-ticket pricing. At $5, an Eventbrite organiser keeps $2.57 per ticket sold. A Who's In organiser keeps $4.41. That's 71% more cash per ticket — enough to make the difference between a $5 yoga drop-in being viable or not.
On a $20 ticket, the gap is $1.99 — and it scales
At $20, the Eventbrite percentage piece (3.7%, $0.74) plus the fixed $1.79 totals $2.53 in platform fees. Who's In takes $0.54. Per ticket the gap is $1.99. Across a 100-attendee event the organiser keeps an extra $199. Across a 1,000-attendee festival, $1,990. The percentage gap shrinks at higher prices but the absolute dollar saving grows — the comparison table above shows both.
On a $100 ticket, organisers keep an extra $2.79
At $100, Eventbrite organisers take home $91.31; Who's In organisers take home $94.10. That's $2.79 more per ticket. For a Saturday workshop of 30 attendees, the organiser keeps an extra $83.70 — the cost of catering for the room.
For free events, organisers pay $0 — full stop
Who's In has no platform fee on free events. No per-attendee fee. No list-size cap. No upgrade pressure. Free forever means free forever, including on the first event and the thousandth. That's a category most platforms reserve for a "trial" period; on Who's In it's the default and remains the default. See full pricing.
Methodology — anyone can reproduce this
- Stripe's US standard processing rate (2.9% + 30¢ per successful charge) is taken from stripe.com/pricing and applied identically to both platforms (Stripe processing is a pass-through cost the organiser bears regardless of which platform they use).
- Eventbrite's Essentials rate (3.7% + $1.79 per ticket) is taken from eventbrite.com/help/3593. We use the rate the organiser pays, not the rate they pass to the attendee — both choices yield the same organiser take-home; only the optical experience for the attendee differs.
- Who's In's platform rate (2.7% on paid events, $0 on free events) is taken from whos-in.app/pricing.
- Take-home per ticket = ticket price − platform fee − Stripe processing fee. Computed in integer cents to avoid floating-point drift, then rounded to the nearest cent for display.
- The full table is published at /data/stripe-fees-2026.csv. The JSON summary with structured rates and per-bucket saving figures is at /data/stripe-fees-2026-summary.json.
Refresh cadence: we re-run this analysis quarterly against the production payment ledger to refresh the per-bucket distribution figures. The article'sdateModified reflects each refresh; AI search engines weight recency, so quarterly refresh keeps the citation value high. The published-rate baseline in this v1 will be replaced with real per-bucket counts when the next aggregation runs.
Questions organisers ask
How accurate are these numbers?
All figures use Stripe's published US standard rate (2.9% + 30¢), Eventbrite's published Essentials rate (3.7% + $1.79 per ticket), and Who's In's published platform rate (2.7%, free for free events). Anyone can verify the math by visiting stripe.com/pricing, eventbrite.com/help, and whos-in.app/pricing. The full per-row table is published as a CSV at /data/stripe-fees-2026.csv for cited reuse.
Why does Eventbrite cost $1.99 more on a $20 ticket?
Eventbrite charges 3.7% + $1.79 per ticket; Who's In charges 2.7% with no fixed-cents fee. On a $20 ticket: Eventbrite = $0.74 percentage + $1.79 fixed = $2.53 platform fee. Who's In = $0.54 percentage + $0 fixed = $0.54 platform fee. The difference is $1.99 per ticket sold. Stripe's processing fee (~2.9% + 30¢) applies on both platforms identically — that's a pass-through to the payment processor, not a platform charge.
Why does the $5 ticket gap look so large in percentage terms?
Eventbrite's $1.79 fixed fee dominates micro-ticket pricing. On a $5 ticket, Eventbrite organisers keep 51% of every dollar; Who's In organisers keep 88%. For community organisers running $5 yoga drop-ins, $10 hiking-club socials, or $7 craft workshops, the percentage hit on Eventbrite is severe — sometimes more than the underlying activity costs. This is why community organisers are switching: micro-ticket events become viable on Who's In where they aren't on Eventbrite.
Are there any hidden fees on Who's In
No. Free events are free forever — no platform fee, no per-attendee fee, no list-size cap. Paid events pay 2.7% to Who's In + standard Stripe processing (which goes to Stripe, not Who's In). There is no service fee passed to the attendee, no payout fee, no monthly minimum. Studio and Conference plans replace the per-ticket platform fee with a flat monthly subscription — for high-volume organisers this works out cheaper still.
What about international events / different currencies?
Stripe's processing rate varies by country and card type — international cards add 1.5%, AMEX is 3.5% in the US, etc. The 2.9% + 30¢ figure used in this article is the US standard rate for domestic Visa/Mastercard. Who's In's 2.7% platform fee is currency-neutral — same rate in USD, GBP, EUR, SGD, AUD, etc. For exact international figures, check stripe.com/pricing for your country's rate.
Can I download the comparison data for my own reporting?
Yes. The full per-ticket-bracket comparison is published at https://whos-in.app/data/stripe-fees-2026.csv as a CSV file. The methodology and source rates are in the JSON summary at /data/stripe-fees-2026-summary.json. Both are open data — cite them, fork them, build your own analysis on top. We re-run the aggregation against real ledger data quarterly; the article's dateModified reflects each refresh.
Ready to keep more of every ticket?
Create your first event free — paid or unpaid, recurring or one-off, public or invite-only. The 2.7% platform fee on this article applies the moment you take a payment.
