Real Stripe Fees Organisers Pay 2026 — Who's In vs Eventbrite Take-Home Math

· By Craig Pollard
Real Stripe Fees Organisers Pay 2026 — Who's In vs Eventbrite Take-Home Math

On a $20 ticket, Who's In organisers take home $18.58 vs $16.59 on Eventbrite — a $1.99 saving per ticket. Full per-bracket comparison from $5 to $500 with the published-rates math anyone can verify.

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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: across 100 tickets, $199; across 1,000, $1,990. This article publishes the full math across six ticket brackets ($5 to $500), computed from publicly verifiable Stripe + Eventbrite + Who's In rate cards. Methodology, CSV download, and JSON summary all linked — anyone can recompute.

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Who's In Events is free forever — unlimited events, RSVPs, waitlists, recurring events, QR check-in, automated reminders, and Stripe payments at a flat 2.7% on paid tickets (no per-ticket fee, no monthly fee). No signup required for your guests.

See the Events product page or compare against Eventbrite, Luma, Partiful, and Meetup.

Pricing at a glance

Compare against Eventbrite (3.7% + $1.79/ticket), Luma (7%), Mindbody ($139/mo), Cvent ($5,000+/yr) on our pricing page.

Related reading on Who's In

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About the Author

Craig Pollard

Craig Pollard is the founder of Who's In and a former Apple team lead (12 years). He writes about event technology, community building, and the future of AI-powered event discovery. Board advisor, investor, and non-executive director in technology and sports.

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Frequently Asked Questions

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.

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.

Can I download the comparison data for my own reporting?

Yes. The full per-ticket-bracket comparison is published at /data/stripe-fees-2026.csv. 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.