Eventbrite Is Taking More of Your Ticket Money Than You Think — Here’s What UK Event Organisers Are Switching To

If you’ve ever looked at your Eventbrite payout and wondered why it’s noticeably smaller than the number of tickets you sold multiplied by the price you set, you’re not imagining it. Eventbrite’s fee sits on top of every paid ticket, it scales with your ticket price rather than staying flat, and it’s rarely the only thing costing UK organisers money or control. The checkout happens on Eventbrite’s marketplace rather than your own site, the payout lands in your account days after the event is already over, and if you need to move a date, Eventbrite’s own postponement policy limits how much say you actually have over refunds.

None of that is a secret — it’s published in Eventbrite’s own help centre. But most organisers have never actually sat down and worked out what it adds up to across a real month of ticket sales, or looked at what a purpose-built alternative changes underneath the fee line. This article does both.

The fee, side by side

Eventbrite’s UK service fee is currently 6.95% of the ticket price, plus a flat 59p, per paid ticket — confirmed directly from Eventbrite’s help centre. There’s no separate payment processing charge on top in the UK; that 6.95% + £0.59 is the whole of it. The catch is the percentage: the fee grows every time you raise your ticket price, so a more successful, higher-value event actually costs you more per ticket to run, not less.

Fliko charges a flat £0.50 platform fee per ticket, regardless of the ticket price, plus 2% on any food, drink or merchandise sold through the same checkout (a line Eventbrite doesn’t really compete on, since it has no built-in concessions or F&B module). Card processing runs separately through Stripe at their standard UK rate (1.5% + £0.20 per transaction), on top of that 50p — included below so the comparison is apples-to-apples against Eventbrite’s all-in fee.

	Eventbrite (UK)	Fliko (incl. Stripe processing)
Fee per paid ticket	6.95% + £0.59	£0.50 + 1.5% + £0.20
Fee on F&B / merch sold at checkout	No native module	2%
Fee on a £15 ticket	£1.63	£0.93
Fee on a £30 ticket	£2.68	£1.15
Fee on a £60 ticket	£4.76	£1.60

What that looks like across a real month

Take a mid-size UK organiser selling 400 tickets a month at an average price of £25:

• Eventbrite: 400 × (£25 × 6.95% + £0.59) ≈ £931/month
• Fliko: 400 × (£0.50 + £25 × 1.5% + £0.20) ≈ £430/month
• Estimated monthly saving: ≈ £501
• Estimated annual saving: ≈ £6,010

Your own numbers will differ depending on ticket volume, average price, how many buyers pay with non-UK cards (Stripe charges more for EEA and international cards) and how many events you run — but the shape of the gap holds at almost any scale, because one fee is a percentage of ticket price and the other mostly isn’t. (Exact figures should be checked against Eventbrite’s and Stripe’s current published UK pricing before you rely on them for a specific decision — fees are a moving target industry-wide.)

Set your own booking fee — and keep every penny

Here’s the one most organisers don’t see coming: Fliko lets you set your own booking or convenience fee on top of every ticket — fixed, percentage, or both — and 100% of it goes into your account. Not Fliko’s. Yours, in full, every time.

On Eventbrite, the only way to build in extra margin is to raise your ticket price — and because Eventbrite’s fee is a percentage, Eventbrite takes a bigger cut of that too, every single time you try to earn more. On Fliko, the booking fee sits completely outside Fliko’s own flat 50p charge, so raising it doesn’t hand the platform a bonus — it just pays you.

Add a flat £1 booking fee to the same 400-tickets-a-month organiser from the example above, and that’s an extra £400 a month — nearly £4,800 a year — going straight into the organiser’s pocket instead of getting quietly skimmed by a percentage fee. Stack that on top of the fee saving already covered above, and switching isn’t just cheaper. It’s a genuine new revenue line, funded entirely by the organiser’s own decision, not the platform’s.

Sell the drink before they’ve even walked in

Eventbrite sells tickets. It doesn’t sell the pint, the T-shirt or the tub of popcorn — there’s no concessions module, so every one of those sales is left to chance: whether someone’s willing to queue for it later, once they’re already inside and thinking about finding their seat rather than reaching for their wallet again.

Fliko puts food, drink and merch straight into the same checkout as the ticket — one upsell step, shown at the exact moment the customer is already paying and already in a buying mood. No separate app, no second queue at a bar five people deep, no relying on someone to notice the merch stand on their way past. It’s the easiest sale an organiser will ever make, because it happens before the doubt has a chance to set in.

The upside runs both ways. Every add-on sold at checkout is extra profit per customer that would otherwise be left on the table — and every one of those sales that doesn’t happen at the bar on the night is one less person standing in line, which means faster service, shorter queues, and a smoother night for everyone still waiting to be served. Fliko takes 2% of whatever gets added at checkout; the rest belongs to the organiser.

It’s not just the fee — it’s when you actually get paid

Even organisers who’ve made peace with Eventbrite’s percentage are often less prepared for the payout delay. Eventbrite processes payouts a few business days after your event ends, and from there it’s down to your bank — UK organisers typically see funds land around 4–5 working days after the event has already finished. If you’ve got suppliers, venue hire or staff to pay before or during the event, that’s cash flow you don’t have when you need it most.

Fliko’s payouts work the other way round: you get paid as soon as the ticket is sold, not after the event. For an organiser running back-to-back events, or one big annual event that needs deposits paid to suppliers well in advance, that difference in timing is often worth more than the fee saving on its own.

Your checkout, not theirs

When someone buys a ticket through a standard Eventbrite listing, they’re buying it on eventbrite.com — inside Eventbrite’s marketplace, creating an Eventbrite account, browsing Eventbrite’s recommendations for other events. Eventbrite does offer an embeddable checkout widget for organisers willing to add custom code to their own website, but even there, the account created at checkout still belongs to Eventbrite, not you.

Fliko’s checkout runs entirely on the organiser’s own website and domain from the first click to the confirmation email — there’s no marketplace page, no competing events shown next to yours, and no forced account creation with a third party. The customer relationship — name, email, order history — belongs to the organiser, not the platform, which matters the moment you want to email past attendees about your next event instead of hoping they remember you.

Rescheduling without losing control of your refunds

Eventbrite’s postponement policy gives organisers a window to reschedule an event on their own terms — but after that grace period, it requires organisers to honour individual refund requests, and if an organiser doesn’t, Eventbrite can step in and issue the refund itself at the organiser’s expense. In practice, that means the decision about what happens to an attendee’s money doesn’t stay entirely in the organiser’s hands.

On Fliko, rescheduling and refunding are two separate, organiser-controlled actions. Moving a session keeps existing tickets valid automatically — the dates roll over, stale ticket PDFs are invalidated, and every ticket holder gets an automatic email about the new date, with no refund triggered unless the organiser chooses to issue one. For attendees who do want their money back, refunds can go out by card, bank transfer, cash or store voucher, individually or as a single batch action across an entire cancelled session — without the platform overriding what the organiser decides.

One system for every way you actually sell tickets

Most independent organisers don’t sell tickets through a website alone — there’s a box office table at the door, a friend on a card reader, a last-minute walk-up sale. Eventbrite is built almost entirely around the online listing; anything happening in person tends to live in a separate system, or a separate spreadsheet.

Fliko runs website sales, an on-site box office point of sale, and a self-service kiosk off the same backend, so a ticket sold at the door and a ticket sold online come out of the same inventory and land in the same report — no reconciling two systems the next morning to work out what actually sold. Seat selection, discount codes, gift vouchers, and an F&B or merch upsell step all sit inside the same checkout flow, whichever channel the sale happens on.

The bottom line

None of this is about Eventbrite being a bad product — for a one-off free meetup, it’s a perfectly reasonable, low-effort choice. But for an organiser running paid events regularly, the percentage fee, the delayed payout, the marketplace checkout and the limited say over refund policy are all working against margin and control at the same time, every single event. A flat fee, a payout that lands before the event even ends, a checkout that stays on your own site, and a rescheduling flow that doesn’t force your hand on refunds — those aren’t small conveniences stacked on top of each other. They’re the difference between an event platform that’s quietly built around its own audience, and one that’s built around yours.

Frequently asked questions

How much cheaper is Fliko than Eventbrite for UK event organisers?
Eventbrite charges 6.95% of the ticket price plus £0.59 per paid ticket, all-in with card processing included. Fliko charges a flat £0.50 platform fee per ticket, plus Stripe’s separate UK card processing rate (1.5% + £0.20). Once you add processing to both sides, an organiser selling 400 tickets a month at an average £25 saves roughly £501 a month, or around £6,010 a year — smaller than the headline “50p vs 6.95%” gap suggests, but still a substantial, real saving.

Does Fliko charge a percentage fee like Eventbrite does?
Fliko’s own platform fee is a flat £0.50 per paid ticket no matter the price — but that’s separate from card processing, which Fliko passes through at Stripe’s own rate (1.5% + £0.20 per UK card transaction) rather than bundling it into one blended number the way Eventbrite does. The only percentage-based fee Fliko itself charges is 2% on food, drink or merchandise sold through the checkout, which is optional and only applies if you sell those items.

Can I add my own booking fee on Fliko, and who keeps it?
Yes. Organisers can set their own booking or convenience fee on top of Fliko’s own charge — fixed, percentage-based, or both — and keep 100% of it. On Eventbrite, any service fee charged to the buyer goes to Eventbrite rather than the organiser.

Can I sell food, drinks or merch during the ticket checkout on Fliko?
Yes. Fliko adds an upsell step to the same checkout as the ticket purchase, so buyers can add food, drink or merch while they’re already paying, rather than queuing separately at a bar or stall later. Eventbrite has no built-in concessions module, so that sale doesn’t happen through the platform at all. Fliko takes 2% of that add-on revenue; the rest is the organiser’s.

How fast does Fliko pay out ticket sales compared to Eventbrite?
Eventbrite typically pays out a few business days after your event ends, with UK organisers usually seeing funds around 4–5 working days later. Fliko makes funds available as soon as the ticket is sold, not after the event, which matters for cash flow on supplier payments, venue hire or staffing costs.

Can I sell tickets on my own website instead of sending buyers to Eventbrite’s marketplace?
Yes. Fliko’s checkout runs entirely on the organiser’s own domain from browsing through to confirmation, with no marketplace page or competing events shown. Eventbrite does offer an embeddable checkout option, but the buyer’s account is still created within Eventbrite’s system.

Can I reschedule an event on Fliko without being forced to refund everyone?
Yes. Rescheduling a session on Fliko automatically keeps existing tickets valid for the new date and notifies attendees — no refund is triggered unless the organiser chooses to issue one, either individually or as a single batch action.

Will I lose my existing customer data if I switch from Eventbrite to Fliko?
No. Eventbrite lets organisers export their past attendee data, which can then be imported straight into Fliko, so your existing buyer list moves with you rather than staying locked in Eventbrite’s system. Going forward on Fliko, every buyer’s name, email and order history belongs to the organiser rather than the platform, so it’s available for direct remarketing to future events.

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Fee figures are based on Eventbrite’s published UK organiser pricing (6.95% + £0.59 per paid ticket, all-in with no separate payment processing fee) and UK payout timing as documented in Eventbrite’s help centre; Fliko’s £0.50 platform fee plus Stripe’s standard UK card-processing rate (1.5% + £0.20 per transaction, published by Stripe); all checked in September 2026. Confirm current rates at eventbrite.co.uk and stripe.com/gb/pricing before relying on them for a specific decision.

Ready to see what your own numbers look like? Fliko is free to set up, pay-as-you-go with no subscription and no long contracts — get in touch through fliko.app to run a comparison against your actual ticket volume and pricing.