How Much Does It Cost to Sell 500 Tickets in the UK? A Platform Comparison

Short answer first: selling 500 tickets at £50 each will cost you anywhere from £825 to £2,635 in fees, depending which ticketing platform you use — a gap of over £1,800 on the exact same event. Here’s exactly how each platform arrives at its number, and the two separate charges that sit behind every ticket price.

The Two Costs Hiding in Every Ticket

Every paid ticket carries two charges layered on top of each other: a platform fee (what the ticketing company charges for the software itself) and payment processing (what Stripe, PayPal or a card network takes to actually move the money). Some UK event ticketing platforms quote a single number that already includes both. Others — including EventBookings and Ticket Tailor — quote the platform fee only, with processing charged separately by whichever payment processor you connect. Knowing which is which before you compare headline rates matters more than the rates themselves.

Our Assumptions

We’re using 500 tickets at £50 each — a £25,000 event, roughly the size of a mid-sized conference, a multi-night show, or a decent-sized festival. We’ve compared the seven platforms UK organisers ask about most: EventBookings, Ticket Tailor, TryBooking, Humanitix, TicketSource, Eventbrite and Skiddle. Every figure below is all-in — platform fee plus processing, wherever the two aren’t already bundled by the provider.

Total Cost: 500 Tickets at £50

The Actual Maths, Platform by Platform

Here’s the per-ticket formula behind each total, so you can run the numbers yourself at a different ticket price.

EventBookings charges 1% of the ticket price plus 20p as its platform fee, with Stripe or PayPal’s processing (roughly 1.5% + 20p for UK domestic cards) added on top. On a £50 ticket: platform fee = (1% × £50) + £0.20 = £0.70; processing = (1.5% × £50) + £0.20 = £0.95. Total: £1.65 per ticket, or £825 across 500.

Ticket Tailor charges a flat 60p plus VAT (around 72p) as its platform fee, with the same kind of Stripe or PayPal processing on top as EventBookings. On a £50 ticket: £0.72 + £0.95 = £1.67 per ticket, or £835 across 500 — just 10 pence a ticket more than EventBookings, which tells you how close these two actually are once processing is accounted for fairly.

TryBooking charges 5% plus 15p through its own built-in payment gateway, with VAT and processing already folded in. On a £50 ticket: (5% × £50) + £0.15 = £2.65 per ticket, or £1,325 across 500.

Humanitix charges 4.67% plus 46p, inclusive of processing. On a £50 ticket: (4.67% × £50) + £0.46 = £2.80 per ticket (rounded), or £1,400 across 500.

TicketSource charges a flat 7%, inclusive of VAT and processing. On a £50 ticket: 7% × £50 = £3.50 per ticket, or £1,750 across 500.

Eventbrite charges 6.95% plus 59p, with processing included in the UK rate. On a £50 ticket: (6.95% × £50) + £0.59 = £4.07 per ticket (rounded), or £2,035 across 500.

Skiddle charges 10% plus 27p, with a £1 minimum per ticket, processing included. On a £50 ticket: (10% × £50) + £0.27 = £5.27 per ticket, or £2,635 across 500 — the highest of the seven, driven by that 10% commission.

What Changes at a Lower Ticket Price

Run the same 500 tickets through a £20 price instead, and something genuinely interesting happens: the ranking shifts. TryBooking, whose fee leans more on a small flat component, overtakes Ticket Tailor at this lower price point, even though Ticket Tailor was marginally cheaper at £50.

EventBookings stays cheapest at every price point we tested, but the runner-up changes depending on your ticket price — which is exactly the kind of detail a straight “cheapest platform” headline misses, and exactly why it’s worth running your own numbers at your own price rather than trusting a single ranking to hold everywhere.

What These Numbers Don’t Include

A few things worth checking before you commit to a platform on fees alone:

• Stripe and PayPal’s actual current rates. Since EventBookings and Ticket Tailor both route through your own processor, check Stripe’s UK pricing or PayPal’s UK business fees directly — these sit outside any ticketing platform’s control.
• VAT treatment. Some of these fees carry VAT on top; others already include it. Confirm which applies to your own situation.

Who actually pays. Every platform here lets you choose whether the organiser absorbs the fee or passes it to attendees — our breakdown of who pays ticketing fees covers the defaults for each.

• Payout timing. Some platforms release funds as tickets sell; others hold everything until after the event.

If You’re Selling More or Fewer Than 500

Every fee structure here scales linearly — there’s no volume discount built into any of these rates at the tiers compared. Selling 1,000 tickets instead of 500 simply doubles the total; selling 250 halves it. If your ticket count is still uncertain, the per-ticket figures above are the more useful number to keep on hand, since they don’t change regardless of volume.

Bottom Line

At £25,000 in ticket revenue, the gap between the cheapest and most expensive platform here is £1,810 — a genuinely significant chunk of any event budget. EventBookings comes out cheapest at £50 a ticket, though Ticket Tailor is close enough behind that it’s worth checking both at your own ticket price before deciding, since the gap narrows and even reverses depending on what you charge. For the full comparison across every UK platform we track, see our Cheapest Ticketing Platforms in the UK breakdown or check EventBookings’ own UK pricing directly.

Fee figures current as of September 2026, based on each platform’s published UK pricing. Stripe and PayPal processing estimates use standard published UK domestic rates and are illustrative only — always confirm current rates directly with each provider before setting an event live.