How can I sell event tickets without platform fees?

A paid ticket usually carries up to three layers of cost:

1. Payment processing — the bank or payment provider charges a percentage (sometimes plus a fixed amount) for moving the money. Nobody can avoid this layer; it is the price of accepting cards.
2. Platform or service fee — many ticketing platforms add their own fee per ticket, paid either by the buyer on top of the price or deducted from your payout.
3. Payout timing and currency conversion — if the platform collects the money first, you wait for a payout and may pay conversion costs.

"No platform fees" means removing layer 2 and, ideally, layer 3: the guest pays you directly, you receive the money in your own account, and the tool earns elsewhere (for example from a subscription). Layer 1 stays, which is why "0% platform fee" never means "0% total cost".

In AET the organizer is the merchant. You connect your own payment account once:

• plata by mono — monobank's internet acquiring for Ukrainian businesses (a sole proprietor, FOP, or a company). You paste your mono token. The Ukrainian setup, including fiscal receipts, is covered in how to accept event payments in Ukraine.
• Stripe — for organizers in countries where Stripe operates (Ukraine is not one of them at the moment). You paste a restricted Stripe key; AET registers the webhook itself.

The key is checked with a live request, stored encrypted and afterwards displayed only as a mask. A key you already connected to your shop or another event can be reused.

When a guest buys, they are sent to your provider's payment page and come back with a ticket. Payment statuses arrive from the provider through webhooks. AET does not hold the money at any point, which is why it can charge 0%: it earns only from the optional Pro subscription (29 USD a month or 290 USD a year, see the pricing page).

One event uses either paid registration or seat tickets, not both at once. Seat maps are explained step by step in how to sell reserved seats with a seating chart; the approval flow in how to collect applications and approve attendees.

For paid registration: the guest fills in your form, goes to the payment page of your provider, pays, and returns to the event page with a QR ticket that is also emailed with a PDF.

For seat tickets: the guest chooses a number of tickets or seats, enters a name and email (optionally a name for each ticket), sees a cart with a hold timer, pays, and receives one email per ticket with its own QR code. "Your tickets" on the page shows what they bought and can resend the email. No account is required for seat tickets.

At the door every ticket is scanned individually; the scanner flags unpaid and refunded tickets. The full door routine is in how to run QR code check-in.

Assumptions: US cards, one ticket per order, processing calculated on the ticket price (for Eventbrite, whose default buyer-paid fee is part of the order, on the ticket plus that fee, as Eventbrite charges it), platform fees as published on each vendor's own site on 2026-10-01. The formula is per ticket; the totals multiply it by the number of tickets.

How to read it:

• Fixed per-ticket fees hurt cheap tickets most. On a 10 USD ticket, Eventbrite's 1.79 USD fixed part alone is 17.9% of the price.
• A subscription only pays off at volume. Luma Plus beats Luma's free plan once 5% of your monthly sales exceeds the subscription.
• Who pays matters. On Eventbrite the buyer pays the fee by default, so the cost appears as a higher checkout total for your guests; if you absorb it, your payout shrinks instead.

Sources: stripe.com/pricing, ti.to/pricing, luma.com/pricing, eventbrite.com/organizer/pricing (checked 2026-10-01). More platforms and the full arithmetic: ticket fees compared.

With AET in Ukraine you pay only plata by mono: 1.3% for Ukrainian cards and 2% for foreign cards, with no monthly fee, and the money arrives on your business account the next day (monobank.ua/plata-by-mono, monobank knowledge base, checked 2026-10-01).

Stripe does not support businesses registered in Ukraine (stripe.com/global, checked 2026-10-01). Ukrainian ticketing services work differently — many act as agents with a buyer service fee — and are compared in ticket-selling services in Ukraine.

You do, because you are the seller:

• Refunds are started from AET (one ticket or the whole order) and the money is returned from your account at the payment provider.
• Taxes, fiscal receipts and invoices follow the rules of your country and your business form. AET is not a payment institution and does not act as merchant of record. In Ukraine, a FOP outside single-tax group 1 generally has to issue a fiscal receipt (PRRO) for card payments.
• Chargebacks and disputes are handled in your provider's dashboard.

This is the trade-off of the direct model: lower costs and immediate access to money, in exchange for doing the seller's paperwork yourself. Platforms that act as merchant of record take on some of this work and charge for it. Payout timing depends on your provider, not on AET.

• Calling it "free". 0% platform fee still leaves processing. Budget 3–6% of gross for card fees on low-priced tickets, less on expensive ones.
• No refund policy on the page. Without written rules every refund becomes a negotiation. Write the deadline and the conditions in a custom section before the first sale.
• Testing with real money only after launch. Buy one ticket yourself at the lowest price, check the email, the PDF and the scan, then refund it.
• Forgetting the receipts. In countries with fiscal rules (Ukraine included), the acquirer's payment confirmation is not a fiscal receipt. Set up your PRRO or accounting before sales start.
• Hold time too short or too long. The 15-minute default works for most events; raise it (up to 60) if your guests often need longer to complete payment, for example group bookings where one person pays for several friends; lower it (down to 10) for a hot release where seats should return quickly.
• Mixing two sale modes. One event uses paid registration or seat tickets. If you need a free "registration" and paid tickets, decide which is the main entry document and design around it.
• No plan for the door. Paid events attract screenshots and forwarded tickets. Add co-admins as scanners and test the scanner before doors open.
• Selling seats you need. Reserve seats for staff, press, sponsors and accessibility before you open sales.

1. Business payment account ready: a mono acquiring account in Ukraine, or Stripe where it is available.
2. Prices, tier names, seat limits and an old price if you run an early-bird discount.
3. Refund and transfer policy written on the event page.
4. Contact for questions (email or messenger) in the Contacts section.
5. Test purchase made, ticket email received, test ticket scanned and refunded.
6. Fiscal receipts or invoicing set up according to your country's rules.
7. Co-admins added for check-in (Free: 1 per event, Pro: up to 10).
8. Participant export and the orders table checked, so you know where to look on the day.
9. Short link and QR code on posters, social posts and the venue's listing.

• You need buyers you do not have yet. Marketplaces such as Eventbrite show events to people browsing nearby; part of the fee pays for that reach. See Eventbrite alternatives with lower fees for the options in between.
• You cannot open a merchant account. If you have no business account with a payment provider, a platform that collects money for you is the practical route.
• You want someone else to handle disputes and tax documents as merchant of record.
• You are a registered nonprofit. Zeffy says it charges nonprofits 0 USD and covers card fees, funded by optional donor tips (zeffy.com/pricing, checked 2026-10-01) — cheaper than paying processing yourself.
• Your tickets are expensive. A flat per-ticket fee, such as Ticket Tailor's 0.60 GBP + VAT (tickettailor.com/pricing, checked 2026-10-01), is small next to a 200 USD ticket, and you get its mature tooling.
• You need native apps, box-office hardware or deep integrations (CRM, Zapier, REST API). AET has none of these today.

If none of these apply, a direct-payment tool usually leaves more money with you.