If you have ever run the numbers on a ticketed event, you already know the quiet tax that eats into them: commission. Most ticketing platforms take a percentage of every ticket you sell — often 2% to 10%, sometimes more once you add their “booking fee” on top of the card processing fee. On a small workshop that is annoying. On a festival doing thousands of euros in passes, it is real money that came out of your production budget, your artists, or your own pocket.
This guide is about how to sell tickets and keep all of it — what commission actually costs you, where the fees hide, and how a zero-commission setup works in practice.
What commission really costs
Commission is charged on gross ticket revenue, so it scales with your success. That is the part that stings: the better your event does, the more you pay.
Work a concrete example. Say you sell 200 passes at €60 — €12,000 in ticket revenue. A platform charging a 5% commission takes €600. Add a typical card processing fee of roughly 1.5% + €0.25 per transaction and you lose another ~€230. The processing fee is unavoidable — someone has to move the money — but the €600 commission is a choice you made when you picked the tool.
Run the same event four times a year and that one line item is €2,400 annually. For most independent organizers, that is the difference between breaking even and not.
Where the fees hide
When you compare ticketing tools, the headline “free” rarely tells the whole story. Watch for:
- Per-ticket booking fees passed to the attendee. These make your prices look higher at checkout and depress conversion, even though you did not raise the price.
- Percentage commission on gross, sometimes labelled a “service fee”.
- Payout fees to move your money from the platform’s account to your bank.
- Held funds — the platform collects the money and pays you out days or weeks later, sometimes only after the event. That is your cash flow sitting in someone else’s account.
The last one matters more than people expect. If a platform holds your ticket money until after the event, you are financing the venue deposit and the deposits on your artists out of your own savings until payout day.
How zero-commission ticketing works
The alternative is simple: the platform gives you the tools — the page, the checkout, the tickets, the check-in — and charges you a flat subscription instead of a slice of every sale. The money from each ticket goes directly into your own payment account, not the platform’s.
That is exactly how Kefi is built. You connect your own Stripe, Revolut Pay or PayPal, and when an attendee buys a pass the funds land in your account immediately. Kefi never holds your money and takes 0% commission on your ticket sales — on every plan, including the free one. You pay the standard processing fee to your payment provider (that is Stripe’s or PayPal’s fee, not ours) and nothing to us per ticket.
The trade you are making is a predictable monthly cost instead of an unpredictable percentage. For anything past a handful of tickets, the flat fee wins — and it stops punishing you for selling more.
What to check before you commit
Before you lock in a ticketing tool, get clear answers to five questions:
- Who holds the money? You want it landing in your own account, not sitting on a platform balance.
- What is the commission on ticket sales? “Free” plans often carry the highest per-ticket cut.
- When do you get paid? Instantly into your account beats a post-event payout.
- Are there fees added at the attendee’s checkout? Those hurt your conversion and your brand.
- Can you export your attendee list any time? Your audience is your asset — you should never be locked out of it.
If a tool passes all five, the commission question is basically solved.
Sell tickets, keep the ticket money
The point of running an event is not to fund a ticketing company. A zero-commission setup — flat subscription, your own payment account, instant payout, no cut on sales — keeps the economics where they belong: with you.
Kefi gives every plan its own branded event page, secure QR tickets and check-in, and 0% commission on the tickets you sell. You can build a page, open registration and start selling today, with no card needed to start. Start free and sell your tickets →