What ticketing platforms actually charge in India — and who pays it
chirag · · 2 min read
Three numbers, not one
Whatever you are quoted, three separate things come out of an event's takings.
The platform's commission is the one people compare. It is usually a percentage of the ticket price, and it is usually taken out of your money.
The payment gateway's charge is not the platform's. Razorpay and everyone like them take a cut of whatever they process, and GST applies on top of their fee. It depends on how the buyer paid — UPI is routinely zero-rated, cards sit around 2%.
GST on the ticket itself, if you are registered and the event is taxable. That is between you and your accountant, not the platform.
A quote that mentions only the first number is not a quote.
The question nobody asks: who pays it
Two platforms both saying "5%" can pay out very different amounts, because the fee can be taken from two places.
Deducted from your ticket price. You price a seat at ₹1,000, the buyer pays ₹1,000, and ₹950 reaches you. Your ₹1,000 ticket is really a ₹950 ticket.
Added to what the buyer pays. You price the seat at ₹1,000, the buyer sees ₹1,000 plus the fee as its own line, and ₹1,000 reaches you.
Same headline percentage. Materially different money. An invoice rarely spells out which one you are on, so the fastest way to find out is to look at a payout against a sale you remember.
Why a flat fee beats a percentage as your tickets get dearer
A percentage grows with your ticket price. A flat amount does not.
Selling a ₹200 ticket, 5% is ₹10. Selling a ₹2,000 ticket, the same 5% is ₹100 — for identical work. Nothing about processing a dearer ticket costs the platform ten times more.
We charge ₹2 to ₹3 a ticket, agreed when your organisation is set up, and the buyer pays it on top of your price. So a ₹2,000 ticket costs the same to sell as a ₹200 one, and the money that reaches your bank is the full face value less the gateway's own cut.
Free events stay free
If a ticket is ₹0, our fee is ₹0. Not a reduced rate, not a per-ticket charge, not a listing fee. There is no payment to process, so there is no gateway cost either. Worth checking on any platform you are comparing — "free" sometimes means "free until you cross 100 registrations".
Work it out on your own numbers
Put your ticket price, the number of people you expect, and whatever you are paying now into the calculator. It uses the same arithmetic the checkout does, so the figure it shows is the figure you would receive.
If a platform cannot tell you, in one sentence, whether its fee comes out of your price or goes on top of it, that is the answer.
- pricing
- fees
- organisers
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