UK Ticketing Platforms Compared: Fees & Features

Prices checked 17 October 2026 from each provider's own published pricing. Fees change — always confirm on the provider's website before you decide. Sources are listed at the end.

What is the best box office platform for selling tickets without high fees?

There's no single cheapest ticket selling platform in the UK — it depends on your ticket price, how people book, and whether you need reserved seating. For a typical UK school or community production — tickets around £8, families booking three or four seats at a time — platforms that charge a percentage plus a small fixed fee per booking come out cheapest. In our worked example below, Your Box Office's Pay As You Go plan took £170 in total fees on £3,200 of ticket sales; the other options we priced ranged from about £180 to £374.

For pricier, unreserved events the picture changes. Ticket Tailor's prepaid credits charge a flat amount per ticket, so on £20 tickets they can work out cheaper than any percentage-based fee. Whichever platform you're considering, check three things before you commit:

• Is the fixed fee per ticket or per booking? A 20p fee per ticket costs four times as much as 20p per booking when a family buys four seats.
• Does reserved seating cost extra? On Ticket Tailor, a paid seated ticket uses two credits instead of one.
• When do you get your money? Some platforms pay as tickets sell; others hold it until after the event.

Fees at a glance

None of the four platforms charges a monthly subscription or a set-up fee. Here is how their per-sale charges compare:

Stripe's 1.5% + 20p is its standard rate for UK cards; non-UK and some premium cards cost more on any platform that processes through Stripe.

Worked example: a two-night school production

To compare like with like, we priced one realistic event on every platform: 400 tickets at £8 (£3,200 of sales) across 130 bookings — families typically buy three or four seats at once — paid with standard UK cards. All figures include VAT, and where a provider publishes a range we used its lowest rate.

* No separate reserved-seating charge is listed on the provider's pricing page.

Running several productions a year? Your Box Office's Growth plan (£180 + VAT for up to four events) brings the plan cost down to £54 per event — about £166 for the example above if you use all four.

How we worked it out

• Your Box Office Pay As You Go: 4.5% of £3,200 (£144) + 130 bookings × 20p (£26) = £170.
• Your Box Office Starter: £108 (£90 + VAT) + 2.7% of £3,200 (£86.40) + £26 = £220.40.
• Ticket Tailor credits: 400 credits at £0.264 (£0.22 + VAT) = £105.60 — or 800 credits (£211.20) when seated — plus Stripe's 1.5% (£48) and 130 × 20p (£26).
• Ticket Tailor pay as you go: 400 × £0.72 (£0.60 + VAT) = £288, plus £48 + £26 in Stripe fees.
• TicketSource: 7% + VAT (8.4%) of £3,200 = £268.80, card processing included. With your own Stripe account: 5.4% (£172.80) plus £48 + £26 in Stripe fees.
• TryBooking: 5% of £3,200 (£160) + 400 tickets × 20p (£80) = £240. With your own Stripe account: 400 × 75p (£300) plus £48 + £26 in Stripe fees.

What if your tickets cost £20?

Run the same event at £20 a ticket (£8,000 of sales) and flat per-ticket fees start to win. Ticket Tailor's prepaid credits come to about £252 for unreserved seating, against £350 on Your Box Office's Starter plan and £386 on Pay As You Go. The rule of thumb: percentage fees favour cheaper tickets; flat per-ticket fees favour pricier ones. Most school, PTA and community theatre tickets sit at the cheaper end.

Who pays the fees?

Ticket Tailor, TicketSource and TryBooking all let you pass their fees on to your audience as a booking fee at checkout. That doesn't make a platform any cheaper — it moves the cost onto the people buying tickets, and a surprise charge on the last step of checkout is a well-known reason people abandon a booking.

Your Box Office doesn't add a booking fee at checkout: the price on your poster is exactly what parents and patrons pay, and the platform fee is taken from the organiser's side. If you'd rather your audience covered the cost, build it into the ticket price openly.

Beyond the fees

When the money arrives

Cash flow matters when you have a licence fee, costume hire or a venue deposit to pay before opening night. With TicketSource's own payment processing, payouts start the Monday after your event (after your final performance, for a multi-week run); TryBooking's managed payments are transferred after your event. Ticket Tailor and Your Box Office both pay through the organiser's own Stripe account, so money arrives as tickets sell, on Stripe's standard payout schedule.

Reserved seating

If your audience chooses their own seats, check how the platform prices it. Ticket Tailor charges two credits for each paid seated ticket. On Your Box Office the seating plan builder is included on every plan, with price bands per section and the same fees whether a show is seated or unreserved.

Paying through ParentPay

Your Box Office integrates with ParentPay, so schools can take ticket payments through the system parents already use, with the money going straight into the school's ParentPay account. If your school runs on ParentPay, ask any platform you're considering whether it supports it before you sign up.

Phone and door sales

Not everyone books online. On Your Box Office, your team can take phone bookings straight onto the live seating plan — so a seat can never be sold twice — and record cash or cheque payments on the door, with every sale in one report.

Free events

If most of your events are free, Ticket Tailor, TicketSource and TryBooking each offer free ticketing allowances — check each provider's current limits, as they differ.

Which should you choose?

• Your Box Office suits schools, PTAs, theatre groups and community organisations selling tickets from around £5 to £15 — especially if you need reserved seating, ParentPay, phone and door sales, and want the money as tickets sell with no booking fee for your audience.
• Ticket Tailor's prepaid credits are worth a look if you sell higher-priced, unreserved tickets in volume.
• TicketSource and TryBooking are straightforward options if you're happy to be paid after the event — or you can connect your own Stripe account instead.

We're obviously not neutral — which is exactly why every figure on this page comes from the providers' own published pricing, shown with our working, so you can check it yourself. New to all this? Our step-by-step guide covers how to sell tickets online in the UK, from choosing a platform to the night itself.

Sources

• Ticket Tailor pricing
• TicketSource pricing and how TicketSource pays event organisers
• TryBooking UK pricing
• Your Box Office pricing

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