Glossary
Service fee
A service fee in online ticketing is a charge a ticketing platform adds on top of the face value of a ticket. It is paid by the buyer at checkout and goes to the platform, not the event organizer. The fee covers the platform's software, infrastructure, customer support, and (depending on the platform) its profit margin.
How it shows up at checkout
A service fee usually appears as a line item between the ticket price and the total. If a ticket is listed at $20 and the platform's service fee is a hypothetical $3, the buyer sees:
- Ticket: $20.00
- Service fee: $3.00
- Total: $23.00
The exact amount varies by platform. Some platforms charge a flat dollar amount, some charge a percentage, and some do both. Some charge nothing on top of the ticket and instead take their cut out of the organizer's side. The structure matters because of who feels it. If the fee is on the buyer, the ticket costs more than the organizer set it at. If it is on the organizer, the buyer sees no platform fee on top of the ticket.
Not the same as payment processing
Service fees are separate from card processing. Card networks (Visa, Mastercard, Amex) and processors (Stripe, PayPal, Square, Adyen) charge a small percentage and a flat per-transaction cost on every successful payment. Stripe's standard US online card rate is 2.9% plus 30 cents per successful transaction, and that money goes to Stripe and the card networks, not the ticketing platform. A ticket platform's service fee is what the platform charges on top of those processing costs.
What DIY Stubs charges
DIY Stubs charges a flat 3% of each paid ticket, called a platform fee. The organizer chooses, per event, who covers it: the organizer (they keep 97% of face value) or the buyer, as a clearly labeled "Platform fee" line at checkout (the organizer keeps 100% of face value). Buyers pay Stripe's 2.9% + 30¢ card processing as its own line either way, plus tax where it applies. On a $20 ticket, the buyer pays about $20.91, or about $21.53 when they cover the 3%.
Related
- Convenience fee, another common name for largely the same thing.
- Gross vs net revenue, which is how to keep fees from shrinking your payout unnoticed.
- DIY Stubs payouts and fees, the full reference for what we charge and how.