As of 30 Oct 2026, the panel rates Eventbrite 2/5 and pretix 3/5 in Event Registration & Ticketing. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 0 of the 6 judges pick Eventbrite and 6 pick pretix. pretix scores higher on 6 of 6 criteria (VAT, invoices & accounting handoff, Check-in, badges & on-site sales, Attendee data & the customer relationship, plus 3 more). Provenance — Eventbrite: Rest of world; pretix: EU-Made. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
On the criteria, pretix takes the larger share of the bench: on shop and registration (7.5 vs 5.0), invoicing and tax (6.8 vs 2.5), check-in and onsite (8.0 vs 4.7) and attendee data ownership (6.0 vs 3.0), 6 judges lean pretix and 0 lean Eventbrite; sovereignty leans 4 pretix, 0 Eventbrite, with 2 ties (4.2 vs 2.8). Eventbrite leads pricing transparency, 5 judges to 1 (3.3 vs 3.0). Payments and fees is the genuine split: means 5.5 vs 6.3, with 2 judges leaning Eventbrite, 1 pretix and 3 ties. Judge totals differ sharply for Eventbrite — 0.0 to 4.7 — versus 5.8 to 7.1 for pretix. Sovereignty attributes: pretix lists a German legal entity, EU-only data residency and US Cloud Act subprocessor exposure; Eventbrite lists US jurisdiction, with ownership, data residency and subprocessor exposure listed as unknown. pretix's verdicts carry no pricing weight, as it publishes no prices.
Choose Eventbrite if
You need a published price before committing: 5 judges lean Eventbrite on pricing transparency, and the verdict records free publishing, no service fees on free tickets and Pro at 'ab 15 $/Monat'.
You take card, Apple Pay, Google Pay or PayPal at checkout: payments and fees is the split criterion, leaning Eventbrite 2 judges to 1 with 3 ties.
You depend on payouts arriving before the event or within minutes to five days after it: the payments and fees lean, 2 to 1 with 3 ties, sits on this payout timing.
Your procurement requires a US-incorporated counterparty: Eventbrite's legal entity jurisdiction attribute is listed as US.
Choose pretix if
You run onsite check-in: check-in and onsite means 8.0 versus 4.7, with 6 judges leaning pretix to 0 — the verdict credits realtime multi-device scanning with duplicate prevention, an offline mode and an Android box office.
Your finance team needs invoicing and tax handling: means 6.8 versus 2.5, with 6 judges leaning pretix to 0.
Your data protection officer asks for documented GDPR roles: attendee data ownership leans pretix 6 judges to 0, means 6.0 versus 3.0, and the verdict documents controller and processor roles under Art. 28 GDPR.
Attendee data must stay in the EU: pretix's data residency attribute is EU-only, and sovereignty leans 4 pretix, 0 Eventbrite, with 2 ties.
Your events rest on the shop and registration experience: means 7.5 versus 5.0, with 6 judges leaning pretix to 0.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Course Provider
Runs a small adult education business: evening courses over eight weeks, weekend workshops for coaches, and a few seminars that employers pay for. Wants registrations with the questions each course needs, a waiting list that fills a cancelled seat by itself, VAT that is right for exempt teaching and taxable workshops in one shop, invoices to employers in her own name, and cancellation rules her terms can point to.
Eventbrite
pretix
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Ticket shop, checkout & registration
Eventbrite
The pages show free, paid and donation ticket types, early-bird and discount codes, custom registration forms for collecting course answers, add-ons, a waiting list, reserved seating and timed entry, plus a checkout I can embed on my own website. I found no public information on a shop under my own domain, group bookings with several attendees per order, conditional questions, several languages, or a stated accessibility level for the checkout.
pretix
My shop can run under my own domain and design with German, Dutch and English languages and an EN 301 549 accessible checkout, and I can ask as many registration questions as I like in free text, multiple choice or file upload, with an approval step for each participant. Categories, variants, add-on product packages, pay-what-you-want, customer accounts for things like ten-visit passes, a graphical seating-plan editor with seat blocking, and a waiting list with a two-day notification window cover most of my course administration. We found no public information on group bookings with several attendees per order, conditional questions, member prices, or recurring dates and course series.
Payments, payouts, fees & refunds
Eventbrite
Buyers pay by credit card, Apple Pay or Google Pay, and I can choose between my own PayPal account and Eventbrite's built-in processing; payouts before the event, instant payouts and a default schedule of five days after the event are stated, with refunds, a customizable refund policy and a seven-day response window handled in the product. The service fee is only described as varying by package, country and currency with no figure published, and I found no public information on invoice or bank transfer payment for employers or on chargeback handling.
pretix
The model is documented plainly: participants pay the ticket price directly to me, pretix does not process the money, and I route payments through my own bank or one of dozens of providers from Stripe, PayPal, Mollie and Adyen to SumUp and Square, with bank transfer, SEPA direct debit, cards, PayPal, Klarna and TWINT named as methods. Payout timing appears only in the note that Stripe pays out 'usually within a few days', and Mollie offers strongly discounted fees to pretix customers. We found no public information on any per-ticket platform fee, refunds of single orders or of a cancelled event, ticket transfer or resale, or chargeback handling.
VAT, invoices & accounting handoff
Eventbrite
Beyond order confirmations with a QR code per ticket, the only tax-related items I found are a payments-and-taxes settings area for choosing processor, currency and country, and a note that Eventbrite collects my tax identification number. I found no public information on setting VAT rates per ticket to separate exempt teaching from taxable workshops, invoices to employers in my own name, credit notes, or exports to an accounting system.
pretix
pretix can generate invoices automatically with configurable contents, issue them as ZUGFeRD or Peppol e-invoices, hand booking data to my accountant through the DATEV invoice data service, and produce reverse-charge invoices under § 13b UStG for cross-border EU sales, while stating it is not the seller of the tickets, so the selling happens in my name. The demo shop shows per-product gross prices including 19% VAT. We found no public information on configuring exempt or reduced VAT rates per ticket, VAT ID validation for business buyers, consecutive invoice numbering, or cancellation invoices and credit notes — the exempt-teaching-versus-taxable-workshop mix my shop turns on.
Check-in, badges & on-site sales
Eventbrite
There is a check-in app for iOS and Android that scans QR codes on several devices at once, supports manual check-in, and shows check-ins, attendance and on-site sales in real time; box-office sales with auto check-in, Tap to Pay and on-site registration are also described. I found no public information on badge printing, attendance certificates for courses, offline scanning, or access rules per entrance, day or session.
pretix
pretixSCAN scans on several devices at once in real time and prevents a ticket being scanned twice, and every app supports an asynchronous offline mode holding a local copy of the participant data that syncs once a connection returns — what I need when three seminar rooms check in at the same time. Badges print in my own design or live at the scan desk, check-in lists can be restricted per product and exported as PDF or CSV, pretixPOS sells on site on Android hardware with ZVT-interface card terminals while keeping ticket quotas and accounting in sync, and attendance certificates for everyone present issue with one click after the event. We found no public information on walk-in registration or access rules per session, entrance or day.
Attendee data & the customer relationship
Eventbrite
Registration data is disclosed to me, email campaigns to my attendees are built in, and a data processing addendum for organisers is published — but for users in the EWR the privacy policy names Eventbrite Inc. itself as the responsible party, and the marketplace's own recommendations account for one in four tickets sold. I found no public information on exporting attendee data myself, making marketplace listing optional, or configuring deletion after a course ends, and a consumer deletion request can remove data from my reach on the platform.
pretix
The GDPR documentation states that I act as controller and pretix as processor under Art. 28 GDPR, offers a data processing agreement to sign inside the account, and says pretix includes no automated decision-making — the ownership stance I want, and with the shop white-labelled under my own domain my students see only me. A REST API is documented for taking data out, and check-in lists export as PDF or CSV. We found no public information on booking without a platform account, newsletter consent in the checkout, messages to attendees, deletion or anonymisation after the event, or any statement that the platform does not market other events to my buyers.
European sovereignty
Eventbrite
Eventbrite Inc. is a Delaware-registered company headquartered in San Francisco with an EU representative in Cork, publishes a data processing addendum, and states that a list of its subprocessors exists. The captured pages give no hosting location and no named subprocessors with their countries, and no security certification is stated.
pretix
The legal notice names pretix GmbH at Berthold-Mogel-Straße 1, 69126 Heidelberg, registered at Amtsgericht Mannheim under HRB 738451 with VAT ID DE337556328, and the site states Made in Germany, ISO 27001 certification and hosting on 100% green electricity. A data processing agreement is available in the account and the site states GDPR compliance. We found no public information on where attendee, order and payment data are hosted or on which infrastructure, on a subprocessor list with locations, or on the scope of the ISO 27001 certification, so beyond the German entity the chain stays unproven to me.
Pricing transparency
Eventbrite
Publishing is free, unlimited free events carry no fees, buyers pay the ticket fees by default unless I absorb them, and Eventbrite Pro is public at "ab 15 $/Monat" with a 50 % discount on Pro packages for nonprofits. The service fee itself has no published figure — it is described as varying by package, country and currency — payment processing fees depend on payout country and method, and no prices appear for reserved seating, refunds or payouts, so I cannot compute the cost of a course from these pages; the pricing page also states its price packages are available in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Ireland, without naming Germany.
pretix
A prices page is listed among the company's legal documents and was captured, yet the only confirmed pricing statement is that no fees are charged for test events; the EUR 250,00 standard and EUR 120,00 student tickets in the demo shop are example ticket prices, not pretix's charge. The payment model is transparent in structure — participants pay me directly and I choose the provider freely, with Mollie offering strongly discounted fees to pretix customers. We found no public information on any per-ticket or percentage fee, who pays it, or refund, payout, white-label or hardware prices, so I could not compute the cost of a course from these pages.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
Eventbrite
pretix
Legal entity
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting location
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting options
Not determined
Not determined
Open source
Not determined
Not determined
Data processing agreement
Not determined
Not determined
Transfer impact assessment
Not determined
Not determined
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.
As of 30 Oct 2026, the panel rates pretix higher: 3/5 against 2/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 0 of the 6 judges pick Eventbrite and 6 pick pretix. Which one fits depends on the criteria that matter to you; the table on this page shows both side by side, and each judge’s reading has its own page. Both were scored by the same AI bench under the same rubric, from public evidence only, as the methodology describes.
Is Eventbrite or pretix European?
Eventbrite is not European by provenance (Rest of world). pretix is European (EU-Made). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.