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 Data Protection Officer
Advises a federation of sports clubs whose events collect names, employers, dietary needs and the odd wheelchair note. Reads the ticket buyer terms before the feature list, because they say whether the platform is a processor or a controller with its own newsletter. Wants a DPA that names the organiser as controller, subprocessors with their countries, and attendee lists that are deleted after the event instead of kept for marketing.
Eventbrite
pretix
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Ticket shop, checkout & registration
Eventbrite
Discount codes with early-bird and limited-time pricing, free, paid and donation ticket types, add-ons such as VIP extras, merchandise and parking, custom registration forms, waiting lists, reserved seating and timed entry are all stated, and the checkout can be embedded in the organiser's own website, Facebook page or WordPress blog with Apple Pay and Google Pay on mobile. We found no public information on group and company bookings, member prices, conditional questions, several languages or an accessibility statement for the checkout.
pretix
The shop runs white-label under the organiser's own domain with a free SSL certificate, embeds as a widget in the organiser's website, and offers a graphical seating-plan editor with seat blocking, add-on products and packages, categories and variants, pay-what-you-want items, an approval step, a waiting list, custom questions in several types, and membership products such as theatre subscriptions and multi-visit passes — in German, Dutch and English, with shop accessibility stated to EN 301 549. We found no public information on group or company bookings with several attendees per order, conditional questions, or recurring dates and course series.
Payments, payouts, fees & refunds
Eventbrite
Credit cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay are named buyer methods, with PayPal or Eventbrite's own payment processing as self-service options; fees are a service fee plus a payment processing fee that buyers pay by default unless the organiser absorbs them, and payouts are documented five days after the event, on a custom schedule, before the event or within minutes, with refunds to the original payment method, per-event refund policies and a duty to refund all buyers on cancellation. We found no public information on chargeback handling, business-buyer invoicing, partial refunds or who acts as merchant of record.
pretix
Money moves directly to the organiser: pretix states that attendees pay the ticket price straight to the organiser and that pretix does not process the money, leaving the organiser free to use Stripe, PayPal, Mollie, Adyen or their own bank, with bank transfer, SEPA direct debit via a downloadable SEPA-XML file, and payouts through Stripe "usually within a few days". We found no public information on refunds of single tickets or of a cancelled event, chargeback handling, or any platform fee and whether it could be passed on to the buyer.
VAT, invoices & accounting handoff
Eventbrite
All we found is a Payments & Taxes settings area where the organiser picks a payment processor, currency and country per event, a confirmation email carrying the ticket's QR code, and revenue reports listing fees, charges and credits. We found no public information on configurable VAT rates, invoices in the organiser's name with consecutive numbers, business buyers with VAT IDs, reverse charge, credit notes, e-invoicing or exports to a named accounting system.
pretix
pretix generates invoices automatically with configurable contents, issues them as e-invoices in ZUGFeRD format or via Peppol, supports reverse-charge invoices under § 13b UStG for cross-border EU sales, and sends data to the tax adviser through the DATEV invoice data service; the legal notice states that pretix GmbH is not the seller of the tickets. We found no public information on VAT-ID validation, net prices for business buyers, several VAT rates within one order, or cancellation invoices and credit notes.
Check-in, badges & on-site sales
Eventbrite
An organiser app for iOS and Android scans QR codes for validation, check-out or manual check-in on several devices that sync through the platform's servers, shows live arrivals, check-ins, attendance and on-site sales, and can auto-check-in tickets sold at the box office; on-site sales of tickets and merchandise with Tap to Pay and contactless payments are stated. We found no public information on offline scanning limits, badge printing, per-entrance or per-session access rules, dedicated scanner hardware or attendance certificates.
pretix
pretixSCAN scans on several devices at once in real time with duplicate-ticket prevention and an asynchronous offline mode that keeps a local copy of attendee data and syncs when a connection returns; check-in lists can be restricted per product, badges print in the organiser's own design including live printing for scanned tickets, attendance certificates issue with one click, and the pretixPOS Android app sells on site with a ZVT-interface card terminal while synchronising ticket quotas and accounting with the online shop. Hardware is part of the product line, and check-in forms can collect arbitrary additional attendee data.
Attendee data & the customer relationship
Eventbrite
The privacy policy names Eventbrite Inc. itself as the controller of personal data collected through the services for EEA and Switzerland users, with the organiser receiving registration data as a recipient, and the platform markets to those users directly — email, SMS and cross-device advertising plus personalised recommendations and newsletters behind a quarter of tickets sold — while a consumer deletion request can remove data from the organiser's view on the platform. A data processing addendum for organisers and a consumer download-and-deletion centre exist, and organiser email tools reach attendees, but we found no public information on organiser-side export at any time, retention or anonymisation configurable per event, or a white-label set-up in which buyers see only the organiser.
pretix
The data protection documentation names the organiser as controller and pretix as processor under Art. 28 GDPR, a data processing agreement can be signed from within the account, and the white-label shop together with the organiser's own customer accounts and memberships keeps the buyer relationship with the organiser, backed by a REST API for taking data out. We found no public information on deletion or anonymisation of attendee data after the event, retention settings, newsletter consent in the checkout, or whether the platform markets other events to the organiser's buyers.
European sovereignty
Eventbrite
The contracting entity is Eventbrite, Inc., a Delaware company headquartered in San Francisco, with an EU representative named in Cork, Ireland; a data processing addendum for organisers, a DPA for processors and a published subprocessor list exist, and PCI compliance is stated for payments. We found no public information on where attendee, order and payment data are hosted, on the countries of the subprocessors the list names, or on ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certifications — only subprocessor categories such as advertising, hosting, email and payments partners are given.
pretix
The contracting entity is pretix GmbH of Heidelberg, registered at Amtsgericht Mannheim, presented as made in Germany, ISO 27001 certified and GDPR-conform, hosting on 100% green electricity, with a data processing agreement available — yet the captured pages state no hosting location and name no subprocessors, and the recommended payment providers include the American Stripe. For attendee lists carrying names, employers and dietary or accessibility answers, where the data sits and who else in the chain touches it remains unproven.
Pricing transparency
Eventbrite
The model itself is public: publishing is free, free events carry no ticket fees, paid tickets carry a service fee plus a payment processing fee that buyers pay by default unless the organiser absorbs them, fees vary by package, country and currency, Eventbrite Pro is quoted „ab 15 $/Monat" with a 50% non-profit discount, and ads cost extra. The actual per-ticket fee figures, payment processing amounts, VAT treatment of the fees, refund and payout fees and hardware rental are not published, so an organiser cannot compute the cost of an event from the captured pages; custom pricing runs through the sales team.
pretix
A prices page is listed among the vendor's legal documents, test events incur no fees, and the organiser keeps a free choice of payment provider. We found no public information on the fee per paid ticket, payment processing fees, or whether the organiser or the buyer pays them, so the real cost of an event cannot be computed from the captured 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.