# pretix — Event Registration & Ticketing

pretix by pretix GmbH holds a panel rating of 3/5 from 6 AI judges (category median 2.5/5), as of 2026-10-30. Provenance: EU-Made; sovereignty: not determined.

- Vendor: pretix GmbH (https://pretix.eu/about/de/)
- Category: [Event Registration & Ticketing](https://whats-best.ai/software/event-ticketing.md)
- Provenance (editorial classification): EU-Made
- Canonical page: https://whats-best.ai/software/event-ticketing/pretix
- Alternatives: https://whats-best.ai/software/event-ticketing/pretix/alternatives ([markdown](https://whats-best.ai/software/event-ticketing/pretix/alternatives.md))
- Data as of: 2026-11-04 · evaluated 2026-10-30 · oldest source captured 2026-10-29

**AI-generated.** Every score, rationale and verdict here is written by a panel of AI judges from public evidence — an analysis, not a hands-on test. Every fact quotes the vendor page it was read from. No score can be bought. How scores are made: https://whats-best.ai/methodology

## At a glance

- Vendor: pretix GmbH
- Headquarters: Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 1 Nov 2026
- Data hosting: Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 1 Nov 2026
- Free plan: Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 1 Nov 2026

## The panel's verdict

pretix GmbH of Heidelberg (Amtsgericht Mannheim, HRB 738451) sells event registration and ticketing as a hosted service and as self-hostable open-source software. Scores span at most one point on every criterion — no meaningful split. Its strongest area is check-in and onsite at 8: multi-device realtime scanning with duplicate prevention, an offline mode with a local copy of attendee data, and an Android box office with ZVT-interface terminals. Shop and registration follows at 7 to 8. The weakest area, apart from pricing, is sovereignty at 4 to 5: the pages state Made in Germany, ISO 27001 certification and hosting on 100% green electricity, yet we found no public information on hosting location, ownership or subprocessors. Attendee data ownership sits at 6: controller and processor roles under Art. 28 GDPR are documented, while we found no public information on deletion or anonymisation after the event. Payments score 6 to 7 — attendees pay the organiser directly; we found no public information on refunds or chargebacks. Pricing statements stop at free test events.

**Speaks for it:**
- Check-in and onsite scored 8, with multi-device realtime scanning, duplicate-ticket prevention and an offline mode that syncs when connectivity returns
- Attendees pay the ticket price directly to the organiser, via the organiser's own bank or a free choice among named providers including Stripe, PayPal, Mollie and Adyen
- Invoicing covers automatic generation, ZUGFeRD and Peppol e-invoices, a DATEV Rechnungsdatenservice export and reverse-charge invoices under § 13b UStG
- The shop runs white-label under the organiser's own domain with a free SSL certificate, a graphical seating-plan editor and accessibility stated to EN 301 549
- Controller and processor roles are documented — organiser as controller, pretix as processor under Art. 28 GDPR — with a data processing agreement signable inside the account

**Held against it:**
- Sovereignty scored 4 to 5: we found no public information on where attendee, order and payment data are hosted, on ownership or on subprocessors
- We found no public information on refunds of single orders or of a cancelled event, ticket transfer or resale, or chargeback handling
- We found no public information on deletion or anonymisation of attendee data after the event, or on retention settings
- We found no public information on group and company bookings with several attendees per order, conditional questions, or recurring dates and course series

**Best for:**
- You run conferences, seminars, workshops or concerts and want ticket revenue paid directly into your own account through your own bank or provider
- You check guests in through several doors and devices, including venues with poor connectivity, and rely on offline scanning that prevents duplicate entries
- You invoice in Germany or across EU borders and need ZUGFeRD or Peppol e-invoices, a DATEV export and reverse-charge invoices under § 13b UStG
- You sell seated events in German, Dutch or English and want a shop under your own domain with an EN 301 549 accessible checkout

**Avoid if:**
- You need the platform itself to process and pay out ticket money — in this model attendees pay the organiser directly and pretix states it does not process the money
- You must be able to state where attendee data is hosted and which subprocessors touch it before signing; sovereignty scored 4 to 5 on the captured pages
- Your attendees need a shop language other than German, Dutch or English
- You sell on site via your own bank on hardware without a ZVT interface, which the pages state in-person payments require

## Scores by judge and criterion

Scores out of 5, each judge scoring independently against the published rubric (v1). "n/r" = not rated: the vendor publishes no price, or the judge found no public information on that criterion.

| Criterion | The Conference Organiser | The Venue Promoter | The Course Provider | The Revenue Accountant | The Data Protection Officer | The Skeptic |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Ticket shop, checkout & registration | 3.5/5 | 4/5 | 3.5/5 | 4/5 | 4/5 | 3.5/5 |
| Payments, payouts, fees & refunds | 3.5/5 | 3.5/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 |
| VAT, invoices & accounting handoff | 3.5/5 | 3.5/5 | 3/5 | 3.5/5 | 3.5/5 | 3.5/5 |
| Check-in, badges & on-site sales | 4/5 | 4/5 | 4/5 | 4/5 | 4/5 | 4/5 |
| Attendee data & the customer relationship | 3/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 |
| European sovereignty | 2/5 | 2.5/5 | 2/5 | 2/5 | 2/5 | 2/5 |
| Pricing transparency | n/r | n/r | n/r | n/r | n/r | n/r |
| **Weighted verdict** | **3.5/5** | **3.5/5** | **3/5** | **3/5** | **3/5** | **3/5** |

### The judges

- **The Conference Organiser** (v1.0): Runs the annual congress of a trade association: 900 attendees over two days, member and non-member prices, workshops with twenty seats each, and half the bookings made by an assistant for three colleagues at once. Wants the shop on the association's own site, invoices that a company's accounts payable accepts without a phone call, badges printed at the door from the same data, and session check-in that counts towards continuing-education points.
- **The Venue Promoter** (v1.0): Books bands and DJs into a 250-capacity club, four nights a week, and pays the artists their guarantee before the show. Needs the ticket money before the event rather than three weeks after, a fee that buyers pay on top of a twelve-euro ticket, a door app two volunteers can run on their phones without signal in the basement, and the buyers of last month's show on a list the club can mail, not the platform.
- **The Course Provider** (v1.0): 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.
- **The Revenue Accountant** (v1.0): Keeps the books for a concert promoter and two conference organisers and gets a payout statement each month that nets ticket sales, refunds and platform fees into one number. Wants to know who sold the ticket in whose name, which VAT rate applied to each ticket, a fee invoice kept apart from the revenue, credit notes for every refund, and an export that reaches DATEV without a spreadsheet in between.
- **The Data Protection Officer** (v1.0): 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.
- **The Skeptic** (v1.0): Has seen "free for free events" turn into a fee on every paid ticket that buyers blame the organiser for, payouts held until a week after the show, and a platform that emails the organiser's audience about a rival's concert. Reads "your data belongs to you" next to buyer accounts on the platform's own app, and an export that stops at names and emails — and asks what leaving would cost.

## European sovereignty — proven facts

Built only from facts on the vendor's own pages; a dimension we could not prove is left open, never scored as zero. Headline: not determined.

| Dimension | Finding | Points | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legal entity | Not determined | — | — |
| Hosting location | Not determined | — | — |
| Hosting options | Not determined | — | — |
| Open source | Not determined | — | — |
| Data processing agreement | Not determined | — | — |
| Transfer impact assessment | Not determined | — | — |

## Key facts

Each fact is the vendor's own statement, cited to the source page it was read from ([S*n*] → Sources).

**Compliance**
- Accessibility: EN 301 549 [S1]
- Controller processor roles: Art. 28 GDPR · pretix · customer [S8]
- Custom DPA not offered: no [S8]
- DPA available: within pretix account under Your organizer > Data protection · yes [S8]
- GDPR: yes [S1]
- ISO 27001: yes [S1]
- Origin: yes [S1]

**Hosting**
- Green energy: yes [S1]

**Integrations**
- Bank transfer: manual marking · CSV bank statement upload · automatic via GoCardless [S3]
- Government sector providers: Some providers (S-Public Services, ePay21, ePayBL, pmPayment) restricted to public sector / public administration [S3]
- Mollie recommended: Mollie strongly discounted fees for pretix customers; Netherlands-based provider with wide European method coverage [S3]
- More providers on request: Additional payment providers available on request [S3]
- Paypal: PayPal Checkout supports SEPA direct debit, credit cards, 10+ regional methods; buyer needs no PayPal account [S3]
- Pos terminals requirement: pretixPOS in-person payments via own bank require a ZVT-interface terminal [S3]
- Provider country coverage: Country selector (Afghanistan through Zypern, 180+ countries) to filter compatible payment providers [S3]
- Provider matrix: Stripe · PayPal · Mollie · Adyen · Ihre Bank · Hobex · S-Public Services (GiroCheckout) · Saferpay (Worldline, SIX, PAYONE) · secupay · SumUp · VR Payment eCommerce · Zettle by PayPal · ePay21 · ePayBL · pmPayment · Authorize.net · BitPay… [S3]
- Rest API: yes [S1]
- Rest API: yes [S2]
- Rest API: yes [S7]
- SEPA direct debit xml: SEPA direct debit via downloadable SEPA-XML file for bank submission [S3]
- Stripe recommended: usually within a few days · credit cards · TWINT · Klarna · iDEAL · yes [S3]
- Website widget: yes · yes [S2]

**Legal**
- Documents available: Impressum · Preise · AGB · Datenschutz · Marke [S7]
- Entity: Heidelberg · pretix GmbH · Berthold-Mogel-Straße 1 · Deutschland · 69126 [S7]
- Not seller of tickets: no [S7]
- Register: 738451 · Amtsgericht Mannheim [S7]
- Social channels: Mastodon · GitHub · LinkedIn · YouTube · Instagram [S7]
- VAT id: DE337556328 [S7]

**Pricing**
- Demo shop example standard: 250 · EUR · yes [S2]
- Demo shop example student: 120 · EUR · yes [S2]
- Demo shop example tshirt: 25 · 30 · EUR [S2]
- Demo shop example vip: 500 · EUR · yes · yes [S2]
- Payment provider choice: free choice of payment provider [S1]
- Test events free: No fees charged for test events [S4]

**Product**
- Addon products: yes [S2]
- Approval process: yes [S2]
- Attendance certificates: Attendance certificates can be issued for all attendees with one click after the event [S4]
- Automated decision making: no [S8]
- Badge live printing: Name tags can be printed live for scanned tickets [S4]
- Badge printing: Name tags or badges can be printed directly from pretix in the organizer's own design [S4]
- Checkin custom fields: Arbitrary fields can be defined to collect additional attendee data at check-in [S4]
- Checkin list product restriction: Check-in lists can be restricted to specific products and are independent of each other [S4]
- Checkin lists: One or multiple check-in lists, updated via digital check-in apps or exportable as PDF/CSV for manual check-off [S4]
- Consulting: yes [S1]
- Custom questions: free text · multiple choice · file upload · statistics · yes [S2]
- Customer accounts memberships: yes · theater subscriptions · 10-visit passes · annual passes [S2]
- Customer count: 3000 [S1]
- Datev export: DATEV Rechnungsdatenservice integration [S3]
- Edition restriction: Some marked features are only in pretix Hosted and pretix Enterprise, not in the pretix Community Edition [S4]
- Funds go directly to organizer: Payment model: attendees pay ticket price directly to organizer; pretix does not process the money [S3]
- Hero features: own ticket shop · marketing tools · direct payments · individual tickets · check-in & box office · reports & statistics [S1]
- Hosted enterprise only features: yes · no · yes [S2]
- International multilingual: usable worldwide and multilingual [S1]
- Invoice export: bulk export · ZUGFeRD · Peppol [S3]
- Invoicing automatic: Automatic invoice generation for orders or payments, configurable invoice contents [S3]
- Mini cms: mini-CMS for static content, can replace small event website [S2]
- Not all features all editions: Some features marked with symbol are only in pretix Hosted and pretix Enterprise, not the Community Edition; some require extensions [S3]
- Overview: online shop · POS system · entry control · hardware [S1]
- Pay what you want: yes [S2]
- Payment methods common: Vorkasse · Lastschrift · Kreditkarte · PayPal · Klarna · TWINT [S3]
- Pos app: pretixPOS is an Android POS app for on-site ticket sales, integrable with pretix for synchronized ticket quotas and central accounting [S4]
- Privacy policy link: privacy policy link in settings or pages plugin [S8]
- Product categories variants: yes [S2]
- Products: pretix · pretixPOS · pretixSCAN · pretixLEAD · Hardware · Plugin marketplace [S1]
- Products listed: pretix · pretixPOS · pretixSCAN · pretixLEAD · Hardware · Plugin-Marktplatz [S7]
- Reverse charge invoices: Reverse-charge invoices per § 13b UStG for cross-border EU sales [S3]
- Scan app offline mode: Apps support an asynchronous offline scan mode with local attendee data copy, synced with server and other devices when connectivity is available [S4]
- Scan app realtime: pretixSCAN supports multi-device simultaneous scanning with real-time processing and duplicate-ticket prevention [S4]
- Seating plan: yes · yes · yes [S2]
- Security art32: yes · yes · yes [S8]
- Security page: yes [S7]
- Self bank or provider: Payments can be processed via own bank or via a payment provider account [S3]
- Shop branding custom domain: yes · yes · yes [S2]
- Shop languages: German · Dutch · English · yes [S2]
- System status page: yes [S7]
- Test events free: yes [S2]
- Test events free: yes [S3]
- Trial: create ticket shop to try it out [S1]
- Use cases: conferences · congresses · trade fairs · museums · libraries · parks & zoos · attractions · workshops · seminars · concerts · theater · digital events · festivals · folk festivals [S1]
- Waitlist: yes · yes · 2 [S2]

**Support**
- Documentation: yes [S7]
- Hours: Mon-Fri 08:00-16:00 GMT [S1]
- Hours: Mon-Fri · 08:00-16:00 GMT [S7]
- Sales contact: sales@pretix.eu [S1]
- Support email: support@pretix.eu [S1]
- Webinars: yes · irregular intervals [S1]

## Questions

### Is pretix European?

Yes. whats-best.ai classifies pretix as EU-Made.

### Where does pretix store data?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 1 Nov 2026.

### Does pretix have a free plan?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 1 Nov 2026.

### What are the best alternatives to pretix?

As of 3 Nov 2026, the panel rates [Converia (3/5)](https://whats-best.ai/software/event-ticketing/converia), [doo (3/5)](https://whats-best.ai/software/event-ticketing/doo) and [Ticket Tailor (3/5)](https://whats-best.ai/software/event-ticketing/ticket-tailor) highest among the other 13 Event Registration & Ticketing products evaluated. Ratings that look equal are rounded to half stars; the order uses the unrounded rating, then the name. The highest-rated European alternative is [Converia](https://whats-best.ai/software/event-ticketing/converia) (EU-Made). Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: [how scores are made](https://whats-best.ai/methodology#ordering). The full list, with European products first: [pretix alternatives](https://whats-best.ai/software/event-ticketing/pretix/alternatives).

## Head-to-head

- [pretix vs Eventbrite](https://whats-best.ai/compare/eventbrite-vs-pretix.md)
- [pretix vs Ticket Tailor](https://whats-best.ai/compare/pretix-vs-ticket-tailor.md)

## What this page leaves out

- 19 pricing facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material.
- 6 product facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material.
- 2 hosting facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material.
- 2 legal facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material.
- 2 support facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material.
- 1 integrations fact could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and was left out of this page and of the panel’s material.
- 5 sovereignty dimensions could not be confirmed on the vendor’s own pages and are shown as unknown.
- 6 of the readings below were written against an earlier fact sheet — a fact has been corrected, added or pulled since. Until the panel next runs on this product you are reading the older judgement.

## Sources

- [S1] Vendor homepage: https://pretix.eu/about/de/ (checked 2026-10-29)
- [S2] Features page (ticket shop): https://pretix.eu/about/de/features/shop (checked 2026-10-29)
- [S3] Features page (payments): https://pretix.eu/about/de/features/payment (checked 2026-10-29)
- [S4] Features page (check-in): https://pretix.eu/about/de/features/checkin (checked 2026-10-29)
- [S5] Documentation (fiscal and tax requirements): https://docs.pretix.eu/de/trust/fiscal/ (checked 2026-10-29)
- [S6] Pricing page: https://pretix.eu/about/de/pricing (checked 2026-10-29)
- [S7] Legal notice: https://pretix.eu/about/de/imprint (checked 2026-10-29)
- [S8] Data protection / gdpr page: https://docs.pretix.eu/de/trust/privacy/gdpr/ (checked 2026-10-29)
- [S9] Code repository (open-source licence) — found from the homepage: https://github.com/pretix (checked 2026-11-01)

---

Cite as: whats-best.ai, "pretix — Event Registration & Ticketing", AI panel analysis, as of 2026-11-04. https://whats-best.ai/software/event-ticketing/pretix

Corrections: https://whats-best.ai/correct/1197?target=page