How much does a ticketing system cost to build in Australia?

What do ticketing platforms charge per ticket?

Australian ticketing platforms mostly charge a percentage of the ticket price plus a fixed amount per paid ticket, which is either absorbed by the organiser or passed to the buyer as a booking fee. Published prices at the time of writing (November 2026):

Platform	Fee on paid tickets	Notes
Humanitix (standard)	4% + $0.99 per ticket, ex GST	No fee for free events; no sign up fees or contracts; profits go to charity
Humanitix (charities and schools)	2.5% + $0.50 per ticket	Same features
Eventbrite	5.35% + $1.19 AUD service fee per ticket	Applies to paid tickets only; marketing tools from AUD $15 a month
Your own system on Stripe	1.65% + A$0.30 for domestic cards, including GST	International cards 3.5% + A$0.30; you carry build and running costs

Ticketek, Moshtix and other venue focused platforms usually negotiate terms per venue or promoter, so get a written quote if they are on your list.

At a $60 average ticket, Humanitix’s standard fee is $3.39 per ticket, Eventbrite’s is $4.40, and Stripe’s card fee on your own system is $1.29. The platform premium over raw card processing is therefore about $2.10 to $3.11 per ticket. That number, multiplied by your annual volume, is what owning a system has to beat.

When does owning the ticketing system pay off?

Owning a system pays off when the per ticket platform premium, across a year of sales, exceeds the yearly cost of building, hosting and maintaining your own. Using the assumptions in this guide (a build of $82.5k to $112.5k spread over three years, hosting and on sale capacity of $6k to $15k a year, maintenance at 15% to 20% of build), the extra yearly cost of owning comes to roughly $42k to $67k.

Paid tickets a year at $60	Humanitix premium over card fees	Owning pays off?
10,000	about $21,000	No
20,000	about $42,000	Only at the low end of the cost range
40,000	about $84,000	Likely
100,000	about $210,000	Clearly

There is an important caveat. If you pass platform fees to buyers as a booking fee, the saving does not land in your pocket automatically. What ownership buys you is control: of the fee, the buyer data, the checkout and the on sale experience. That can still be worth a lot, but count it honestly.

What drives the cost of a ticketing build?

Three things move a ticketing build from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars: traffic on sale day, reserved seating, and resale controls.

1. On sale traffic. A festival that sells most of its tickets in the first hour needs a virtual queue, load testing at several times expected peak, inventory locks that never oversell, and payment flows that survive bursts. This is engineering most event apps never need.
2. Seat maps. Reserved seating needs a venue map editor, holds and releases, accessible seating rules, price zones and a buyer interface that works on a phone. It is a product in itself.
3. Resale controls. Name on ticket, transfer rules, an official resale marketplace with price caps, and checks against bulk buying by bots.
4. Scanning. A scanning app that works offline at the gate, rejects duplicates across several entry points and syncs when the connection returns. Our guide to offline first field apps covers that pattern.
5. Refunds and changes. Partial refunds, exchanges between sessions and bulk refunds when an event is cancelled.

Which state resale laws must your software enforce?

If you sell or resell tickets to NSW events that carry a resale restriction, your platform may need to stop resale above the original cost plus capped transaction costs. NSW Fair Trading says it is against the law to resell such tickets above the original cost, plus transaction costs capped at 10% of the ticket cost. The NSW guidance suggests measures for resale sites, such as working with organisers to determine official original prices and writing them into the website’s code, and requiring sellers to provide proof of the original cost.

Other states have their own rules, including Victoria’s Major Events Act 2009, and they change. Check the current rules for every state you sell into before scoping resale features. Our event management software page covers the operational side of resale and ID checks.

What do typical ticketing builds cost?

Worked at an assumed agency rate of $1,100 to $1,500 a day, ticketing builds range from about $5k for a configured white label platform to $500k or more for high demand reserved seating. The rate assumption reflects Re:Sourced’s July 2026 guide, which lists Sydney senior software contractors at $800 to $1,100 a day ex GST, before agency overheads for design, testing and management.

Build	Typical scope	Cost range (AUD, ex GST)
White label platform, configured	Branding, event setup, payment account connection, embed on your site	$5k to $20k
Custom general admission ticketing	Event pages, checkout with Stripe, QR tickets by email and wallet pass, scanning app, refunds, promoter dashboard	$60k to $150k
High demand reserved seating	Seat maps, holds, virtual queue, load testing, resale marketplace with price caps, bot controls	$200k to $500k+

Worked example: a promoter running 30 general admission events a year

A hypothetical promoter sells about 40,000 tickets a year across 30 events. Scope: discovery and design (8 days), event and ticket type setup with capacity and release rules (10 days), checkout with Stripe, promo codes and GST invoices (10 days), QR tickets by email and Apple Wallet (6 days), offline scanning app for iOS and Android (14 days), refunds and transfers (7 days), promoter dashboard and reporting (8 days), load testing and launch (12 days). Total 75 days, or $82,500 to $112,500 ex GST.

How to keep the build smaller

• Start with general admission. Reserved seating can come later, or stay on a platform for the one venue that needs it.
• Use wallet passes and email for tickets before building a buyer app. Most buyers never need one.
• Keep high demand on sales on a platform for the first year, and run your smaller events on your own system to prove it.
• Buy the queue. Virtual waiting room services exist, and renting one for on sale days is usually cheaper than building it.

What are your refund and pricing obligations?

Australian Consumer Law, not your terms and conditions, decides most refund rights for cancelled events, and the ACCC expects the total price to be shown before purchase. The ACCC says that where an organiser cancels or makes a major change to an event, such as changing the headline act or moving a show to another city, consumers are entitled to a refund and may be entitled to compensation for related losses. If cancellation is due only to someone else’s actions, such as government restrictions, there is generally no consumer law remedy, though your own terms may still offer one.

On pricing, the ACCC describes drip pricing as advertising a price at the start of an online purchase and adding fees such as booking and service fees along the way, and says businesses should communicate the total price payable before purchase. The ACCC’s ticketing guidance points to the Federal Court finding against Viagogo, where significant fees, including a 27.6% booking fee, were not disclosed until late in the booking process. Build the checkout so the full price including fees shows from the first screen. This is general information, not legal advice.

What will it cost over three years?

At 40,000 tickets a year, owning the system is cheaper than Humanitix over three years on these assumptions; at 10,000 tickets it is not close. Assumptions, not quotes: $60 average ticket; platform fees absorbed by the organiser; Stripe domestic card rates; hosting and on sale capacity at $6k to $15k a year; maintenance at 15% to 20% of build from year 2.

Option, 40,000 tickets a year	3 year platform or card fees	Build and running	3 year total
Humanitix standard	$406.8k	None	$406.8k
Eventbrite	$528k	None	$528k
Custom system from the worked example	$154.8k in Stripe fees	$82.5k to $112.5k build, $18k to $45k hosting, $24.8k to $45k maintenance	$280k to $357k

At 10,000 tickets a year, Humanitix would cost about $101.7k over three years against roughly $164k to $241k for the custom system, so the platform wins comfortably. Do this sum with your own numbers before you commission anything.

How AWLabs approaches ticketing projects

We start with a Development Consult, then a paid Discovery Audit, credited in full against the build, that models your volumes against platform fees so the build versus platform decision is made on numbers. If owning is justified, you receive a fixed price Schedule of Work with three options: The Minimum, The Recommended and The Complete. Senior engineers lead every build. See our web and mobile app development service, our sports and recreation and hospitality pages, and our booking and marketplace app cost guide.