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Chobble Tickets vs Fatsoma

Fatsoma is popular with student events and nightlife promoters. Here's how a small, open source alternative compares on pricing, features, and data ownership.

Open source & cheaper Fatsoma alternative

Chobble Tickets is a white label ticketing platform made in the UK by a community interest company. Its source code is published under the AGPL-3.0-only licence, so anyone can read it, fork it, or run their own copy. Fatsoma is closed source and does not publish its code.

Fatsoma charges 10% per ticket with a £1 minimum, plus Stripe processing. Chobble Tickets charges £50/year or £5/month, so an organiser selling more than about 34 tickets at £15 in a year pays less.

Pricing comparison

Fatsoma charges 10% per ticket with a minimum of £1, plus Stripe payment processing fees (1.5% + 20p in the UK). So on a £15 ticket, that's £1.50 to Fatsoma plus roughly 43p to Stripe, totalling £1.93 gone per ticket before you see a penny.

Chobble Tickets is a flat £50/year or £5/month (£25/year for charities and community groups) with no per-ticket platform fees. You also pay Stripe, Square or SumUp processing fees on top. If you sell more than about 34 tickets at £15 each in a year, Chobble Tickets is already cheaper.

On higher-priced tickets the gap grows quickly. A £30 ticket costs you £3.00 in Fatsoma platform fees alone, so 17 tickets cover a full year of Chobble Tickets.

Interactive cost calculator

Drag the sliders to see how costs compare at different volumes:

Total takings £2,000.00
Chobble Tickets Fatsoma
Annual fee £50.00 £0.00
Platform fees £0.00 £0.00
Payment processing £0.00 £0.00
Total cost per year £0.00 £0.00
Cost per ticket £0.00 £0.00

"Your share" assumes the organiser pays the fees out of the ticket price. Where a platform lets the organiser add its fees on top, the buyer pays them and the organiser keeps more than the figure shown. These figures exclude VAT and cover paid tickets. Several platforms charge nothing for free tickets, and the notes below record that where it is published.

Fatsoma fees: 10% per ticket (minimum £1), plus Stripe processing (1.5% + 20p). Chobble Tickets: £50/year or £5/month flat + Stripe processing (1.5% + 20p). Source: ticketing.fatsoma.com/pricing (March 2026).

Data ownership and privacy

Fatsoma lists events in a public catalogue, so your event appears alongside other promoters' events. Its communication policy says people receive announcements about a brand only if they follow it, and buying a ticket makes someone a follower of that promoter.

With Chobble Tickets, attendee data is encrypted with hybrid RSA/AES encryption and stays under your control. Chobble Tickets has no public catalogue, so your event is not listed next to anyone else's, and Chobble sends no marketing emails to your attendees.

Payouts

Fatsoma pays out after your event ends, typically 2 or more days after. You're essentially lending Fatsoma your ticket revenue until they decide to release it.

Chobble Tickets uses Stripe, Square, or SumUp directly, so payments go straight to your account with standard processing times. You're always in control of your own payment processor account.

Feature comparison

Both sites share some features

  • Online ticket sales with Stripe payment processing
  • Apple Pay and Google Pay at checkout (via Stripe)
  • QR code scanning for check-in at the door
  • Email confirmations to attendees after booking
  • Event capacity limits
  • Free event support with no payment setup required
  • Refund processing
  • Custom questions at checkout

Fatsoma has some features Chobble Tickets doesn't, and vice versa:

Fatsoma has features Chobble Tickets doesn't

  • Rep/affiliate network - a built-in system where promoters sell tickets on your behalf and earn configurable commission per ticket type, with rep-only tickets and tracking dashboards showing which reps are driving the most sales. Reps are paid out directly through Fatsoma. See Fatsoma Reps
  • Consumer mobile app - the Fatsoma App is a consumer-facing app where attendees browse and discover events. Fatsoma report that 70% of their ticket sales come through the app
  • Follower system - every ticket buyer automatically becomes a follower you can market to for free with future event announcements
  • Push notifications - event announcements hit followers' phones via push notification and email
  • Cross-sell - promote your other events on the order confirmation screen after each purchase
  • Ad pixel tracking - built-in retargeting and lookalike audience support for Facebook and other ad platforms
  • Structured customer profiles - structured data capture (age, gender, social handles, phone, location) with profile saving across events (Chobble supports multiple-choice and free-text custom questions per event)
  • Hidden ticket access codes - tickets hidden behind access codes for presales, VIP access, or invite-only events
  • Event discovery platform - Fatsoma's website and app function as a marketplace where attendees browse and discover events, particularly strong in student and nightlife markets
  • Fatsoma Chat - social sharing features within the consumer app
  • Custom branded apps - on the Professional tier (~£1,500), Fatsoma builds custom branded iOS/Android apps and websites for your events
  • Fast 3-tap checkout - checkout with saved card details via the Fatsoma app

Chobble Tickets has features Fatsoma doesn't

When Fatsoma might be better

  • You're running student events or university nightlife and want access to Fatsoma's promoter network
  • You need a rep/affiliate system to incentivise ticket sellers
  • You want your events listed on a discovery platform aimed at students
  • You have very low volume (under ~50 tickets/year) and prefer paying per ticket over a flat fee

When Chobble Tickets might be better

  • You want predictable, flat-rate pricing with no per-ticket platform fees
  • Privacy and encryption matter to you
  • You don't want a platform marketing to your attendees
  • You're a charity, community group, artist or musician (£25/year on the annual plan)
  • You want Apple/Google Wallet integration, calendar feeds, or RSS
  • You value open source and the ability to self-host
  • You're selling enough tickets that 10% per ticket adds up quickly

Who owns Fatsoma?

Fatsoma was founded in 2005 in Manchester (originally as YourNightOut Limited, renamed in 2006). It is a private limited company (Companies House #05495880) owned by its two remaining co-founders, Paul Stacey and Chris Pearson. A third co-founder, Ben Taylor, stepped back from a controlling role in 2019. The company has around 35 employees and raised modest funding from AXM Venture Capital and via a Seedrs crowdfunding campaign, but remains independently owned with no corporate parent.

Chobble Tickets is run by one person as a Community Interest Company (CIC), a UK legal structure that locks the company's assets for community benefit. All of Chobble's code is public under AGPLv3, and the platform can be self-hosted by anyone without depending on Chobble as a company.

Pricing sources

The pricing information on this page was verified in March 2026. Fees may change. Check the links below for the latest figures.