Chobble Tickets vs Pretix

UK made & flat fee Pretix alternative

Chobble Tickets is made in the UK by a community interest company and priced in pounds. Pretix is made in Germany by pretix GmbH and priced in euros.

Both platforms are open source and both can be self-hosted. Pretix Hosted charges 2.5% of each ticket price, capped at €15 per ticket, on top of payment provider fees. Chobble Tickets charges a flat £50/year or £5/month however many tickets you sell.

Self-hosting differs too. Pretix keeps some features, such as seating plans and point of sale, in enterprise plugins from €499 a year. Chobble Tickets has one version with no licence fee and no feature tier.

Two open source projects, two approaches

Pretix and Chobble Tickets are both open source event ticketing platforms, but they target very different audiences. Pretix is built for large conferences, exhibitions, and enterprise customers, with a feature set to match. Chobble Tickets is built for smaller organisers who want something simple, affordable, and transparent.

Other open source comparisons cover Hi.Events and Swicket with alf.io. The open source page describes Chobble Tickets without a competitor comparison.

Both platforms share some features

• Open source under AGPLv3
• Self-hosting option with no licence fee for core features
• Stripe payment processing, paying the organiser directly
• Apple Pay and Google Pay at checkout (via Stripe)
• Apple Wallet and Google Wallet passes
• QR code scanning for check-in at the door
• A door list for checking attendees in by hand
• Event capacity limits
• Free event support with no payment setup required
• Daily and recurring event support
• Timed-entry sessions as well as general admission
• Custom questions on the booking form
• Promo codes and discount rules
• Optional extras sold alongside tickets
• Extras a buyer must choose before they can check out
• Several listings sold together at a bundle price
• Buyer-set pricing above a minimum
• Multiple admin users with different permissions
• Several events managed under one organisation
• Email confirmations to attendees after booking
• Confirmation emails sent from your own domain
• Editable email templates
• Bulk email to a filtered set of attendees
• Refund processing
• Bookings recorded by hand for cash and door sales
• A log of admin actions and booking activity
• Retention rules and erasure tools for attendee data
• Team accounts that can edit listings without seeing attendee records
• CSV export of booking data
• A public API and an authenticated admin API
• Webhooks for real-time notifications
• An embeddable ticket widget for your own website
• Custom domain support
• Branding on your booking pages with your own colours and images

The differences are in pricing, complexity, and who they're designed for.

Hosted pricing comparison

Pretix Hosted charges 2.5% of each ticket's price (excl. taxes), capped at €15 per ticket, with no monthly or annual fee. This is on top of payment provider fees (such as Stripe, PayPal, or Mollie), so the total cost per ticket is higher than 2.5%. That's manageable for a handful of tickets, but costs rise quickly at volume.

Chobble Tickets charges a flat £50/year or £5/month regardless of how many tickets you sell or what you charge for them. No percentage cut or per-ticket platform fee. Community groups, charities, artists and musicians pay £25/year.

Interactive cost calculator

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

Self-hosted pricing comparison

Both platforms can be self-hosted, but the licensing models differ.

Chobble Tickets is fully open source with no license fee. You get every feature for free when you self-host, and there is no "community vs enterprise" split.

The recommended deployment compiles to a single JavaScript file that runs on Bunny Edge Scripting with a Bunny database, so there is no server to manage, no scaling to configure and no database replication to maintain. The deployment page covers the other routes. Deno Deploy runs the same kind of script on another company's hosting, and the repository ships Docker configuration with ready-made files for Fly and Render, so the same image runs on a managed host or on a server the operator keeps. Running that server yourself is the one route that leaves a host to maintain.

Pretix offers a free Community edition, but its proprietary plugins (seating, lead scanning, POS, resellers, and more) require a Pretix Enterprise license starting at €499/year (approx. £420). The full-featured Enterprise Professional tier is €750/year, and Ultimate is €950/year. Self-hosting Pretix also means running a traditional server with Python, PostgreSQL, Redis, and a reverse proxy. That is infrastructure you need to manage, update, and keep online yourself.

Self-hosted cost calculator

Compare self-hosting costs - Chobble Tickets has no license fee:

When Pretix might be the better choice

Pretix is a mature, feature-rich platform with years of development behind it. Their features are documented across their shop, marketing, payment, check-in, and admin pages. Here's what Pretix offers that Chobble Tickets doesn't:

• Interactive seating plans - a graphical venue editor for custom layouts with seat-to-pricing mapping and seat blocking (enterprise plugin)
• Point of sale (pretixPOS) - an Android tablet-based cash register for on-the-door sales that syncs with the online shop in real time (enterprise plugin)
• Dedicated scanning apps - pretixSCAN for Android, iOS, Windows, and Linux with offline mode and multi-device sync, plus automatic badge printing after scan. Chobble Tickets scans through a phone browser, so the door needs a working connection
• 15+ languages - full multi-language support so attendees see the checkout in their preferred language (German, English, Arabic, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, and more). Chobble Tickets is English only, though an operator can change the wording of any message
• 30+ payment methods - Stripe, PayPal, Mollie, Adyen, Apple Pay, Google Pay, WeChat Pay, Alipay, Klarna, SEPA, Bitcoin (BitPay), bank transfer, and many regional methods. Chobble Tickets supports Stripe, Square and SumUp
• More than one currency - different events can sell in different currencies. A Chobble Tickets site uses one currency
• Automatic invoicing - EU reverse charge support, ZUGFeRD invoices, and Peppol e-invoicing for B2B compliance
• Tax management - configure VAT rates per product and country
• Waitlists - automatic notifications when places open up, with manual and auto-assignment modes
• Product variations - options such as sizes within one product. Chobble Tickets models these as separate listings in a group, or as child listings attached to a parent
• Customer accounts - buyers log in to see and manage their past orders. Chobble Tickets has no attendee login. Its returning-customer discounts recognise a repeat buyer by a one-way code instead
• Memberships - membership models and member-only products
• File-upload questions - attendees can upload a file at checkout. Chobble Tickets questions are multiple-choice or free text
• Badge and name tag printing - auto-generate and print attendee badges at check-in using custom designs (enterprise plugin)
• Certificates of attendance - auto-generated certificates for checked-in attendees
• Lead scanning (pretixLEAD) - app for exhibitors to scan attendee badges and capture lead data (enterprise plugin)
• Exhibitor management - dedicated plugin for managing exhibitors at trade fairs and conferences
• Reseller network - offline ticket outlets with settlement/invoicing tools
• Campaign and affiliate tracking - built-in analytics with Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel integration
• Newsletter integration - MailChimp and Newsletter2Go connectors, alongside the mass email both platforms send from the admin backend. Chobble Tickets connects to newsletter tools through webhooks instead
• Zapier integration - connect to 5,000+ apps
• Check-in lists with permissions - multiple independent check-in lists per gate or area with custom fields at scan
• Digital content delivery - attach downloadable content to tickets
• Shipping - physical product delivery management
• Virtual event support - Venueless integration for hybrid and virtual events
• 150+ plugins - a plugin marketplace with 150+ official and third-party plugins extending every aspect of the platform

Note: many of Pretix's larger-event features (seating, POS, lead scanning, badges, resellers, and others) are only available with a Pretix Enterprise licence starting at €499/year. The free Community edition includes core ticketing but lacks these plugins.

Chobble Tickets has features Pretix doesn't

• Encryption at rest - attendee names, contact details, payment references and free-text answers are encrypted before they are stored. Only the keys held by your own administrator accounts, plus the optional recovery account you can enable, unlock them. Both platforms can restrict a team member to editing listings, but an editor here holds no key, so the data stays unreadable to them even at the database
• Flat pricing - £50/year or £5/month whatever you sell, with no percentage taken from any ticket
• Public-facing website and CMS - a homepage, content pages, news posts, and a contact form with spam protection, edited from the admin panel with Markdown and custom CSS. Pretix provides organiser profiles, event shops and mini-CMS pages for static content
• SMS messages - text attendees from your own Android phone and number, with replies recorded against the booking. Pretix sends SMS through a third-party plugin, using a messaging service rather than your own number
• Deposits and balance payments - take a deposit at booking time and collect the balance later through a payment link
• Double-entry ledger - every income figure, refund and outstanding balance comes from one ledger you can filter by date and listing
• Logistics and run sheets - deliveries, equipment hire, transport, set-up and teardown at customer addresses, with an agent assigned to each leg
• Multi-day hire - bookings across consecutive days, priced per duration, with capacity checked over the whole booked range
• Servicing holds - block out capacity for maintenance or staff holds without creating a customer booking
• Postcode lookup - buyers type a postcode and pick their address from a list
• Subscribable calendar and RSS feeds - one feed listing all your events, so subscribers see new ones automatically
• Order widget - one JavaScript file turns the links already on your website into add-to-cart buttons, with a floating cart. Pretix embeds its shop in a page instead
• Complete database backups and catalogue import and export you can take from the admin panel and move to another Chobble Tickets host
• Built-in admin guide - documentation for the main admin areas, inside the admin panel
• Community Interest Company - run by a CIC, a UK legal structure that locks the company's assets for community benefit

When Chobble Tickets is the better choice

• You run community events, school fairs, local gigs, classes, hire bookings or charity fundraisers rather than large conferences
• You want a price that does not change with ticket volume or value
• You want every feature without a community-versus-enterprise split
• You want encryption at rest and privacy controls as standard
• You want a public website on your own domain rather than an event shop page
• You take payments through Square or SumUp, which Pretix does not offer. Pretix supports far more payment methods overall
• You want deposits, logistics or multi-day hire, which Pretix does not cover
• You want to self-host without running Python, PostgreSQL and Redis

Feature comparison at a glance

Attendee data

Pretix stores attendee data in a PostgreSQL database in readable form. On Pretix Hosted that database is run by pretix GmbH; on a self-hosted install it sits on your own server. The sources reviewed do not document whether Pretix uses attendee data to market other events.

Chobble Tickets encrypts attendee names, contact details, payment references and free-text answers before they are stored. Only the keys held by your own administrator accounts, plus the optional recovery account you can enable, unlock them. The who can see your data page lists every user and service provider that may receive attendee data.

Who builds Pretix?

Pretix was created by Raphael Michel, who started writing it in 2014 while working as a freelance developer in Heidelberg, Germany. The company behind it (pretix GmbH, formerly rami.io GmbH, renamed in 2025) is owner-led. Its website states that the company has grown through customers "without any pressure by investors or creditors." This does not establish that the company has never had any creditor relationship.

Pretix received a German federal government grant through the Prototype Fund (funded by the BMBF) in 2017–2018, but has no recorded private venture capital.

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. Chobble Tickets is published under AGPL-3.0-only with no enterprise tier or feature gates, and the platform can be self-hosted by anyone without depending on Chobble as a company. The hosting page describes its deployment options.

Pricing sources

The pricing information on this page was verified in June 2026. The feature comparison was checked on 28 July 2026. Fees may change. Check the links below for the latest figures.

• Pretix hosted pricing - 2.5% of ticket price (excl. taxes), capped at €15/ticket, plus payment provider fees
• Pretix self-hosted/enterprise pricing - from €499/year (Enterprise Starter)
• Pretix on GitHub
• Pretix features - shop - ticketing and shop features
• Pretix features - check-in - scanning and on-site tools
• Pretix plugin marketplace - 150+ official and third-party plugins
• Chobble Tickets pricing
• Chobble Tickets features
• Pretix company page - team and company information