The 3% fee: why we built Gathrd's pricing for churches, not venture capital

The maths that made us rethink platform fees

When we started building Gathrd, I looked at what other platforms charged. Eventbrite takes 6.95% of each ticket plus 59p per transaction. For a £20 ticket, that's £1.98 off the top. For a church running a 200-person event, that adds up quickly. A 300-person summer conference at £25 per ticket costs nearly £600 in platform fees alone on Eventbrite.

We decided 3% made more sense. Not because it sounds nice in marketing copy, but because we wanted churches to actually use Gathrd without feeling penalised for selling tickets. A church shouldn't have to choose between covering their costs and letting people in affordably.

The Durham administrator's maths was simple: Eventbrite would have taken about £330 from her conference. Gathrd took £99. That's money she put back into catering, speaker fees, and transport for young people who couldn't otherwise attend.

But 3% is just one piece of the puzzle

Here's where it gets interesting. The fee itself isn't the whole story. We also built in Gift Aid automation for UK churches and organisations.

If you're a registered UK charity running a ticketed event, you can enable Gift Aid split checkout. That means attendees see two options at payment: pay for the ticket normally, or pay plus Gift Aid. If someone buys a £20 ticket and adds Gift Aid, you receive an extra £5 from HMRC (because Gift Aid adds 25% to donations). The platform fee still applies only to the ticket price, not the Gift Aid portion.

I mention this because it matters. A church that sells 200 tickets at £20 with 60% Gift Aid uptake just raised an extra £1,500 in pure charitable giving. That's not just cheaper than Eventbrite; that's a tool Eventbrite doesn't offer at all.

The cost of staying faith-first

When we built the directory, we made a decision that costs us money. Gathrd will never list a secular nightclub, a commercial concert promotion, or a generic ticketing event next to a worship service. The directory is faith-only by design and by policy.

That means we can't compete on volume the way Eventbrite does. We don't grow by becoming everything to everyone. We grow by being the trusted place churches, prayer networks, denominational conferences, and faith communities list their events.

The 3% fee reflects that. We're not pricing for scale; we're pricing for mission. A platform that serves half a million nightclubs and one million faith events has to charge differently than a platform that serves only faith communities. The smaller pond means we can afford to charge less.

What happens when you remove the extras

Eventbrite's pricing includes a lot of stuff many churches don't need. Payment processing bundled in, multiple revenue share tiers, seat selection, digital customisation, API access. None of that is free; you're paying for it whether you use it or not.

Gathrd's base model is simpler. Free to use as a community. 3% on paid tickets. QR check-in is included (offline support built in). NFC door scanning is available through TapTrust if you want it. Door check-in isn't an add-on; it's part of the platform.

If you're running multiple events, the Church plan is £19.99 a month or £199.99 a year. That's unlimited events, unlimited attendees, all the core features. No per-event charges hiding in the fine print. A 50-person prayer meeting costs the same to list as a 2,000-person conference.

The maths works because we're not trying to extract maximum value from the moment you list an event. We're trying to be the platform you keep coming back to.

Why comparisons to Eventbrite matter less than you'd think

I mention Eventbrite by numbers because pricing transparency matters. But the real difference isn't the 3.95% gap (3% vs 6.95% plus fees). It's what you're paying for.

When a Baptist church in Manchester runs a baptism service event, they're not competing with a commercial theatre promotion for attendees. When a Pentecostal network lists a prayer conference, they're not next to a club night. The directory stays clean because that's the point.

That focus lets us charge less and still build a sustainable platform. The money from the 3% fee goes into supporting a faith-first directory, maintaining offline QR check-in, integrating with NFC systems that churches actually want, and keeping Gift Aid automation running without extra charge.

A church told me last month that they'd moved five separate events to Gathrd because they knew their attendees would see only events worth seeing. No noise. No clutter. That's worth more than a 4% discount.

The real conversation about fair pricing

Fair pricing for churches isn't about being the cheapest. It's about aligning incentives. When we take 3% instead of nearly 7%, we're saying: we win when you sell more tickets, not when we extract more margin.

It's also about transparency. The 3% is the fee. It's on every ticket across every plan. No hidden per-transaction charges. No seasonal upsells. No tiers that cost more because you're running a larger event.

I think churches deserve platforms that price like they understand how church budgets work. A small prayer group's event costs the same to process as a cathedral's Christmas service. The digital infrastructure doesn't care about scale; neither should the fee.