Most festival registration software was built for something else: a 5K, a conference, a concert. That is fine when your festival is one of those things. It gets expensive in time and frustration when your festival is a Saturday with a parade, a 10K, forty vendors, sixty volunteers and a funder who wants to know how many visitors slept in a hotel.
This guide compares the tools small festival organizers actually use, with fees taken from each vendor’s own pricing page as of October 2026. It also says plainly when a spreadsheet and a payment link are enough, and the narrow set of situations where a custom system pays for itself.
If you only read one thing: the right tool depends less on price than on how many kinds of people you register, and whether anyone downstream (a city council, a lodging tax committee, a grant officer) will ask you to report on them.
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First, list who you are actually registering
“Registration” is usually four or five separate jobs sharing one name:
- Participants in a ticketed or entered activity: a fun run, a cook-off, a kids’ pet parade. They pay a fee, sign a waiver and pick a size or category.
- General attendees who need a ticket, a wristband or just an RSVP.
- Vendors and exhibitors who submit an application, a certificate of insurance and a booth fee, and need approval first.
- Volunteers who pick shifts, and whom you need to find at 6 a.m. on the day.
- Sponsors who commit money in exchange for specific visibility.
Every tool below handles the first one or two well. The rest are where organizers end up with five spreadsheets. Write your list down before you compare anything, because it decides which category of tool you need.
The real options, with fees
Eventbrite. A large ticketing marketplace (its pricing page cites 89 million monthly users), with a built-in audience and a familiar checkout. As of October 2026, Eventbrite’s pricing page lists a service fee of 3.7% + $1.79 per paid ticket plus 2.9% payment processing per order, and free events cost nothing. Buyers pay the fees by default; you can choose to absorb them instead. Its fee help page says processing is 2.9% of the total order, so on a single $25 ticket the listed numbers work out to about $3.44 if you absorb the fees, or about $3.52 if the buyer pays them on top (our arithmetic), roughly 14%. It is built for tickets, so vendor applications and volunteer shifts do not fit it well.
RunSignup. Built for races, with a ticketing product for other events, free event websites and the option to collect donations during registration. As of October 2026, RunSignup lists no subscription or separate platform fee. It charges a processing fee per cart total: 6% + $1 for carts from $0.01 to $249.99, 5% + $1 for $250 to $999.99, and 4% + $1 at $1,000 and up. The registrant, your organization, or both split the fee. Because the fee is per cart, a family registering together pays the $1 once rather than per person. If your festival includes a run or walk, this is a strong option.
An online form builder plus Stripe. Tools like Jotform and Cognito Forms collect any fields you want and connect to a payment processor. As of October 2026, Jotform lists a free Starter plan with 100 submissions a month, of which only 10 can be payments, then paid plans from $39 a month on monthly billing (Bronze: 1,000 submissions and 100 payments), with 50% off for approved nonprofits on the paid tiers. Cognito Forms lists a free plan with 100 entries a month that can still accept payments. Card processing then comes from the gateway: Stripe lists 2.9% + 30¢ per successful domestic card transaction. This is the most flexible cheap route. The cost is that you design the registration experience yourself and do more of the reconciling.
Google Forms with a payment link. Free, and everyone knows it. According to a form-builder vendor’s write-up (not Google), Google Forms has no built-in payment collection, so people paste a payment link into the confirmation message or install an add-on. With a pasted link, the payment is not tied to the form response, and matching them is manual. For a free 50-person pancake breakfast, fine. For a paid event with capacity limits, it will cost you evenings.
We left large conference platforms out of this comparison. They are designed for corporate events, and we could not verify public pricing for them.
What this looks like on a real ticket
Take a $25 registration, using only the figures above (our arithmetic, before any tips or donations):
- Eventbrite: about $3.44 to $3.52 in total fees, depending on who pays them.
- RunSignup: $2.50 for a single $25 cart (6% + $1).
- Form builder + Stripe: about $1.03 in card processing, plus the form plan once you outgrow the free tier’s limits.
- Google Forms + link: whatever the payment link costs, plus your time.
The gap looks large per ticket and is small in total for most festivals. On 400 registrations at $25, the difference between the cheapest and most expensive option here is about $1,000 at most. Time spent reconciling can easily cost more. Choose on workflow first, then fees.
The part nobody budgets for: reporting to funders
If your festival receives lodging tax money in Washington, registration data is not only an operations tool. Under RCW 67.28.1816, applicants estimate how funds will increase travel, and recipients must then report the actual number of travelers their funded activity drew, counted as overnight stays in paid lodging, trips of 50 or more miles one way, and trips from another state or country. Municipalities send those reports to the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC), and JLARC’s lodging tax page describes the reporting system, which opens January 1, 2027 for 2026 data.
The registration form is the cheapest place to collect those answers. Two or three optional questions (home ZIP code, nights in paid lodging, where you stayed) cost the registrant five seconds. Whichever tool you choose, check that it lets you add custom questions and export every response. Eventbrite, for example, exports attendee reports as CSV or Excel. Our guide to tourism website design covers the wider measurement question.
When a custom registration system is worth it
Almost never for a single-activity event. A custom build starts to make sense when several of these are true at once:
- Multiple event types in one weekend. A run, a vendor market, a ticketed concert and a kids’ area, each with different rules, prices and capacity.
- Vendors, attendees and volunteers need to live in one record. The same family buys tickets, volunteers on Saturday, and sponsors next year. Off-the-shelf tools keep them in separate places.
- Approval steps matter. Vendor booths, juried entries or parade slots that need a human yes before money moves.
- Funders need reports you cannot get from the tool. Traveler counts by ZIP, repeat-attendance year over year, vendor sales tax and permit status in one view.
- You run this every year, so a one-time setup amortizes, and somebody on your board will actually own it.
If two or fewer apply, buy the closest tool and adapt your process. If most apply, a small custom system is a real option. Our guide on custom software for small business walks through the full set of gates before building, and the Mercy House Ministry case study shows what an organization-specific system looks like in practice.
The honest verdict
Buy off the shelf if you register one kind of participant. A race or walk: RunSignup. A ticketed show: a ticketing platform (see the fees above). A free community day: a form plus a spreadsheet. Add the two lodging questions and export after the event.
Use a form builder plus Stripe if you have two or three simple registration types and one volunteer to maintain it.
Consider custom work if you meet most of the five conditions above, you have a named person to own the system, and the hours your team spends reconciling spreadsheets each year are real. We will tell you honestly if the answer is a tool you can already buy. Start with the free audit, or request an estimate below.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best festival registration software for a small festival?
It depends on what you register. For a run or walk, a race platform such as RunSignup fits well. For a ticketed show, a ticketing platform is simpler. For several small registration types, a form builder connected to Stripe is the most flexible low-cost option. Compare total fees on a typical ticket, but weigh the hours your volunteers spend reconciling payments and spreadsheets at least as heavily as the percentage.
Can I use Google Forms for festival registration?
Yes for free events or simple RSVPs. Google Forms does not collect payments on its own, so paid events need a payment link or an add-on, and payments made through a pasted link are not matched to responses. That is manageable for a few dozen sign-ups and painful for hundreds. Once you have capacity limits, refunds or several ticket types, move to a tool that connects the form and the payment.
What data should festival registration collect for lodging tax reporting?
In Washington, recipients of lodging tax funding report actual travelers in three categories: overnight stays in paid lodging, trips of 50 or more miles one way, and trips from another state or country. Optional registration questions for home ZIP code and nights in paid lodging give you the raw material. Confirm the exact reporting categories with your city or county, and keep the responses in a file you can export.
When should a festival build a custom registration system?
When you register several kinds of people in one weekend (participants, vendors, volunteers, sponsors), need approvals before payment, must produce funder reports no off-the-shelf tool gives you, and will run the event for years with a named person to maintain the system. If only one or two of those are true, buy the closest tool and change your process to fit it.