---
title: "Luma vs Cvent"
subtitle: "How Luma compares to Cvent for running company events and conferences"
slug: "luma-vs-cvent"
url: "https://help.luma.com/p/luma-vs-cvent"
tags: ["Competitors"]
---

If your team runs many events — field marketing dinners, customer meetups, community events, workshops, and conference registration — and wants to set each one up in minutes without an implementation project, choose Luma. If you run large multi-day conferences that need session management, exhibitor tools, venue sourcing, and hotel room blocks, Cvent is built for that, with a larger contract and implementation effort.

## Pricing

**Luma**: Pricing is published and self-serve. Free events are free, with unlimited events and guests. On the Free plan, paid tickets carry a **5% platform fee** plus Stripe processing (2.9% + 30¢). [Luma Plus](/p/luma-plus) is **$59/month billed annually** (or $69 month-to-month) per calendar and drops the platform fee to 0%, so you pay only Stripe processing. For larger organizations, [Luma Enterprise](/p/enterprise-overview) adds SSO, CRM integrations, and a company-wide [organization](/p/organizations), with pricing based on your needs.

On a $300 conference ticket, fees total $24.00 on the Free plan or $9.00 on Luma Plus.

**Cvent**: Pricing isn’t published — every contract is negotiated with sales. Buyers report an annual platform license starting around **$20,000** and running well past $75,000 for enterprise deployments, per-registrant fees for the event app and attendee hub (around $7–$12 per attendee, per event), and implementation fees of $5,000–$50,000 in the first year. Contracts are typically annual or multi-year with auto-renewal. Procurement platform Vendr reports an average contract of about **$19,550 per year**, with deals ranging from roughly $5,000 to $94,000.

> Pricing checked in September 2026 from third-party buyer data ([Vendr](https://www.vendr.com/marketplace/cvent), [Docket](https://www.docket.io/resources/research/cvent-pricing)). Contact Cvent for a quote.

## How They Compare

Cvent is an enterprise event management suite. It covers the full lifecycle of a large conference: registration with complex logic, agenda and session management, speaker and exhibitor portals, the Attendee Hub event app with networking, polling, and Q&A, hotel room blocks, and OnArrival for onsite check-in with kiosk badge printing. Its Supplier Network is a venue sourcing marketplace where planners send RFPs to hundreds of thousands of hotels and venues. That breadth is why large enterprises, associations, and agencies standardize on it — and why getting started usually means an implementation project, admin training, and a dedicated event operations team.

Luma is built for running many smaller events. Anyone on your team can create and publish an event page in a couple of minutes — no templates to configure or builds to request. Guests register with just a name and email (no account required), get a calendar invite automatically, and can add their ticket to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. Teams organize events under [calendars](/p/luma-calendar-overview), send [invites and blasts](/p/sending-or-scheduling-event-blasts), collect [registration questions](/p/collect-registration-questions), [require approval](/p/payment-require-approval) or run a [waitlist](/p/waitlist), and [check guests in](/p/check-in) from the iOS or Android app.

The tradeoff is scope. Luma doesn’t have agenda or session management, exhibitor and sponsor portals, a branded conference app, or venue sourcing. Many teams use both: Cvent for the flagship annual conference, and Luma for the dozens or hundreds of smaller events that happen the rest of the year.

## Where Luma Shines

1. **Fast for every event**: Create and publish an event in minutes, then [clone it](/p/cloning-events) for the next city or date. No implementation project, and anyone on the team can run an event.
2. **Published pricing**: Free events are free, and Luma Plus is a flat monthly subscription. No per-registrant fees, so costs don’t rise with attendance.
3. **Simple registration for guests**: Guests register with a name and email — no account needed — get a calendar invite automatically, and can add [wallet passes](/p/mobile-wallet-passes) to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet.
4. **Built for recurring programs**: [Calendars](/p/managing-events-with-calendars) with subscribers, [newsletters](/p/sending-newsletters), and [event tags](/p/calendar-event-tags) keep your audience in touch between events, and [embeds](/p/embed-luma-on-your-website) put your events on your own website.
5. **Enterprise features when you need them**: [SSO](/p/sso), [HubSpot](/p/hubspot) and [Salesforce](/p/salesforce) sync, [custom sending domains](/p/custom-sending-domain), and a SOC 2 Type II audit (see [Enterprise Security](/p/enterprise-security)).

## Why You Might Choose Cvent

- **Large multi-day conferences** – Agenda builder, session registration, speaker management, and complex registration paths for thousands of attendees.
- **Venue sourcing** – The Cvent Supplier Network lets planners send RFPs to venues and hotels and compare proposals in one place.
- **Hotel room blocks & travel** – Manage housing and attendee travel alongside registration.
- **Exhibitors, sponsors & event app** – Exhibitor portals, lead retrieval, and a branded attendee app with networking, polling, and Q&A.
- **Established procurement footprint** – Many large companies already have Cvent approved, integrated, and staffed.

## Migrating from Cvent to Luma

1. Pick the events that don’t need Cvent’s conference tooling — field events, meetups, customer dinners, webinars — and start there.
2. Create a Team Calendar for each team, region, or program, and add your teammates as admins.
3. Export attendee lists from Cvent as CSV and use them to [invite guests](/p/inviting-and-adding-guests-to-your-event) to your Luma events.
4. Connect your Stripe account if you’re selling tickets, and set up [ticket types](/p/setting-up-ticket-types) and [coupons](/p/create-coupons-for-paid-events).
5. For SSO, CRM integrations, or bringing many teams onto Luma at once, contact enterprise@luma.com about [Luma Enterprise](/p/enterprise-overview).

## FAQs

**Can Luma handle a multi-session conference?** Luma doesn’t have agenda or session management. You can model a few sessions as separate [ticket types](/p/setting-up-ticket-types), or create each session as its own event on one calendar — see [multi-session events](/p/multi-session-recurring-events).

**Does Luma print badges?** Yes — onsite badge printing is available on [Luma Enterprise](/p/enterprise-overview). On any plan, you can also [export your guest list](/p/download-guest-csv) with per-ticket QR codes and print badges with your own template — see [printing event badges](/p/printing-event-badges). For very large events, Luma also works with [hardware scanners](/p/hardware-scanners).

**Does Luma sync with our CRM?** Yes. On Luma Enterprise, registrations and attendance sync automatically to [HubSpot](/p/hubspot) or [Salesforce](/p/salesforce) across every calendar in your organization. On Luma Plus, you can use the [API](/p/luma-api), [webhooks](/p/webhooks), or [Zapier](/p/zapier).

**Will guests need to create a Luma account?** No. Guests register with a name and email.