Luma vs Partiful

If you want a full events platform — transparent pricing, recurring events, calendars with subscribers, and mature ticketing — choose Luma. If you’re throwing a casual party and want playful, animated invites your friends can RSVP to with just a phone number, Partiful is a fun choice.

Pricing

Luma: Free events are completely free. For paid tickets, Luma Plus has a 0% platform fee — you pay only Stripe processing (2.9% + 30¢), so a $20 ticket costs just $0.88 in fees. On the Free plan, paid tickets incur a 5% platform fee plus processing ($1.88 on a $20 ticket).

Partiful: Free events are also free. For paid tickets, Partiful doesn’t publish pricing — fees vary by event size and ticket price, and you only see the exact fee when setting up tickets. Fees we’ve seen are around 10% + $2 per ticket. On a $20 ticket that’s about $4.00. Partiful says its service fee covers payment processing, so nothing extra is added on top.

Cash Flow: With Luma, funds are paid out to your Stripe account as guests purchase tickets, following Stripe’s standard rolling payout schedule (typically 2 days in the US). You can use ticket revenue for venue deposits and vendors well before the event date.

Pricing checked in July 2026 — Partiful’s fees aren’t published and may change. See Partiful’s fees article for their latest details.

How They Compare

Partiful is built for casual parties: animated invite pages, guests RSVP with just a phone number, and updates go out over text message. It’s a delightful way to invite friends to a birthday or house party, and each event is a one-off.

Luma is built for hosts who run events regularly — from dinner parties to meetups to conferences. Events live on a calendar that guests can subscribe to, you can set up recurring events, and you can reach your audience by email, SMS, and event chat. Partiful is text-first — guests invited by email get blasts by email until they RSVP, after which updates arrive by SMS or push — with limits on how many blasts you can send per event. Luma also connects to the rest of your tools — Zapier, an API, embeds, and CRM integrations — while Partiful’s integrations are limited to calendar sync (Google and Outlook), with no public API.

On ticketing, Partiful launched paid tickets in June 2026 — its first paid product. It covers the basics (free and paid tiers, promo codes, capacity caps, QR check-in), but it’s early: no ticket add-ons, no waitlist for ticketed events, US hosts only, and hosts can’t issue individual refunds from the dashboard. Luma has run paid ticketing at scale for years, with waitlists that work for paid events, add-ons, coupons, and flexible refunds.

Where Luma Shines

1. Transparent, lower fees: 0% platform fee with Luma Plus and a published 5% on the Free plan, versus unpublished fees you only discover during ticket setup.
2. Built for communities, not just parties: Calendars with subscribers, recurring events, memberships, and newsletters keep your audience coming back.
3. Mature ticketing: Years of production scale, from free meetups to multi-thousand-person conferences.
4. Professional polish: Luma pages fit everything from a dinner party to a company launch event.

Why You Might Choose Partiful

• Playful, expressive invites – Animated themes, effects, and fonts make the invite feel like part of the party. Google Play named it Best App of 2024.
• Text-message-first – Invites and updates arrive over SMS, which is how a lot of friend groups already make plans.
• Social momentum – Visible guest lists, comments, and reactions build hype among guests.

Migrating from Partiful to Luma

1. Export your guest list from Partiful (their guest list supports CSV export) and use it to invite people to your Luma events.
2. Create your event on Luma — it takes under 2 minutes.
3. Connect your Stripe account on Luma to accept payments for ticketed events.
4. Share your new Luma event links, and set up a Luma calendar so guests can subscribe to all your future events.
5. For large migrations, contact support@luma.com — we’re happy to help.

FAQs

Can my community list Partiful events on a Luma calendar? Yes — Luma calendars can accept external event submissions from platforms like Partiful, which is handy while you transition.

Will guests need to create a Luma account? Only if they want to join event chat; they can RSVP with just an email.

Does Luma have fun invite designs too? Yes — themes and visual effects let you personalize your event page, with a look that also works for professional events.