Luma vs Resident Advisor

How Luma compares to Resident Advisor for hosting events and selling tickets

If you want published fees and payouts before your event — for parties and club nights as well as meetups, dinners, and community events — choose Luma. If you promote electronic music and want your events listed where dance music fans already look, Resident Advisor is the go-to.

Pricing

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

Resident Advisor: RA doesn’t charge promoters directly — instead it adds a booking fee to each ticket, included in the displayed price by default. RA doesn’t publish its fee rate; its own example shows a £1 fee on a £7.50 ticket, and third-party trackers put the rate at around 10%. At 10%, a $20 ticket carries about $2.00 in fees, for an all-in price of about $22.00.

Who really pays the fee? RA describes its booking fee as paid by the buyer, but ticket sellers in the US (under the FTC’s rule on ticket fees), the UK, the EU, and Australia have to show guests the full price upfront, fees included. Guests decide whether to buy based on that all-in price, so on every platform the fee comes out of the same total — what matters is how much of it you keep. On a $22.00 all-in ticket, you keep about $20.00 on RA or $21.06 on Luma Plus. On Luma’s Free plan it’s about the same as RA.

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) — or within minutes with Stripe’s Instant Payouts, for eligible accounts. You can use ticket revenue for venue deposits, artist fees, and production well before the night. RA pays promoters after the event — on the following Tuesday, taking up to 4 business days to land — though it offers early access to ticket revenue for some promoters.

Pricing checked in September 2026 — RA’s fees aren’t published and may vary. See RA’s ticket fees article for their latest details.

How They Compare

Resident Advisor is the home of electronic music: event listings, editorial, artist and club pages, and the RA Guide app, used by millions of dance music fans worldwide. Its ticketing is tied into that audience — RA pushes events to fans by email and push notification, lets promoters pay to “bump” events higher in listings, and runs an anti-touting resale queue where fans return tickets for sold-out events, resold at the final tier price. Promoters also get the RA Scan app for the door and can export their audience data.

Luma is built for every kind of event — meetups, conferences, dinners, workshops, virtual events, and parties and club nights too, in any genre and anywhere in the world. Hosts get calendars with subscribers, recurring events, memberships, and multi-channel communication: email blasts, SMS and WhatsApp, and event chat. Your guest list is yours — export it as a CSV anytime.

Both platforms cover the ticketing basics — ticket tiers, all-in pricing, capacity limits, waitlists for sold-out events, and QR check-in at the door.

For ticketed events, the biggest differences are transparency and cash flow: Luma publishes its fees, and the money reaches you as tickets sell instead of after the event.

Where Luma Shines

Lower, published fees: 0% platform fee with Luma Plus and 5% on the Free plan, versus an unpublished booking fee on RA.
Paid before the event: Stripe payouts arrive on a rolling schedule as tickets sell, not the week after the party.
Curate a paid guest list: Require approval works with paid tickets — guests’ cards are held when they apply and only charged if you approve them. Paid waitlists work the same way, so you can fill sold-out spots without chasing payments.
Paid memberships: Sell monthly, yearly, or one-time memberships that give members access to your events — recurring revenue, with Luma handling the billing.
Every kind of event: Run club nights alongside meetups, dinners, workshops, and virtual events — not just electronic music — with calendars, recurring events, newsletters, and event chat between them.

Why You Might Choose Resident Advisor

Electronic music discovery – RA is where dance music fans look for what’s on, so a listing puts your event in front of the right crowd.
Credibility in the scene – Artist, club, and promoter pages, plus editorial coverage, connect your event to the wider electronic music ecosystem.
Anti-touting resale – The resale queue gets returned tickets to real fans for sold-out events and reduces no-shows.

Migrating from Resident Advisor to Luma

Export your audience data from RA Pro (Audience data → Export audience) and use it to invite people to your Luma events.
Create your event on Luma — it takes under 2 minutes.
Connect your Stripe account on Luma to accept payments for ticketed events.
Share your new Luma event links, and set up a Luma calendar so guests can subscribe to all your future events.
For large migrations, contact support@luma.com — we’re happy to help.

FAQs

Can I sell tickets on the door? Yes — walk-ups can buy on your event page and appear instantly in your check-in list. See selling in-person tickets.

Can I keep the address private? Yes — you can restrict the location to approved guests, so everyone else sees only the city and approximate area. Approved guests see the full address right away. To share it closer to the night, leave it off the event and schedule a blast with the address instead.

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