Townscript alternatives for an Indian organiser
The honest shortlist against Townscript in India is short. KonfHub and Explara compete on rate, Luma and Eventbrite are priced in dollars and route through Stripe, BookMyShow publishes no organiser rate at all, and a gateway's own payment page is the floor at 2% plus 18% GST with none of the event machinery attached. Which one wins depends on whether you are selling a ticket or a dated departure with a deposit, not on the headline percentage. Thrivia is the one built for the dated departure: a deposit now, the balance chased against the same booking, and a QR per ticket at the gate.
If you are on Townscript and looking around, the field is smaller than the category pages suggest. Four products compete with it on something an Indian organiser can act on, two more are priced for a market you are not in, and one option is not a platform at all. This page is the field. For the two pairwise arguments, Thrivia against Townscript and KonfHub against Townscript each work one comparison to the rupee.
What you would be leaving
Take the Townscript column seriously first, because three of the things it does well are the things that go missing the week after you move.
- One structure, no tiers. Read on 20 September 2026, Townscript's pricing page has no plans at all. It states that pricing stays the same whatever kind of event you host, and there is no registration cap that pushes you onto a bigger plan mid-season. KonfHub and Explara both price in tiers with limits.
- A fee band, not a flat rate. The organiser-side Townscript fee is published as a range, "3% 2%", plus ₹0 per ticket, with the payment gateway fee at 2% per ticket for domestic currency. Where you sit in that band is an account conversation, and a volume seller can be at the bottom of it.
- A fee-bearer control that actually moves your net. Townscript's own calculator prices both scenarios on a ₹1,000 ticket. With you bearing the fees the buyer pays ₹1,023.60 and you receive ₹946.80. With the buyer bearing them the buyer pays ₹1,070.80 and you receive ₹994. That is ₹47.20 a ticket, and on a 400-seat gate it is the difference between two of these platforms.
- Marketplace discovery. Townscript has category pages and years of search presence behind them. No alternative below replaces that, including this one.
The alternatives an Indian organiser actually shortlists
Every figure below is the vendor's own, read on 20 September 2026. Where a vendor publishes no rate, the row says so instead of quoting one off a review site.
| Platform | What it publishes | The job it is built for |
|---|---|---|
| KonfHub | 2% plus 18% GST on Lite, UPI only, capped at 300 registrations per event. 3.75% plus 18% GST on Silver, stated to include gateway charges, capped at 2,500. Weekly settlement on Thursdays. | Conferences and meetups where one all-in rate and a fixed settlement day beat a fee stack. |
| Explara | Plan prices in US dollars on its India site: Starter $0, Growth $9 and Pro $25 a month. 4% on ticket value, domestic only, plus a stated 1% per transaction for the Stripe gateway. Events per month are capped by plan, at 1, 5 and 10. | An organiser who wants memberships and ticketing in one account and can live with a monthly floor. |
| Luma | 5% platform fee for paid events on the free plan, 0% on Luma Plus at $59 a month billed annually, prices stated in US dollars. Stripe's card fee, which Luma gives as typically 2.9% plus 30 cents, sits on top of the platform fee. | Community and recurring meetup hosts who want the calendar and the guest list more than the checkout. |
| Eventbrite | 3.7% plus $1.79 service fee per ticket and 2.9% payment processing per order. Its organiser pricing page names the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Ireland as where its plans are available. India is not among them. | Not an Indian shortlist entry on its own published terms. |
| BookMyShow | No organiser commission, per-ticket fee or payout timeline published. Covered separately on the BookMyShow page. | Large city events where the act carries the gate and terms are negotiated rather than read. |
| A gateway's own payment page | 2% on domestic payments with 18% GST on the platform fee, no setup fee and no annual maintenance charge, and up to 3% on international cards. | The floor. Money collection with no capacity, no attendee record and no gate. |
| Thrivia | 4.9% inclusive of GST when the payment gateway collects, applied last on the GST-inclusive subtotal, split as 3.71% payment processing and 1.19% platform. Nothing at all when the attendee pays your own UPI VPA in manual mode. | A dated departure with a capacity and a deposit, sold to an audience you already have. |
Three of those are priced in dollars
Explara, Luma and Eventbrite all publish their subscription prices in US dollars, which changes the arithmetic in a way a percentage comparison hides. A $9 Explara plan and a $59 Luma Plus plan are fixed costs in a currency your gate is not denominated in, and they are due whether or not the batch fills.
Luma's is the sharpest version of it. The platform fee is 5% on the free plan, and Luma states that Stripe's card fee, typically 2.9% plus 30 cents, is charged on top rather than included. Buying that down to 0% costs $59 a month billed annually, so the break-even is a volume question you answer in dollars for revenue you collect in rupees. Eventbrite settles itself: its own organiser pricing page lists six countries for its plans and India is not one of them.
Explara is the closest of the three to an Indian answer, since its 4% is stated for domestic ticket value and it invites you to talk to them about connecting your own payment gateway. Read the 1% Stripe line next to the 4% before you compare it to anything, because that is 5% before the monthly plan price.
Collecting the money yourself
A gateway's own payment page at 2% plus 18% GST is cheaper than everything above, and organisers leave Townscript for it more often than the category pages admit. What you give up is not the checkout. It is everything after the payment: the seat count that stops selling at capacity, the record that says who is coming, and something at the door that tells a real ticket from a forwarded screenshot.
That is the work a platform is charging for. Our own UPI collection guide covers where doing it by hand stops scaling, and it is somewhere around forty attendees rather than four hundred.
How operators do this today
| How it works today | Where it breaks | What Thrivia does instead |
|---|---|---|
| You pick a platform on its headline percentage and discover the rest of the stack in the payout. | The rates are not measuring the same thing. One includes the gateway charge, one adds a separate 2%, one adds a card fee in dollars, and two of them add a monthly plan price underneath. | One rate, 4.9%, inclusive of GST and applied last on the GST-inclusive subtotal. It is 3.71% payment processing and 1.19% platform, and there is no second line under it. You set per event whether the attendee sees it or you absorb it. |
| The buyer pays the whole price at checkout, because that is what a ticket is. | A ₹32,000 Spiti departure does not sell like a ₹500 gig. Asking for all of it in one screen is the most common reason the booking never happened. | A booking can take a deposit now and carry the balance as owing, so the seat is held and the rest is a number you can chase. The deposit guide covers the mechanics. |
| The money lands with the platform and reaches you on its calendar, weekly or after the event. | Your permit fees, your vehicle advance and your homestay deposit are due before the departure, not after the settlement. | In manual mode the attendee pays your own UPI VPA and Thrivia is not in the payment, so there is nothing to settle. In gateway mode the payment gateway settles to your own account on its standard T+2 cycle. The single exception is a booking where the attendee opted into the 1% Guarantee at checkout, which shows as Held in Finance until check-in and is an accounting line rather than custody of the money. |
| Entry is a scan at the gate against the platform's server, and a duplicate is caught by whoever is watching. | At a trailhead or a farm venue there is no network, and the same screenshot gets forwarded to four people. | Each ticket carries its own QR. A second scan comes back as already checked in, with the time of the first one on screen, so the steward sees what happened rather than a shrug. The scanner queues check-ins offline and reconciles them when a signal comes back. |
| The marketplace puts your event in front of people who have never heard of you. | Nothing breaks. This is the part of Townscript you are actually paying for. | Nothing. Thrivia has no marketplace and brings you no strangers. If discovery is why you are on Townscript, that reason survives this page. |
Which product for which job
- Stay on Townscript if a real share of your buyers arrive through its listing pages, or if you are above the volume where the fee band starts bending toward 2%.
- KonfHub if you want a single rate with the gateway charge inside it and a settlement day you can put in a calendar, and your event fits under its per-plan registration cap.
- Explara if memberships and events in one account matter and the monthly plan price in dollars is small against your gate.
- Luma if what you run is a recurring community calendar and the guest list is the product.
- A gateway's own payment page if you are selling forty seats to people who already know you and you would rather do the reconciliation than pay for it.
- Thrivia if what you sell has a date, a capacity and a deposit, and most of your buyers come from your own Instagram and WhatsApp rather than from a marketplace search box.
What moving actually costs
Two things make a migration worse than the spreadsheet says. Your existing Townscript event URLs are the links sitting in every WhatsApp forward and Instagram bio you have sent for two years, and they do not follow you. And your past attendee list is the audience you would be selling the next batch to, so move it before you stop paying, not after.
One more thing to check against your own book before you shortlist anything here. Thrivia prices every ticket in rupees. A foreign card pays, at the gateway's international rate of up to 3% against 2% domestic, but the buyer sees a rupee figure and their bank sets the conversion. Townscript's own note about FX applying when the transaction currency differs from your domestic currency is the same problem, described from the other side.
If you want the whole category rather than the Townscript-shaped slice of it, the buyer guide compares what reaches your bank on a ticket you actually sold, and the event organisers page covers what changes when the thing you sell has a date on it.
Common questions
What are the main alternatives to Townscript in India?
KonfHub, Explara and Thrivia compete with it on terms an Indian organiser can act on. Luma and Eventbrite publish their prices in US dollars and route card payments through Stripe, and Eventbrite's organiser pricing page does not list India among the countries its plans are available in. BookMyShow publishes no organiser rate at all. A gateway's own payment page at 2% plus 18% GST is the cheapest option and comes with none of the event machinery.
Is Townscript's fee really 2%?
Its pricing page publishes the Townscript fee as a range, 3% to 2%, plus a payment gateway fee of 2% per ticket for domestic currency, read on 20 September 2026. Where you land inside that band is an account conversation, so a small organiser should not assume the 2% end of it.
Does it help to pass Townscript's fees to the buyer?
By its own calculator, yes. On a ₹1,000 ticket with the organiser bearing the fees the buyer pays ₹1,023.60 and the organiser receives ₹946.80. With the buyer bearing them the buyer pays ₹1,070.80 and the organiser receives ₹994, a difference of ₹47.20 a ticket.
What is the cheapest alternative to Townscript?
Collecting the money yourself. A gateway's own payment page is 2% on domestic payments with 18% GST on the platform fee and no setup or annual maintenance charge, and Thrivia's manual mode carries no platform fee at all because the attendee pays your own UPI VPA and Thrivia is not in the payment. Both move the reconciliation work onto you.
Can I keep taking international card payments if I leave Townscript?
That depends where you go. The gateways publish up to 3% for international cards and Luma and Eventbrite are built around Stripe, so foreign cards are native to them. Thrivia takes the foreign card too, at that same gateway rate, but prices the ticket in rupees rather than in the buyer's currency.
Sources
- Townscript pricing, India and INR: the 3% to 2% Townscript fee band, the 2% domestic gateway fee, TCS and TDS, and both fee-bearer scenarios on a ₹1,000 ticket checked 2026-09-20
- KonfHub pricing, India tab: Lite at 2% plus GST with a 300-registration cap, Silver at 3.75% plus GST inclusive of gateway charges with a 2,500 cap, weekly Thursday settlement checked 2026-09-20
- Explara pricing, India site: Starter $0, Growth $9 and Pro $25 a month, 4% on domestic ticket value plus 1% per transaction for the Stripe gateway, events capped per plan checked 2026-09-20
- Luma pricing: 5% platform fee for paid events on the free plan, 0% on Luma Plus at $59 a month billed annually, with Stripe's card fee stated as typically 2.9% plus 30 cents on top checked 2026-09-20
- Eventbrite organiser pricing: 3.7% plus $1.79 per ticket and 2.9% payment processing per order, with plans listed for the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Ireland checked 2026-09-20
- Payment gateway pricing: 2% on domestic payments, 18% GST on the platform fee, up to 3% on international cards, and no setup or annual maintenance charges checked 2026-09-20