Price Study · October 7, 2026

What a $100 ticket really costs on each site

One seat. Same row, same seller, same delivery. We ran it through real checkouts and read the receipts. Then we wrote down the fee rule for every marketplace we compare.

The seat

Jerry Seinfeld at the Beacon Theatre in New York, February 5, 2027, Upper Balcony 1, Row M. On the TicketNetwork inventory network, where this listing originates, the seat carries a wholesale price of $100. Two storefronts resell that exact ticket group. We opened both checkouts on October 7, 2026, in a fresh browser with no account or coupon, and read the line items.

	TicketNetwork	MegaSeats
Inventory price	$100.00	$100.00
Listed price on site	$134.00	$137.00
Fee or promotion	+ $20.10 fee (15%)	- $13.70 promotion (10%)
Pre-tax total	$154.10	$123.30
New York sales tax (8.875%)	$13.68	$10.94
You pay	$167.78	$134.24

Checkout line items read on October 7, 2026. Both storefronts resell the same TicketNetwork ticket group (ID 1184340518).

$33.54

Paid more for the identical seat on TicketNetwork than on MegaSeats. That is 20% of the cheaper price, for the same ticket, row and delivery.

Nothing about the seat differs. The gap is entirely storefront policy: TicketNetwork lists the seat at 1.34 times the inventory price and then adds a 15% fee on the listed price. MegaSeats lists it at 1.37 times, adds no fee, and applies a 10% promotion automatically. We repeated the MegaSeats checkout in Texas and Alabama and got the same structure, so the promotion is not a one-off.

The fee rule for every site we compare

The table shows what you pay before sales tax for a seat that is $100 of inventory on the TicketNetwork network, or $100 as listed on sites with their own inventory. Where we could read a checkout, the row says measured. Where a site does not publish a rate and we rely on third-party reporting, it says estimate.

Site	Fee rule	You pay (pre-tax)	Basis
TickPick	Listed price is the price. No buyer fee. TickPick charges sellers a commission instead of adding a buyer fee at checkout.	$100.00	measured
Gametime	Fee bundled into the displayed price. The number on the listing is the pre-tax total; nothing is added at checkout.	$100.00	measured
Hellotickets	Listed price is the price (US storefront). Checked against three listings on their US site in September 2026.	$100.00	measured
Events365	Adds about 12% at checkout. Checkout fee on the TicketNetwork-network inventory it resells.	$112.00	measured
MegaSeats	Lists at 1.37x the inventory price, then takes 10% off automatically. No fee. Same seat as TicketNetwork below; the 10% promotion applied on every checkout we ran.	$123.30	measured
StubHub International	Listed x 1.26 plus $2.50 (x 1.28 under $56). Measured to the cent across 11 listings in September 2026.	$128.50	measured
TicketNetwork	Lists at 1.34x the inventory price, then adds a 15% fee on the listed price. $100 inventory lists at $134; the fee line was $20.10 on that seat.	$154.10	measured
SeatGeek	Adds a buyer fee, commonly 10 to 30%. Third-party estimate; the fee rises with demand and is shown in the all-in total.	$110 to $130	estimate
StubHub (US)	Adds a buyer fee, commonly 15 to 30% or more. Third-party estimate; shown in the total since the 2025 all-in pricing rule.	$115 to $130+	estimate
Ticketmaster	Service, facility and order fees, commonly 20 to 30% or more. Primary tickets; resale on Ticketmaster varies by event.	$120 to $130+	estimate
Vivid Seats	Adds a buyer fee, commonly 20 to 40%. Third-party estimate; the highest range of the major sites.	$120 to $140	estimate

Measured rows: checkout line items read by Tixplorer on September 5, September 25 and October 7, 2026. Estimate rows: third-party reporting; those sites do not publish fixed rates and their fees move with demand.

What this means when you buy

The listed price on a ticket site tells you very little. Two of the most expensive storefronts in our table start from the same wholesale seat as two of the cheapest. The only number that compares across sites is the pre-tax, fee-inclusive total, which since the 2025 federal all-in pricing rule every US site must show before checkout. Compare that number for the exact seat you want, not the site's reputation.

That comparison is what Tixplorer does for every event: the same seat from every marketplace that lists it, priced with the rules above, sorted lowest first. The fee rules in this article are exactly the ones our site uses, and we update them when a checkout tells us something changed. See also our report on ticket fees in 2026 and the marketplace comparison hub.

Questions

Why does the same seat cost different amounts on different sites?

Because the seat is one listing from one seller that several marketplaces resell, and each adds its own markup and fee on top. In our test the identical Beacon Theatre seat totalled $167.78 on TicketNetwork and $134.24 on MegaSeats, a 20% gap for the same ticket, same row, same delivery.

Which ticket site has the lowest fees?

TickPick adds no buyer fee and Gametime bundles its fee into the displayed price, so on identical listings they usually produce the lowest total. Among resellers of the TicketNetwork network, MegaSeats was cheapest in our test because its automatic 10% discount more than offsets its markup.

Is the price Tixplorer shows the price I pay?

Tixplorer shows the pre-tax, fee-inclusive price for every marketplace using the rules in this article, measured where we could and estimated where the site does not publish a rate. Sales tax is added at checkout by every site where the state charges it.

How did you measure this?

On October 7, 2026 we opened real checkout pages for the same ticket group on TicketNetwork and MegaSeats in a fresh browser with no account, in New York (8.875% tax), Texas (8.25%) and Alabama (0%), and read the line items: listed price, fee, promotion, tax, total. StubHub International and Hellotickets were measured the same way in September 2026. The ranges for SeatGeek, StubHub US, Ticketmaster and Vivid Seats are third-party estimates, because those sites do not publish a fixed rate.

Reuse: journalists and bloggers may quote this study with a link to this page. Data and method questions: cameron@tixplorer.com.