Livestorm vs Luma
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentLuma compared with Livestorm
Not really competitors, but frequently confused. Livestorm is a browser-based webinar platform with a presenter console, engagement tools, recording, and CRM sync, priced on actual attendance. Luma has none of that and does not stream. Teams sometimes run both: Luma for the public event page, ticketing, and reminders, Livestorm for the session itself. If you can only buy one and the session is virtual and interactive, buy Livestorm.
Choose Livestorm if
European and EU-data-conscious marketing teams running a steady program of live webinars, product demos, and customer onboarding sessions, especially those with high registration volume and typical no-show rates, who want attendees to join in a browser with zero friction and would rather pay for people who turned up than for a seat licence.
Choose Luma if
Community organizers, startups, coworking spaces, meetup and conference side-event hosts, and small businesses running a recurring programme of in-person or hybrid events, especially anyone who wants a persistent audience via a subscribable calendar and does not want to pay a platform fee on ticket revenue.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Livestorm | Luma |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Webinars | Webinars |
| Starting price | Pro at approximately 2.50 euros per attendee credit; third-party trackers report an entry block around 105 euros per month (free trial) | $0 (Free, with a 5 percent platform fee on paid tickets); $59 per month for Plus billed annually (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Attendee-credit consumption model. One credit is consumed per unique participant per session across a rolling twelve-month period. Team members are not counted, and no-shows consume nothing. | Freemium. A complete free plan that takes a five percent platform fee on paid tickets, and a flat monthly Plus plan that removes the fee and raises limits. Send capacity is the metered dimension. |
| Free plan | No | Unlimited events and guests, 500 invites or newsletter sends per week, paid ticketing with a five percent platform fee, ticket types, coupons, group purchases, guest check-in, three calendar admins, and Zoom integration with attendance tracking. |
| Free trial | A trial is available on request through the signup flow; Livestorm does not publish a fixed trial length on the pricing page | Not applicable; the free plan is permanent and fully functional |
| Best for | European and EU-data-conscious marketing teams running a steady program of live webinars, product demos, and customer onboarding sessions, especially those with high registration volume and typical no-show rates, who want attendees to join in a browser with zero friction and would rather pay for people who turned up than for a seat licence. | Community organizers, startups, coworking spaces, meetup and conference side-event hosts, and small businesses running a recurring programme of in-person or hybrid events, especially anyone who wants a persistent audience via a subscribable calendar and does not want to pay a platform fee on ticket revenue. |
| Setup time | Under an hour for a first event. Create the event, choose the format, restyle the registration page, edit the reminder emails, and connect your CRM. There is no software rollout and nothing for attendees to prepare, so the usual pre-launch IT work simply does not exist. | Fifteen minutes to a live public event page. Connecting Stripe for paid ticketing takes another ten. There is essentially no configuration burden, which is a large part of why the product spread the way it did. |
| Learning curve | Low for the basic live event. The parts that take practice are the automated event mode, the role and permission model in a larger workspace, and the analytics export, which is powerful but not self-explanatory. | Very low. Luma is one of the few tools in this category a non-technical organizer can use correctly on the first try without reading documentation. The only concepts worth learning are the calendar-versus-event distinction and the approval workflow. |
| Platforms | Web browser (attendees and presenters, desktop and mobile), iFrame embed on your own site, RTMP simulcast to YouTube, LinkedIn, X, and custom endpoints | Web application, Mobile web event pages, iOS and Android apps for guests and hosts, Embeddable calendars and register buttons |
| Compliance | ISO 27001, GDPR | GDPR handling for guest data, PCI handled by Stripe for ticketing, No public SOC 2 report advertised on standard plans |
| Founded | 2016 | 2020 |
| Headquarters | Paris, France (fully remote team) | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Ownership | Venture-backed | Venture-backed |
Strengths and limitations
Livestorm
Strengths
- Genuinely zero-install for both attendees and presenters, which lifts attendance rates and removes the most common day-of-event support ticket.
- Attendee-credit billing means no-shows are free, which is a real saving in a category where more than half of registrants routinely fail to attend.
- Unlimited team members at no additional cost, so a large marketing organization does not pay per host.
- Live, on-demand, and automated formats are all first-class rather than one of them being a token feature.
Limitations
- The pricing page publishes no flat monthly number and no free plan, so building a budget requires a conversation or a configuration exercise rather than reading a table.
- Running out of attendee credits blocks new joiners mid-session rather than billing you for the overage, which is an unusually harsh failure mode.
- Replay and on-demand views consume credits, which quietly makes evergreen content more expensive than it looks.
- Production control is thin compared with a studio tool: no scene composition, no multi-camera switching, no high-bitrate local recording.
Luma
Strengths
- The free plan is genuinely complete, with unlimited events and guests plus full paid ticketing, which no comparable platform offers.
- Luma Plus charges zero platform fee on ticket sales, which is a structurally better deal than Eventbrite's per-ticket percentage plus fixed fee for anyone selling regularly.
- The calendar model builds a persistent, subscribable audience across events rather than a fresh registration list each time, which compounds for anyone running a programme.
- Reminders reach guests by email, SMS, push, and WhatsApp, a broader channel mix than any conventional webinar tool, and it shows up directly in attendance rates.
Limitations
- There is no streaming room at all. Luma cannot host a webinar; a virtual event runs in Zoom or elsewhere, and Luma handles everything around it.
- No discovery marketplace, so unlike Eventbrite it will never bring you attendees you did not already reach.
- The five percent platform fee on the free plan is steep for a paid event, and combined with Stripe's processing it takes roughly eight percent off the top.
- No native CRM connectors; integration is API and Zapier on Plus, so marketing operations plumbing has to be built rather than configured.
Pricing compared
Livestorm
Attendee-credit consumption model. One credit is consumed per unique participant per session across a rolling twelve-month period. Team members are not counted, and no-shows consume nothing.
- ProAbout 2.50 euros per attendee credit
- EnterpriseCustom quote
Livestorm is good value when your no-show rate is high and your attendance is uneven, and poor value when it is neither. Paying only for people who turned up is genuinely fairer than a seat licence with a fixed room cap, and the unlimited team members clause means a twenty-person marketing org pays the same as a solo operator for the same audience. The catch is forecasting. A quote-free per-credit model turns your webinar bill into a variable cost that rises exactly when a campaign works, and the hard block when credits run out during a live session is a worse failure mode than an overage invoice. If you can predict your annual attendee volume within twenty percent, buy the credits and the economics beat Demio or Zoom at similar volume. If you cannot, a capped per-seat platform will be less stressful even if it is nominally more expensive.
Luma
Freemium. A complete free plan that takes a five percent platform fee on paid tickets, and a flat monthly Plus plan that removes the fee and raises limits. Send capacity is the metered dimension.
- Free$0
- Plus$59
- EnterpriseCustom
Luma's free plan is the most generous serious offering in this whole category, and for a community organizer running free events it is simply the correct answer at zero cost. The moment money changes hands, the arithmetic sharpens: five percent of ticket revenue is a lot, and Plus at 59 dollars a month erases it, so any organizer clearing more than about 1,200 dollars a month in tickets should be on Plus and is losing money by staying free. Against Eventbrite's 3.7 percent plus 1.79 dollars per ticket, Luma Plus wins decisively at volume and on low-priced tickets, where Eventbrite's fixed 1.79 dollars is brutal. What you give up is discovery, since Eventbrite has a marketplace and Luma does not, and the streaming room, which Luma has never had. Judged as ticketing and event management, it is excellent value; judged as a webinar tool, it is not one.
Editorial verdict on each
Livestorm
Category LeaderLivestorm is the best browser-first webinar platform for a marketing team that treats webinars as a lead channel rather than a big meeting, and the attendee-credit model is the fairest billing structure in the category for anyone whose no-show rate is typical. Zero-install attendance is not a marketing line; it measurably changes how many registrants become attendees. Buy it if you run a steady program with volatile attendance, have many occasional hosts, and want EU hosting with ISO 27001 behind it. Think twice if you need a fixed, forecastable monthly cost, because credits that run out block joiners mid-session, or if your strategy is really an evergreen funnel, in which case a dedicated automation tool will do more for less.
Read the full Livestorm profileLuma
MomentumLuma is the best event hosting and ticketing tool a small business can adopt in fifteen minutes, and the free plan is so complete that most organizers never need to pay. The calendar model, which builds a subscribable audience across a programme rather than a fresh list per event, is the quietly important idea, and reminders by SMS, push, and WhatsApp are why its events fill. The upgrade decision is arithmetic rather than taste: past roughly 1,200 dollars a month in ticket sales, the 59-dollar Plus plan is cheaper than the free one because it removes the five percent platform fee entirely. What you must not do is buy it expecting a webinar platform. Luma does not stream, record, or run a session; it gets people to one and tells you who showed up. Paired with Zoom, Livestorm, or Crowdcast it is close to ideal. On its own, for a virtual-first company that needs a room, it is only half the stack.
Read the full Luma profileLivestorm profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Luma last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.