# Luma

> Luma is an event hosting and ticketing platform, used at lu.ma and luma.com, that creates a public event page and calendar for any in-person, virtual, or hybrid event, handles registration, approval, guest lists, and paid tickets through Stripe, sends invitations and reminders by email, SMS, push, and WhatsApp, checks guests in at the door, and syncs virtual events to Zoom with attendance tracking; the free plan charges a five percent platform fee on paid tickets and the 59-dollar Plus plan removes it.

- Category: Webinars & Virtual Events (https://saastracker.org/categories/webinars-events)
- Website: https://luma.com
- Starting price: $0 (Free, with a 5 percent platform fee on paid tickets); $59 per month for Plus billed annually
- Free plan: 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: Not applicable; the free plan is permanent and fully functional
- Founded: 2020, HQ: San Francisco, California, United States, Ownership: Venture-backed
- Profile last reviewed: 2026-08-22
- Canonical profile: https://saastracker.org/products/luma

## Overview

Luma is the most-used piece of software in this category that most B2B software buyers have never evaluated. It started in 2020 as a way to run events on top of Zoom and became the default tool for a very specific and very large constituency: startup meetups, AI hackathons, investor dinners, community dinners, coworking events, conference side-events, and the entire dense calendar of gatherings that surrounds technology and creative work. By early 2026 it powers well over a million events a year. If you have been invited to a tech event in the last three years, there is a good chance the link was a lu.ma one.

The reason it won that market is aesthetic and structural rather than functional. Event pages look good with no effort, the RSVP flow is two clicks with no account friction that matters, and the central object is a calendar rather than an event, so an organizer builds an audience that persists across events instead of starting from zero every time. That calendar can be public, subscribed to, and embedded, and guests who subscribe get told when you schedule something new. Eventbrite has a marketplace; Luma has a following.

Commercially it is refreshingly simple. The free plan is genuinely complete: unlimited events, unlimited guests, up to 500 invites or newsletter sends a week, paid ticketing with cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and regional methods, ticket types, coupons, group purchases, guest check-in, three calendar admins, and Zoom integration with attendance tracking. It takes a five percent platform fee on paid tickets, on top of Stripe's usual card processing. Luma Plus is 59 dollars a month billed annually and removes the platform fee entirely, raises weekly sends to 5,000, and adds API access, Zapier, tax collection, custom event URLs, and five admins.

Be clear about what Luma is not. It is not a webinar platform. There is no streaming room, no presenter console, no polls, no in-session chat, and no recording. For a virtual event, Luma handles registration, reminders, and the join link, and the session itself happens in Zoom or wherever else you send people. That makes it a complement to Livestorm, Zoom Webinars, or Crowdcast rather than a replacement for them, and it is the single most common misunderstanding buyers have about it.

## How it works

1. You create a calendar, which is the durable object: your organization, community, or event series. Events live inside it, and people can subscribe to the calendar so future events reach them without you rebuilding a list each time.

2. You create an event with a title, a cover image, a time, and a location, which can be a physical address, a virtual link, or both. Luma generates a public event page immediately. Registration can be open, approval-required, invite-only, or gated to a password or a specific email domain.

3. Tickets can be free or paid. Paid ticketing runs through Stripe and supports multiple ticket types, group purchases, coupons, and regional payment methods. On the free plan Luma takes a five percent platform fee; on Plus the platform fee is zero and you only pay Stripe's processing charge.

4. Guests receive confirmations and reminders through email, SMS, push notifications, and WhatsApp, which is a broader channel mix than any conventional webinar tool offers. Weekly send capacity is 500 on Free and 5,000 on Plus, with add-ons up to 100,000.

5. For in-person events, hosts check guests in at the door from a phone with QR scanning and a live guest list. For virtual events, the Zoom integration issues personalised join links and reports back who actually attended and for how long. Afterwards you can message attendees and no-shows separately, and the calendar keeps the audience for next time.

## Best for

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.

## Not the right fit for

- Anyone shopping for a webinar platform; Luma does not stream, does not record, has no presenter console, and no in-session engagement tools, so it cannot host the session itself.
- Large ticketed public events that depend on discovery; Luma has no consumer marketplace, so unlike Eventbrite it will not bring you an audience you did not already have.
- Teams that need deep marketing automation; there are no native Salesforce or Marketo objects, and integration means the API on Plus or Zapier rather than structured CRM sync.
- Enterprise buyers with procurement requirements; SSO, SOC 2 documentation, and data residency are not published as standard plan features and sit behind an enterprise conversation.
- Organizations selling low-margin tickets on the free plan; a five percent platform fee on top of roughly three percent card processing is eight percent off the top, and at any real volume the 59-dollar Plus plan is cheaper than staying free.

## Features

### Event pages and calendars

The design decision that made Luma the default in its market.

- **Instant public event pages**: A well-designed, mobile-friendly event page is generated the moment you create an event, with cover art, description, location, and a two-click RSVP.
- **Calendars as the durable object**: Events sit inside a calendar that people can subscribe to, so an organizer accumulates an audience across events instead of building a list from scratch each time.
- **Embeddable calendars and buttons**: Drop your calendar or a register button into your own website so the event programme lives on your domain as well as on Luma.
- **Custom event URLs**: Plus lets you set your own event page slugs rather than accepting a generated one, which matters for anything you promote in print or on stage.
- **In-person, virtual, and hybrid events**: The same event object handles a physical address, a virtual join link, or both, with location revealed only to approved guests when you want it that way.
- **Multiple calendar admins**: Three admins on Free and five on Plus, with additional seats purchasable, so a team can run a programme without sharing one login.

### Registration, ticketing, and payments

A complete ticketing stack that most people get for free.

- **Paid ticketing through Stripe**: Sell tickets with cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and regional payment methods. Five percent platform fee on Free, zero percent on Plus, plus Stripe's own processing.
- **Multiple ticket types**: Early bird, general, VIP, member, and free tiers on the same event, each with its own capacity and availability window.
- **Approval-required registration**: Review each request before issuing a ticket, which is how curated dinners, investor events, and community gatherings actually run.
- **Coupons and discount codes**: Issue promotional codes for partners, sponsors, or members without creating separate ticket types.
- **Group purchases**: One person buys several tickets and distributes them, which is the normal pattern for team attendance at a paid event.
- **Tax collection**: Plus adds tax collection on ticket sales, which is the feature that turns Luma from a community tool into something a registered business can invoice through.
- **Waitlists and capacity limits**: Cap an event and let overflow join a waitlist that promotes automatically as spaces free up.

### Guest communication

The widest channel mix in this category, and the reason show rates are high.

- **Email invitations and reminders**: Invite lists and automated reminder emails, with weekly send capacity of 500 on Free and 5,000 on Plus.
- **SMS reminders**: Text reminders are included rather than sold as an add-on, and they are the single biggest lever on whether people actually turn up.
- **WhatsApp and push notifications**: Reminders can reach guests on WhatsApp and via push, which no conventional webinar tool offers and which matters greatly for international community events.
- **Newsletters to a calendar**: Message everyone subscribed to your calendar, not just registrants for one event, turning the calendar into a genuine audience channel.
- **Attendee and no-show segmentation**: Message people based on whether they attended, which is how follow-up on a recurring event programme should work.
- **Send-capacity add-ons**: Weekly send limits can be raised beyond the 5,000 included with Plus, ranging from roughly 50 dollars a month for 10,000 sends to 800 dollars a month for 100,000.

### Running the event

Strong on the door, thin on the stream.

- **Guest check-in**: QR-based check-in from a phone with a live guest list, which is a real in-person capability most virtual-first tools do not have at all.
- **Zoom integration with attendance tracking**: Virtual events issue personalised Zoom join links and report back who joined and for how long, so attendance data survives the handoff.
- **Guest lists and profiles**: See who is coming, with repeat-attendee history across your calendar, which is how community organizers recognise their regulars.
- **Registration questions**: Ask custom questions at signup and use the answers for approval decisions or segmentation.
- **Host and co-host roles**: Multiple hosts per event with control over the guest list, messaging, and check-in.

### Data and developer surface

Modest, and gated to Plus.

- **API access**: Plus includes API access for creating events, reading guest lists, and pulling attendance into your own systems.
- **Zapier automation**: Also a Plus feature, connecting registrations and attendance to email tools, CRMs, and spreadsheets.
- **Guest list export**: Full CSV export of registrants and attendees on every plan, so your audience data is never trapped.
- **Calendar analytics**: Registration, attendance, and subscriber growth across the calendar rather than just per event.

## Use cases

- **Startup running a monthly community meetup**: A recurring in-person evening for local founders, currently organized through a mix of a spreadsheet, a form, and a group chat, with no persistent audience between events. Outcome: A public Luma calendar accumulates subscribers who get told about every new date, RSVPs are approved by hand where needed, SMS reminders lift the turnout, and door check-in runs from a phone.
- **Coworking space selling tickets to workshops**: Paid workshops at 25 to 60 dollars a seat, where an eight percent effective fee on the free plan is eating a visible slice of thin margins. Outcome: Luma Plus at 59 dollars a month removes the platform fee entirely, so anything above roughly 1,200 dollars of monthly ticket revenue makes the upgrade pay for itself, and tax collection makes the sales properly invoiceable.
- **Conference organizer running side events**: A dozen satellite events around a main conference, each needing its own page, capacity, and guest list, all discoverable in one place. Outcome: One calendar holds every side event with individual capacities and waitlists, attendees subscribe once and see the whole programme, and the embedded calendar sits on the conference website.
- **Investor or accelerator running curated dinners**: Invite-only gatherings where who is in the room is the product, so open registration is unacceptable and manual list management is the current process. Outcome: Approval-required registration with custom questions lets the host vet every request, location stays hidden until approval, and repeat-attendee history across the calendar shows who keeps showing up.

## Pricing

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 forever. Unlimited events and unlimited guests; Up to 500 invites or newsletter sends per week; Paid ticketing with cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and regional methods; Ticket types, coupons, group purchases, and guest check-in; 3 calendar admins and Zoom integration with attendance tracking. The catch is the five percent platform fee on paid tickets, on top of Stripe's roughly 2.9 percent plus 30 cents.
- **Plus**: $59 per month, billed annually. Zero percent platform fee on paid events; Up to 5,000 invites or newsletter sends per week; Tax collection on ticket sales; Custom event page URLs and separate first and last name collection; API access, Zapier, 5 calendar admins, and priority support. Annual billing saves around 14 percent. If you sell more than roughly 1,200 dollars of tickets a month, Plus is cheaper than Free.
- **Enterprise**: Custom quoted. Custom terms for large organizations; Expanded admin and volume arrangements. The only part of Luma that requires a conversation. Everything a small business needs is self-serve.

Add-ons:

- Additional weekly send capacity (From about $50 per month for 10,000 sends up to about $800 per month for 100,000): Billed annually; only relevant if you are using the calendar as a newsletter channel at scale.
- Additional calendar admin seats (Purchasable beyond the five included with Plus)

Billing notes:

- The platform fee is the real pricing lever. Five percent on Free versus zero on Plus means the 59-dollar plan pays for itself at roughly 1,200 dollars of monthly ticket revenue, and everything above that is pure saving.
- Stripe's card processing fee, around 2.9 percent plus 30 cents, applies on both plans and is never waived; it is Stripe's charge, not Luma's.
- Fees can be absorbed by the organizer or passed to the buyer at checkout, so a small business can choose whether the attendee sees an eight percent uplift on the free plan.
- Weekly send limits, 500 on Free and 5,000 on Plus, are the only genuinely metered resource. Events and guests are unlimited on both plans, which is unusual.
- Annual billing on Plus saves around 14 percent against monthly, which is a smaller discount than most of this category offers.
- Luma is not a webinar platform, so a virtual event still needs Zoom or another room. Budget for that separately rather than assuming Luma replaces it.

Value assessment: 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.

## 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.
- Event pages look good with no design work, and the RSVP flow has almost no friction, which is the reason the entire startup and AI event ecosystem standardised on it.
- Real in-person capability with QR check-in and live guest lists, so hybrid programmes run from one tool rather than two.
- Approval-required registration and hidden locations make curated, invite-only events a first-class case rather than a workaround.

## 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.
- SSO, published compliance certification, and data residency are not standard plan features, which will not satisfy an enterprise security review.
- Weekly send limits mean an organizer using the calendar as a newsletter channel hits real ceilings and pays add-on pricing that climbs steeply.
- No in-session engagement of any kind, so polls, chat, and Q and A all live in whatever tool actually hosts the session.

## Comparisons

- **Luma vs Eventbrite**: Both do event hosting and ticketing, and the fee structures differ in ways that matter. Eventbrite charges 3.7 percent plus 1.79 dollars per paid ticket with no subscription required, and brings a real consumer marketplace that surfaces your event to people who have never heard of you. Luma Plus charges 59 dollars a month and zero platform fee, with no marketplace. For low-priced tickets or high volume, Luma is dramatically cheaper. For public events that need discovery, or physical events at scale, Eventbrite earns its cut.
- **Luma vs Crowdcast**: These solve adjacent halves of the same problem. Crowdcast is the live room with ticketing attached; Luma is the ticketing and audience layer with no room. If your virtual event is the product and you want a good browser session with chat, Q and A, and instant replay, Crowdcast. If you run in-person or hybrid events, or you are happy running the session in Zoom, Luma is better at registration, reminders, check-in, and building a recurring audience, and it is free.
- **Luma vs 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.
- **Luma vs Zoom Webinars**: Luma's Zoom integration means these two are commonly paired rather than compared. Zoom Webinars provides the room, the presenter controls, the recording, and the attendee capacity you pay for by tier. Luma provides the event page, the ticketing, the SMS and WhatsApp reminders, and the attendance tracking that reports back from Zoom. Buying Luma does not remove the need for Zoom; buying Zoom does not give you Luma's registration experience or its persistent calendar audience.

## Implementation

- Setup time: 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: 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.
- Onboarding: Entirely self-serve on both Free and Plus, with no sales contact required. Enterprise is the only path that involves a conversation, and almost no small business needs it.
- Migration: Guest lists import by CSV and export the same way on every plan, so your audience is portable in both directions. Past events do not migrate in from Eventbrite or Meetup as historical records, so a back catalogue stays where it is. If you are moving from Eventbrite, note that you also lose marketplace discovery, and plan to replace that traffic with your own channels before you switch.

## Platform, API & security

- Platforms: Web application, Mobile web event pages, iOS and Android apps for guests and hosts, Embeddable calendars and register buttons
- API: API access is included on the Plus plan for creating events, reading guest lists, and pulling attendance data, alongside Zapier automation.
- Compliance: GDPR handling for guest data, PCI handled by Stripe for ticketing, No public SOC 2 report advertised on standard plans
- Data residency: Not offered as a standard selectable option.
- SSO: Not published as a standard plan feature; enterprise arrangements are handled case by case.
- Security notes: Payments are processed through Stripe so card data does not sit with Luma. Guest data is exportable on every plan, and event visibility controls cover public, unlisted, approval-required, and invite-only registration.

## Support

- Channels: Email support, Priority support on Plus, Help centre
- Documentation: A clear, task-oriented help centre covering calendars, ticketing, Stripe connection, check-in, the Zoom integration, and the API.
- Community: Very large informal community across startup, AI, and creative event organizers; Luma calendars themselves function as a discovery network within specific scenes even though there is no formal marketplace.

## Company

- Founded: 2020
- Founders: Victor Pontis, Danqing Liu
- Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States
- Ownership: Venture-backed
- Employees: Approximately 50
- Funding: Roughly 15 million dollars raised, including a 3 million dollar seed round led by Maven Ventures and Venrock and a 12 million dollar Series A in 2024 that funded expansion to about 50 people and enterprise integration work.

Funding history:

- Seed (2020): $3M. Led by Maven Ventures and Venrock, backing a product originally built to help creators run paid events on top of Zoom.
- Series A (2024): $12M. Funded growth to roughly 50 employees, a San Francisco hub, and expanded integrations.

Timeline:

- 2020: Founded in San Francisco, initially as a way for creators and educators to run and monetise events on top of Zoom.
- 2021: The calendar becomes the central object rather than the individual event, letting organizers accumulate a subscribable audience across a programme.
- 2022: Adoption accelerates across startup, crypto, and AI communities, where lu.ma links become the default way to invite people to anything.
- 2024: Raises a 12 million dollar Series A, grows to around 50 people, and expands in-person capability with QR check-in and richer guest management.
- 2025: Communication channels broaden beyond email to SMS, push, and WhatsApp, materially improving attendance on community events.
- 2026: Consolidates on luma.com alongside the original lu.ma domain, powering well over a million events a year, with Free at a five percent platform fee and Plus at 59 dollars a month removing it.

## Integrations

Stripe (ticketing and payouts), Zoom (join links and attendance tracking), Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, and Outlook, Zapier (Plus), Luma API (Plus), Embeddable calendars and register buttons, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and regional payment methods, CSV import and export of guest lists

## FAQ

### What is Luma?

Luma is an event hosting and ticketing platform at lu.ma and luma.com. It creates a public event page and a subscribable calendar for in-person, virtual, or hybrid events, and handles registration, approval, paid tickets through Stripe, invitations and reminders by email, SMS, push, and WhatsApp, and guest check-in at the door. It is the default tool for startup, AI, and community events.

### Is Luma a webinar platform?

No, and this is the most important thing to understand before choosing it. Luma has no streaming room, no presenter console, no polls or in-session chat, and no recording. For a virtual event it handles registration, reminders, and the join link, and the session itself runs in Zoom or another platform. It complements Livestorm, Zoom Webinars, or Crowdcast rather than replacing them.

### How much does Luma cost?

The free plan covers unlimited events and guests, 500 weekly invite or newsletter sends, full paid ticketing, ticket types, coupons, check-in, three admins, and the Zoom integration, and takes a five percent platform fee on paid tickets. Luma Plus is 59 dollars a month billed annually and removes the platform fee, raises sends to 5,000 a week, and adds tax collection, custom URLs, API access, Zapier, and five admins.

### What is the per-ticket fee and who pays it?

On the free plan Luma takes five percent of the ticket price, and on Plus it takes nothing. Stripe's card processing, roughly 2.9 percent plus 30 cents, applies on both plans and is never waived. At checkout you choose whether to absorb the fees or pass them to the buyer, so the attendee either sees the ticket price you set or that price plus roughly eight percent on the free plan.

### When is Luma Plus worth paying for?

At roughly 1,200 dollars of paid ticket revenue a month, because five percent of 1,200 is 60 dollars and Plus costs 59. Above that you are strictly better off on Plus, and the tax collection, custom URLs, and API come free with the decision. Below that, or if all your events are free, the free plan is the correct choice and stays correct indefinitely.

### What happens if more people register than I planned for?

Nothing breaks, because Luma does not cap guests. Events and guests are unlimited on both plans, and if you set a capacity yourself, overflow goes to a waitlist that promotes automatically as spaces free up. This is a very different failure mode from webinar platforms: Demio and WebinarJam hard-lock the room at the plan cap, Livestorm blocks joiners mid-session, and Zoom bills by attendee tier. Luma's constraint is the room or the Zoom licence you send people to, not Luma itself.

### What does a 500-registrant event cost on Luma?

Zero on the free plan if the event is free, since guests are unlimited. If you are selling 500 tickets at 20 dollars, that is 10,000 dollars of revenue, and the free plan's five percent fee costs 500 dollars while Plus costs 59 dollars for the month and takes nothing, saving over 440 dollars on a single event. Stripe processing applies either way. Note that if the event is virtual, you still need Zoom or another platform capable of holding those attendees.

### Do attendees need to install anything?

No. Guests register from a browser on any device with no account requirement that gets in the way, and event pages work well on mobile. There are iOS and Android apps for people who attend a lot of events and for hosts running door check-in, but nothing is required.

### Does Luma send SMS reminders?

Yes, and it also sends push notifications and WhatsApp messages alongside email. That channel mix is broader than any conventional webinar platform, most of which are email only, and it is a significant part of why Luma events see the show rates they do. Weekly send capacity is 500 on Free and 5,000 on Plus, with add-ons available up to 100,000.

### How does Luma compare to Eventbrite?

Eventbrite charges 3.7 percent plus 1.79 dollars per paid ticket with no subscription and gives you a consumer marketplace where people discover events. Luma Plus charges 59 dollars a month with no platform fee and has no marketplace. On a 20-dollar ticket, Eventbrite takes about 2.53 dollars while Luma Plus takes nothing, so at volume Luma is far cheaper. Eventbrite is the better choice when you need discovery or you run large physical events; Luma is better for community programmes where you already have the audience.

## Editorial verdict

Luma 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.

## SaaSTracker awards

- Momentum (Webinars & Virtual Events, Summer 2026): "Event hosting that feels like a calendar rather than a ticketing platform, and the default for the AI-era meetup wave."

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Source: SaaSTracker (https://saastracker.org), an independent editorial project. This profile is compiled from public information, carries no peer reviews or paid placement, and was last reviewed 2026-08-22. Awards are judged on published criteria: https://saastracker.org/methodology