How ticketsware works

ticketsware is a price listing for live events, mostly in the United States but also across the UK and Canada. For any performer, venue or city, we show every upcoming date we know about and the lowest listed ticket price for each one, so the choice of which night to go is made with prices in front of you rather than after four tabs of searching.

We hold no tickets, take no payment and issue no tickets. When you pick a date, you leave for the marketplace that actually has the inventory, and everything from seat selection onward happens there under their terms.

Marketplaces publish their inventory to affiliate feeds. We read those feeds on a schedule, normalise every event to a single record — performer, venue, calendar date, local start time — and store the cheapest ticket each seller is advertising for it.

The figure you see on a listing page is therefore a floor: the least you could pay for that date at the moment we last looked, before checkout fees. It is not a quote, and it is not the price of a good seat. It is the number that tells you whether a Tuesday is half the price of a Saturday.

A stored price is only as good as the moment it was stored, so we print how old ours is — “checked 3d ago” — next to the number instead of presenting it as live. Any site showing a price with no timestamp is showing you one of these too; it just is not telling you.

Open an individual event and we re-check that price with the seller in your browser, so the page you actually buy from is working with a current figure rather than a stored one.

Today we show inventory from TicketNetwork. We are adding marketplaces, and the number of sellers holding a given date is shown on the event page — so when a date has only one, you can see that, rather than being shown a “comparison” of one.

Where a seller publishes a range rather than a single figure, we show the spread. A Broadway house with seats from $60 to $1,800 is telling you something a single number cannot.

The single largest difference between ticket sites is not the ticket — it is what they include in the number on the listing page. Some quote the seat alone and add service, fulfilment and processing charges at the final step. Others quote an all-in figure from the start. The second looks more expensive and often is not.

This is why comparing headline prices between sites is close to meaningless, ours included. The only number worth comparing is the one on the final screen before you pay, with the same quantity selected, on the same day.

• Fee structure and disclosure. Whether fees appear on the listing, at checkout, or in a toggle you have to find.
• Delivery. Instant download, mobile transfer or a wait until closer to the event. A cheap ticket that transfers the day before is not the same product as one you hold now.
• The buyer guarantee. Most resale marketplaces promise valid tickets or a replacement, but what counts as a qualifying failure, and how long you have to report it, differs.
• Inventory. Listings are not shared. A date that looks sold out on one site can have seats on another.
• Quantity rules. Splits are often restricted so a seller is not left with a single orphan seat, which is why a pair can be unavailable in a row showing four.

• The all-in total for your quantity, not the per-ticket headline.
• When the tickets actually arrive, and by what method.
• Whether the seats are a specific row or a “zone” assigned later.
• The refund position if the event moves date — usually different from cancellation.
• That the venue and date match the event you meant. Tours repeat city names.

No comparison site sees every seller, and any site claiming otherwise is overstating it. Treat ours, and everyone else’s, as a strong starting point rather than a complete survey of the market.

When you follow a link from here and buy, the marketplace pays us a commission. That is the whole model. It costs you nothing, it does not change the price you are quoted, and it does not buy a seller a better position — dates are ordered by price and by date, never by what a seller pays.

Full detail is in our terms and privacy policy.

Because we are not the seller, we have no access to your order. We cannot see a booking, change seats, resend tickets, or process a refund — only the marketplace you bought from can. If something has gone wrong with a purchase, contact them first; their name is on your confirmation email.

We are glad to hear about a wrong price, a missing event or a broken page — that is ours to fix. Tell us here.