As a Standard or Pro organizer, you can charge members a fee to attend an event. Collecting event fees can offset costs of running a group like renting a venue, paying a speaker, or your organizer subscription.
Organizers on a Starter plan can't set up fees to attend their events.
Before you set an event fee, you must set up a PayPal account.
Setting an event fee
After setting up PayPal, you can set an optional fee when you create your next event.
Desktop / Mobile web
When you schedule an event, scroll down to the Event fee section.
Check This is a paid event.
Choose a Method: Direct from member or PayPal.
Confirm the Currency and Amount.
Add an optional refund policy.
For more, watch our Community Support specialists walk you through setting up event fees in this video:
Transaction fees
When an attendee RSVPs to an event, Meetup collects a service fee in addition to the full price of the event ticket. The service fee is collected on top of the ticket price, comparable to similar event ticketing platforms, and will not affect the amount transferred to organizers’ accounts.
Members will see this when they RSVP to a ticketed event:
In this example, the organizer charged $1 for the event ticket and the service fee is collected directly from the member on top of that ticket cost. This service fee goes to enhancing the ticketing experience and supporting an integrated checkout flow where your members can pay using PayPal, credit, debit, or Venmo.
The amount of the service fee depends on the price of the ticket.
A small transaction fee is also taken from the total amount an organizer charges per ticket. Please check with PayPal to determine the exact fees for your region, then adjust your event fee accordingly.
One of my attendees requested their money back. Can I refund them?
You're free to decide to accept a refund request or proactively issue a refund for a payment you received. You can issue and review refunds for both member dues and event fees on your group’s Money page.
Refunds for event fees are managed via Stripe or PayPal (depending on which tool you have set up).
You can issue and review refunds for both member dues and event fees on your group’s Money page.
Go to your Meetup group's Money page.
Scroll down to “All transactions.”
Select the arrow icon to the right of the transaction you want to refund.
Select Yes, I'm sure to confirm.
Payment resolution
We believe it’s essential for all Meetup communities to maintain trusting environments for their members. To ensure the integrity of the Meetup platform, we may process refunds directly from an organizer account - including member dues, event fees, and other monetary transactions.
We want organizers to feel empowered as community leaders, so we will only take action if we determine that there has been misuse of our Platform, or that the expectations originally communicated to members have not been met.
Meetup’s Trust and Safety team may intervene and provide a refund for dues or fees paid via Stripe in cases of fraud or misuse of our payment system.
Meetup cannot mediate disputes regarding payments made using any other payment processor, any fees associated with the use of third-party payment processors, or in cash. Please refer to our Terms of Service for the official fees, payment, and offers policy.