Comparison
Partiful vs Luma.Two great tools, two different events.
People compare these two because both make beautiful event pages with free RSVP — but they are built for different gatherings. We run an event platform ourselves, so here is the honest read, including where each of them beats us.
Partiful is built for casual, personal, one-off gatherings — playful invites, text reminders, and (since June 2026) simple ticketing. Luma is built for calendar-shaped, recurring events — clean pages, subscriber calendars, and 5%-fee paid tickets (0% on Plus). Pick by the event: party → Partiful; recurring meetup → Luma; recurring ticketed series with real operations → that is the gap SocialLoop fills.
Head to head, by what actually differs
The page and the vibe
Partiful
Playful, personal, party-shaped. Animated invites, emoji-heavy RSVPs, text-message reminders. Guests feel invited to a party, not registered for a session.
Luma
Clean, minimal, calendar-shaped. A crisp page with date, location, and a guest list — the default look of tech meetups and founder dinners.
RSVP vs ticketing
Partiful
Free RSVP at its core. Ticketing launched in June 2026: fees scale with event size and ticket price (shown transparently at setup), free tickets carry no fees, and the host chooses whether guests or the host absorb fees. Payouts via Stripe, roughly three days after the event.
Luma
Free RSVP, with paid tickets available on every plan: 5% platform fee on the free plan (0% with Luma Plus at $59/mo), plus Stripe processing. Fees come out of the host payout — guests always see face price.
Recurring events and audience
Partiful
Built around one-off gatherings. You can host again, but there is no calendar or subscriber model — each party largely starts fresh.
Luma
The calendar is the product: people subscribe to your calendar and get every future event. Strong for weekly and monthly series with an audience you keep.
Discovery
Partiful
Discovery is social — guests share the invite link. There is no marketplace of strangers browsing events, which is fine for private parties.
Luma
Some discovery through featured calendars and city pages, but Luma is mostly link-and-audience driven too — you bring the crowd.
Where each stops
Partiful
Application-gated tickets, member tiers, affiliate or promoter payouts, and marketing campaigns are not the product. Partiful stays deliberately simple.
Luma
Deeper ticketing operations — tiered member pricing, application review at scale, promoter commissions, campaign tooling — sit outside what Luma focuses on.
The honest verdict
Throwing a birthday dinner, a housewarming, a party where the invite sets the mood? Partiful — nothing else makes casual feel that good. Running a weekly founder breakfast or a monthly tech meetup where people subscribe and come back? Luma — the calendar model is exactly that shape.
And if your series has outgrown both — you are selling tiered tickets, vetting applications, paying promoters a commission, sending campaigns — that is the operator shape neither focuses on. It is the one SocialLoop is built for, with AI doing the building.
Common questions
Is Partiful or Luma better?
Neither is better outright — they serve different events. Partiful is the stronger pick for casual, personal, one-off gatherings where the invite itself is part of the fun. Luma is the stronger pick for calendar-shaped, recurring events — especially tech meetups — where subscribers and a clean page matter more than playfulness.
Does Partiful support paid tickets?
Yes — since June 2026. Fees scale with event size and ticket price and are shown transparently when you configure the event; free tickets carry no fees, and hosts choose whether to absorb fees or pass them to guests. Payment runs on Stripe with payouts about three days after the event.
What does Luma charge for paid tickets?
On Luma’s free plan, paid tickets carry a 5% platform fee plus Stripe processing (2.9% + 30¢), deducted from the host payout. Luma Plus ($59/mo) drops the platform fee to 0%. Guests always pay face price. Verify current pricing with Luma directly.
What if I need more than either — real ticketing for a recurring series?
That is the gap both leave open: recurring, ticketed events with operations — application-gated tickets, member and secret tiers, affiliate payouts, campaigns. That is the shape SocialLoop is built for, with AI generating the event, tiers, and campaigns. Free to start; see socialloop.ai/pricing.
The third option: recurring, ticketed, operated
SocialLoop is for the series that outgrew free RSVP — paid and application-gated tiers, member pricing, affiliate payouts, and AI-generated events and campaigns. First event free.
See SocialLoop vs Partiful