Issue a full or partial refund

Before you start

• Make sure you respond to all refund requests within five business days.
• If you need to fully refund multiple orders, you can issue multiple refunds at once. 
• If an order is free, cancel or delete it instead. 
• If you use PayPal for payment processing, you'll need to issue refunds with your PayPal account.

Refund an order

To issue a full or partial refund:

1. Go to Events and select your event.
2. Go to Manage Orders (under Manage attendees) and find the order you want to refund.
3. Select Actions, then Refund this order.
4. Select the tickets you want to refund and enter the refund amount. If you want to issue a partial refund, edit the ticket price.
5. Choose if you’d like to pay the ticketing fees.
6. (Optional) Add a note to the ticket buyer.
7. Review the refund confirmation and select Confirm refund. The refund will return to the buyer within 5-7 business days.

If you fully refund a ticket, it’s no longer valid and is added back to your available ticket quantity. A ticket that’s partially refunded is still valid.

Note: If the order was paid with an offline payment method, refunding the order will invalidate the tickets, but will not return funds to the buyer.

Declined refunds

While you should always attempt a refund on Eventbrite first, the buyer's bank may still decline it. In that case, contact the buyer directly to work out a solution.

To avoid chargebacks, follow these recommendations:

• If the purchaser accepts an alternative solution (such as a ticket to another event), confirm the alternative in writing, then decline the refund request.
• If you issue a refund outside of Eventbrite, keep a receipt of the transaction and don't use cash.
• If you issue a full refund (including Ticketing Fees) and the refund reason is "COVID-19," "Duplicate order," or "Event canceled or postponed," contact us with the receipt to receive a credit for the Ticketing Fees.

Tip: Even if you suspect a refund might be declined due to a closed account or card, always attempt the refund in Eventbrite first. The bank or card company may accept the refund and transfer it to an open account or give a check to the cardholder. 

Refunds declined by your payment processor

This is different from a decline by the buyer's bank, above — here the decline comes from the payment processor connected to your event, such as PayPal or Authorize.net.

First, check that your Eventbrite processor credentials are correct and up to date. For Authorize.net, go to Finance Workspace → Settings and confirm your Login ID and Transaction Key match what's shown in your Authorize.net account.

If your credentials are correct, the processor may still decline the refund if the original payment hasn't fully settled — this typically takes 24–48 hours, and up to 4 business days with some banks. If the order was placed recently, wait before trying again.

Payment

If there are enough funds from your event’s ticket sales to cover the refund amount, Eventbrite will use those for the refund payment.

If there aren't enough funds to cover the refund because you’ve already received a payout, you have two options:

1. Add funds to your event before you issue a refund. This option is best if you need to issue multiple refunds or partial refunds. The charge will appear on your statement as "EB *Payin for event."
2. Start the refund and Eventbrite will ask for payment. This option is best for individual refunds, and you must refund the complete order this way. The charge will appear on your statement as "EB *Refund to buyer."

If you used a debit or credit card to pay for the refund, you'll get a charge for the refund amount, minus any Ticketing Fees. 

Refunding Ticketing Fees

By default, Ticketing Fees are not refunded on orders. This means that the attendee will receive a refund for the amount they paid minus the Ticketing Fees.

There are a couple of exceptions:

• If the refund is made before the charge has settled (usually within 24 hours), the original charge will be completely voided.
• If the refund reason is "COVID-19," "Duplicate order," or "Event canceled or postponed," the Ticketing Fees will be refunded as well.

When you issue a refund, you can choose to refund the Ticketing Fees from your payout. This means the attendee will receive a full refund.

Information on partial refunds

When you only refund part of a ticket’s cost, the Ticketing Fees are recalculated based on the amount you refunded. Fully refunded tickets have their Ticketing Fees kept or refunded based on the reason you issued a refund.

If a ticket buyer requests a refund through Eventbrite and you want to accept it, you’ll need to issue a full refund. If you need to issue a partial refund instead, deny the refund request first. Then you can issue a partial refund separately. Make sure you let the attendee know why you're issuing a partial refund to prevent chargebacks.

Viewing refunded orders

To view fully refunded orders:

1. Go to Events and select your event.
2. Go to Manage attendees, then select Manage Orders.
3. Select Order type to filter by “Refunded and canceled orders.”

To view partially refunded orders (and other currently valid orders), filter by “All completed orders."