This article walks through both fees, how they're calculated, and what happens in the situations that trip people up, such as free tickets and discount codes.
What fees actually show up on a ticket?
There are two fees, and they behave differently. The payment processing fee is 3.05% plus $0.40, and it's charged once per order, not once per ticket — so a single order for four tickets still only pays that $0.40 fixed portion one time.
The second fee is BrightStar's own platform fee, and it depends on the organizer's plan. Seva is free. Elevate carries a low per-ticket fee made up of a small flat amount plus a small percentage. Because this fee is per ticket rather than per order, it scales directly with how many tickets are in the cart. When the buyer's total payable is $0, no fees of any kind are charged.
How does the math actually work?
For a $100 ticket on Elevate, the platform fee is calculated first: a small flat amount plus a small percentage of the ticket price. The processing fee is calculated separately, on the ticket total, as 3.05% of the price plus the $0.40 order-level flat charge.
One detail worth holding onto: the processing percentage runs on the ticket total plus any custom fee you add, not on the ticket total plus the platform fee. The platform fee is deliberately kept outside that base.
What happens with free tickets and discounts?
When the buyer's total payable is $0, no fees are charged. Individual ticket lines priced at $0 are also left out when the platform fee is added up, so a free ticket sitting in an order with paid ones adds no fee of its own.
Discount codes reduce your net earnings, not the amount the fees are based on. The platform fee is worked out per ticket from the ticket price, and the processing fee is worked out from the ticket total plus any custom fee.