The three pricing models for event apps
Event app vendors charge in three main ways, and the model matters more than the headline price:
- Per event: one price for one event, usually tiered by the number of attendees. You pay when you run an event and nothing in between. This fits organizers who run one to a few events a year.
- Per attendee or per registration: a fee for every person who joins. Simple for small events, but the total grows with every ticket you sell.
- Annual licence: a yearly subscription, often sales-led, that covers a number of events or the whole platform. It can pay off for agencies with a full calendar, but it locks smaller organizers into paying for months without events.
Many enterprise platforms do not publish prices at all and quote after a sales call. Our comparison of 10 event networking apps lists each vendor's public pricing model, and the head-to-head pages show it in detail, for example Conferras vs Cvent or Conferras vs Whova.
What drives the price of an event app?
- Number of attendees: almost every vendor tiers by attendees, because they drive hosting, messaging and support.
- Scope: a networking app costs less than a full event management suite with registration, ticketing, badge printing and onsite hardware.
- Branding: some vendors charge extra for your own logo and colours, or for a fully white-label app without the vendor's name.
- Native app builds: a branded app in the App Store and Google Play means build, review and publishing work for every event. A web app (PWA) avoids that cost entirely.
- Services: onboarding calls, content entry, onsite staff and custom integrations are often billed on top.
Hidden costs to check before you buy
- Setup or onboarding fees that are not part of the listed price.
- Branding or white-label as a paid add-on.
- Charges when you go over your attendee limit, and whether the app is locked mid-event when you do.
- Annual minimum terms or automatic renewals.
- Fees for exports of your own attendee and lead data.
- Who counts as an attendee: are speakers, staff and organizers billed too?
A transparent offer answers all of these on the pricing page. If you need a sales call to find out what one event costs, plan for a longer buying process.
What Conferras costs
Conferras is a white-label event networking app with published per-event pricing, excluding VAT:
- Test: free, for your team, up to 10 accounts with every feature.
- Starter: €89 per event, up to 250 attendees. Matchmaking, custom branding, chat and 1:1 meetings, agenda and profiles, analytics, sponsor banner, stories and job board.
- Growth: €399 per event, up to 1,000 attendees. Everything in Starter plus AI matchmaking.
- Scale: €899 per event, up to 3,000 attendees, with priority support.
- Custom: for events above 3,000 attendees, with your own domain, SSO and tailored integrations.
There is no annual contract and there are no hidden platform fees. Only attendees with a profile count; organizers, speakers and invited staff are free. If more people join than your tier allows, the event keeps running: you move to the next tier and pay the difference after the event.
Is a cheap event app good enough?
Price says little about the attendee experience. The questions that matter are whether attendees actually use the app, whether they find the right people and whether they meet them. A focused networking app at €89 can deliver more meetings than a large suite whose networking module nobody opens. We compare budget options in cheap event app solutions and affordable event apps for business conferences.
The cheapest test is a real one: run a free test event with your team, look at the attendee experience on your own phones and decide then.
How to budget for an event app
Put the event app next to the other per-head costs of your event, such as catering and badges, and plan it per event. A useful check is cost per attendee: €89 for up to 250 attendees is about €0.36 per attendee at full capacity. Then add what the app can earn back: sponsor banners, stories and sponsored push notifications can be sold to partners, as explained in how an event app makes money from sponsors.
For the rest of your event budget, use our event budget template.