Costs
Who pays what on a trade show — the organiser, exhibitors and sponsors each have credit charges — how each of them earns credits back, and why none of it touches your ticket and booth revenue.
Two separate things are happening, and conflating them causes most of the confusion.
Your event revenue is yours entirely. Platform use is charged in credits, and more than one party pays.
Figures live on the pricing page
Rates are configured centrally and change, so no amounts are printed here. The current figures for every action are on the pricing page.
Your event revenue: Bidancer takes none of it
Registration, booth and sponsorship payments settle into the organiser's own payment account. Bidancer never holds the money and takes no commission.
No commission
On tickets, booths or sponsorship. Not a reduced rate — none.
No payout wait
Your gateway settles on your cycle. Nothing is held back and released later.
Your invoicing
Your numbering series, your tax configuration, your entity on the receipt.
Your pricing
Booth, ticket and tier prices are yours to set. Nothing is capped.
That is the difference from a ticketing platform, where the money flows through the platform's account and a fee comes off each ticket. See Bidancer vs Explara.
Who pays for platform use
Credits are spent by whoever is doing the thing — not only by the organiser.
| Action | Who pays |
|---|---|
| Publishing a show | Organiser |
| Each exhibitor whose participation is confirmed | Organiser |
| Each chargeable visitor pass issued | Organiser |
| Taking part as an exhibitor | The exhibitor |
| Taking part as a sponsor | The sponsor |
An exhibitor or sponsor is paying for their own participation, from their own wallet. The organiser is not charged on their behalf, and they are not charged for the organiser's costs.
What gets earned back
Separate from what anything costs, credits also run the other way — and the two ways of earning belong to different people.
| Action | Who earns |
|---|---|
| A business that joins Bidancer through your show | The organiser |
| Giving feedback on a show you took part in | The exhibitor or sponsor |
Organisers earn by bringing businesses in. When a business joins Bidancer through your show and gets verified, that is credited to you. Bringing a new verified business onto the platform is worth something, and this is where that shows up rather than being goodwill.
Exhibitors and sponsors earn by giving feedback. After the show, you can tell the organiser how it actually went — footfall against what was promised, the quality of leads, how the venue and the organising ran. Submitting that earns credits back into your wallet, so part of what participation cost you comes back for the effort of saying something useful.
Feedback is only invited from someone who genuinely took part, and only after the show has finished — the same rule that governs feedback everywhere on Bidancer. It cannot be farmed, which is what makes it worth reading.
Exhibitors and sponsors start with credits
A business joining Bidancer receives an opening balance of credits. Participation charges draw against that wallet like any other credit spend, so a first show does not begin with a top-up.
Once the opening balance is used, the wallet is topped up like any other. See credits and the wallet.
Where the rates come from
Every credit cost is configured centrally rather than fixed in the product, and resolved at the moment a charge happens. A rate change never reprices something that already happened.
Where a configured cost is zero, the action is simply free rather than blocked — so an action being chargeable in principle does not mean it is chargeable in your region or at this moment.
Always check the pricing page for current figures
It reads the same configuration the charges do. See current rates
For visitors
Attending is free unless the organiser has made the show ticketed, in which case you pay the organiser, at their price. Bidancer does not charge visitors.