A sold-out registration page feels like success right up until the morning of the event, when a fifth of the chairs stay empty and the caterer has already been paid for every one of them. No-shows are not bad luck. They are predictable enough to plan for, and some of the usual remedies make no difference at all.
How many will not come
The most useful benchmark we have found comes from check-in data rather than a survey. PheedLoop, an event platform, analysed check-ins across more than 1,070 live events. The median no-show rate was about 20%. The mean was higher, at 29%, because a minority of events do very badly: 17% of events lost more than half of their expected attendance.1
The strongest predictor was price. Free events had a median no-show rate of about 28%, paid events about 17%. Size mattered too, mostly for free events: small free events of 10 to 49 people lost about 37%, while paid events stayed at roughly 15 to 18% at every size.1
One caveat on definitions: PheedLoop counts anyone expected who did not check in, so advance cancellations and silent no-shows are counted together.1 If your own figure is lower, check whether you are only counting the silent ones.
Why free events lose more
The obvious explanation is that people who paid have something to lose. That is partly true, but PheedLoop's own follow-up qualified it. Comparing paying and non-paying attendees inside the same events, the paying ones showed up only 2 to 4 percentage points more reliably at the median event.2
So the effect belongs mostly to the event, not the individual ticket. Something about a paid event makes its whole audience more reliable, and comped seats at that event behave almost as well as paid ones. For organisers that has a practical consequence: complimentary passes for speakers, partners or students cost you little attendance. On this data, whether the event as a whole is free is what moves the numbers most.
What does not help
Making registration harder. It is tempting to add fields or steps to weed out the uncommitted. PheedLoop tested this across more than 860 events. Harder registration did appear to go with better attendance, but almost entirely because paid events have both more friction and fewer no-shows. Among paid events, no-show rates were flat regardless of how many people completed registration.2 Friction loses you registrations and buys no attendance.
Judging success by registrations. A high registration count with a high no-show rate is a marketing number, not an event outcome. Track both.
What does
Something at stake. Basecamp tested a refundable deposit at a free breakfast event: attendees paid $100 to register and received $100 at the door. Fifty-five people registered and 50 came, a 90% show rate. Its previous free event had 84 registrations and 38 attendees.3 Fewer registrations, more people in the room.
The deposit has limits. Jason Fried, co-founder of 37signals, the company behind Basecamp, suggested it works less well when an employer is paying rather than the attendee,3 which describes a lot of corporate and association events. It also adds payment handling and can put off people who cannot afford, or do not want, to part with the money even temporarily.
Commitment without payment. For free events, PheedLoop suggests asking guests to confirm, adding calendar invitations and running a reminder sequence.2 These are recommendations rather than measured results, but they are cheap. Reminders only work if they arrive, which is its own problem; see why event emails land in spam.
Relevance. An event psychology adviser quoted in the same Skift piece made the uncomfortable point that a high no-show rate can mean the event simply was not relevant enough.3 No reminder fixes that.
Planning around it
PheedLoop's planning guidance is to set catering, seating, staffing and materials for about 80% of expected attendees at paid events and 70% at free ones, and to allow for up to 40% no-shows at small free events, where a waitlist or overbooking may make sense.1
The same arithmetic runs in reverse for small free events. At a 37% no-show rate, filling a 30-seat room takes about 48 registrations, not 30. Overbooking is a bet that some days you will lose, so pair it with a waitlist and release places as cancellations come in, rather than closing registration the moment it reaches capacity.
Better still is your own number. Two or three events of registration and check-in records will tell you more about your audience than any benchmark. That only works if check-in is recorded per person, by scan rather than a tick on a printed list; our check-in guide covers sizing it.
When the alternative wins: for a thirty-person invitation-only dinner, a phone call the day before beats any system. The numbers above matter when there are too many guests to call.
Where Aurentex sits
Registration and check-in are included in every Aurentex plan and sit in the same record, so each event gives you its own no-show rate rather than an industry average. Email tracking shows whether reminders were opened, and if you decide to charge, payments go to your own gateway and we take 0% of ticket sales. Your first event is free, which is a fair way to get a first real number for your own audience.
Common questions
What is a normal no-show rate?
About 20% at the median, about 28% for free events and 17% for paid ones.1
Does harder registration reduce no-shows?
No. Among paid events, no-shows were flat regardless of registration completion.2
Do complimentary tickets cause more no-shows?
Slightly: 2 to 4 percentage points at the median event that otherwise charges.2
How should I plan catering?
For about 80% of registrations at paid events and 70% at free ones, then adjust to your own history.1