StubOrder vs. SeatGeek: What 17 Live Checkouts Actually Cost

July 25, 2026 · By StubOrder

Over July 24 and 25, 2026, we sat down and bought our way to the last screen before payment on two ticket marketplaces, side by side, for the same events, the same sections and the same rows.

Here is what we found. Across the 17 stronger matched comparisons, StubOrder had the lower final checkout total in 11 of them, a 64.7% win rate. SeatGeek was lower in the other 6. The typical gap was small: the median comparison ran 1.42% cheaper on StubOrder, and the median dollar gap was $1.51 on a two-ticket order.

That is what happened in this sample, and we want to be careful about how much weight it carries. Seventeen comparisons is a small number, and 11 of 17 is not a wide enough margin to call the race on its own. We are certainly not going to tell you StubOrder wins every time, because it did not. One NFL game here favored SeatGeek by $70.88. What the numbers support is narrower and more useful: in this live sample, StubOrder was cheaper more often, and the two sites were close enough that the only way to know on any given night is to take both carts to the final screen.

How we ran the comparison

We wanted to answer the question a normal shopper actually has, which is not "whose listing page looks cheapest" but "what will I pay."

For every comparison we:

1. Picked the same event, venue, performance date and start time on both sites.
2. Selected two tickets every time. Every observation in this sample used a quantity of two.
3. Matched the same section and the same row.
4. Matched seat numbers or a seat range whenever both sites disclosed them.
5. Skipped zone and speculative listings unless both sites described the same product. Worth saying plainly: in two comparisons that rule meant passing over a cheaper StubOrder listing, so those two totals are not the lowest we could have shown.
6. Went all the way to the final order total shown before payment, and used that number, not the headline price on the event page.
7. Wrote down taxes, delivery and mandatory fees whenever the checkout itemized them.
8. Logged anything that broke, repriced or vanished as a failed attempt rather than counting it as a win or a loss.

One honest limitation belongs right here. Most StubOrder listings did not show seat numbers during the capture. So for most pairs we could confirm the event, the quantity, the section and the row, but not that the two sites were selling the same seats from the same seller. We graded those matches B, and we describe them as same-section, same-row comparisons rather than same-seat ones.

One pair earned an A grade: Hamilton in New York, where both sites showed the same section, the same row and the same partial-view restriction. That is the closest this sample comes to a like-for-like match, and it happens to be StubOrder's largest win.

What the 17 stronger comparisons show

Three numbers describe this sample, and they answer three different questions.

Win rate answers "how often." StubOrder was lower in 11 of 17, SeatGeek in 6 of 17. That is 64.7%.

The median answers "what is typical." Line all 17 gaps up in order and take the middle one. Measured as a percentage, the middle comparison was 1.42% cheaper on StubOrder. Measured in dollars, the middle comparison was $1.51 cheaper on a pair of tickets. The median is the honest measure of a normal night, because one unusual result cannot drag it around.

The average answers "what if you bought all of them." Add every gap together and divide by 17, and StubOrder comes out ahead by $0.09 per two-ticket order. That is a tie in any practical sense, and it is the work of a single result: one SeatGeek win of $70.88 cancels out almost the entire run of eleven smaller StubOrder wins.

Put those together and you get the fair summary: StubOrder won more often, by a small typical margin, in a sample where the two marketplaces were on average nearly identical.

Representative results, including the ones we lost

These are the widest gaps we recorded in each direction, not typical ones. The middle comparison was $1.51. Every price below is the final total for two tickets, before payment.

The Lions at Bills result is the one we would most like to explain away, and we cannot. On a high-priced primetime NFL game, matched to the same section and row, SeatGeek's checkout came in $70.88 lower. That one comparison is 59% of everything SeatGeek won across the 17 stronger comparisons, and it is why the average and the win rate disagree. Add up the margins: StubOrder's 11 wins come to $120.68 and SeatGeek's 6 come to $119.17, so all 17 pairs put together separate by $1.51 in total, which is the $0.09 per order quoted above. Take the Lions game out and StubOrder's average advantage jumps to $4.52 a pair. One result, that much leverage.

This kind of spread is normal in resale. Two marketplaces can be showing two different sellers' inventory in the same row at the same moment, and either one can be the cheaper draw.

All 17 comparisons

Since the table above is deliberately the extremes, here is the whole set, in the order we ran it. Nothing is left out and nothing is rounded in our favor.

Look down the Gap column and you can see the shape of the result for yourself. Six of StubOrder's eleven wins are under $7, and one SeatGeek win is $70.88. That is a marketplace that came out ahead more often by small amounts, not one that was decisively cheaper.

How the categories landed

Please read that table as texture, not as a finding. Four comparisons in a category, or one, is nowhere near enough to say anything about how a marketplace prices hockey or comedy in general. The only thing it shows is that the overall result was not produced by a single category.

Why we used the final checkout total

The number on an event page and the number you pay are not always the same number, and one family show in our sample makes the point cleanly.

For Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Houston, StubOrder displayed $26.68 per ticket. Here is what the checkout showed for two:

• Ticket subtotal: $46.00
• Service fees included in the displayed price: $7.36
• Mobile-ticket delivery, added at checkout: $9.95
• Tax: $5.22
• Final total: $68.53

SeatGeek's final total for the matched section and row was $69.32. StubOrder still came out $0.79 lower, so the winner did not change. But the pair total moved by $15.17 between the listing screen and the final screen, and a comparison built on event-page prices would have missed that entirely.

What our captures support saying is specific: StubOrder's service and booking fee was inside the displayed ticket price during this capture. What they do not support is the broader claim that the displayed price contained every charge, because delivery and tax were both added later in this example. We used final checkout totals precisely so that later-disclosed tax and delivery amounts were counted on both sides.

The comparison we kept out of the headline

We completed an 18th pair that we deliberately excluded from the result above, and we would rather show it to you than bury it.

Rockies at Brewers, Section 421, Row 12. SeatGeek's final total was $83.40. StubOrder's was $413.76.

Be straight about the reasoning: "seat identity was not confirmed" is true of almost every pair here, so it cannot be what sets this one apart. The size of the gap is. A five-fold difference in the same row of the same ballpark is far better explained by two sites selling different inventory than by the same seats priced that far apart. We graded it C and treated it as a sensitivity check rather than a price result. That call happens to remove our worst row, so here is the arithmetic both ways.

Include it and StubOrder's win rate becomes 11 of 18, or 61.1%. The median advantage becomes 1.28%. The simple average flips hard: SeatGeek comes out $18.27 per pair cheaper, entirely on the strength of that one observation.

We are showing you both versions because a comparison that only survives when you drop the inconvenient row is not worth publishing. The win rate and the median barely move. The average is the fragile number, which is why we lead with the other two.

The seven attempts that never produced two totals

Seven more comparisons were started and never finished, because one side or the other would not give us a final total. They are excluded from every win and loss count above.

All seven, in short: a StubOrder listing that was gone by the time we reached checkout; another that repriced mid-purchase from $57 to $123 per ticket, on an attempt where SeatGeek's checkout also stayed blank; two SeatGeek checkouts that returned to the listing or stopped rendering; one SeatGeek event whose inventory never loaded; and two SeatGeek links that redirected to a team page instead of the game we picked.

None of that is a price result and we have not counted it as one. It is worth knowing anyway, because it is a fair description of live resale shopping on any site, ours included.

What we would actually tell a friend

Compare the final total, not the first price you see. It takes an extra minute per site and it is the only number that is real.

In this sample, doing that favored StubOrder more often than SeatGeek: lower in 11 of 17 stronger matched checkouts, with a median advantage of 1.42%. It also would have saved you $70.88 by going to SeatGeek for one particular Bills game. Both are true, and a shopper who checks both is better off than one who trusts either of us on reputation.

About this comparison. All prices were captured live between July 24 and July 25, 2026 (ET), at a quantity of two tickets, matched by event, date, section and row. This is a time-stamped live sample of 18 completed comparisons, 17 of which were strong enough for the headline result. It is a snapshot, not a promise about future prices. Resale inventory and seller pricing can change immediately, including while you are comparing, so the exact totals shown here will not be reproducible later. This comparison was run and published by StubOrder, not by a third party, and it is a first-phase sample rather than the last word on either marketplace.