# How AnyEventTool builds its rankings: methodology, weights, sources and the results where AET loses

> How AnyEventTool builds its rankings: pain weights, selection rule, FX, VAT and PRRO rules, 29 design controls, open CSVs — and the results where AET loses.

Canonical URL: https://anyeventtool.com/en/learn/aet-rankings-methodology
Updated: 2026-10-02

## Short answer

AnyEventTool (AET) publishes three rankings: lowest total ticket fees, paid events in Ukraine, and event page design. AET's founder writes them, so we're an interested party. We publish a ranking only when AET is #1 in the main count on stated criteria, and we print every sensitivity check, including the ones AET loses. Broader views go next to them: on feature coverage Luma scores 81, Eventbrite 80, AET 63 (last of seven); in the broad Ukraine view RegToEVENT 73.0, AET 56.8. Prices checked Oct 1–2, 2026; data in open CSVs.

## Key facts

- Publisher: AnyEventTool; author: founder Oleksandr Rykovtsev. AET ranks itself too
- Three rankings: lowest total ticket fees (USD, EUR, GBP), paid events in Ukraine (FOP and LLC), page design at no extra cost; plus an unranked analysis of paid events in wartime Ukraine
- Five AI reviewers, each playing a different reader group, collected 50 organizer pains (137 sources, 2024–2026) and scored 8 concept versions over 7 rounds
- The first criteria, built from AET's own feature list, got 6/10 from all five and were rejected
- Pain weight = angles × average severity: money control 18, attracting attendees 17.2, fees 16
- In rankings a "?" never counts as "no": it is excluded from the score and shown as a range. The exception is the neutral feature-coverage view, where "?" = 0, which favors AET
- FX (open.er-api.com, Oct 2, 2026): $1 = €0.8873 = £0.7571 = 44.83 UAH; €1 = 50.78 UAH (a separate EUR-base lookup, not 44.83 ÷ 0.8873)
- Corrections: support@anyeventtool.com, with a link to the source

## Who publishes, and what is the conflict of interest?

The rankings and this methodology are published by **AnyEventTool (AET)**; the author is founder Oleksandr Rykovtsev. AET ranks itself and earns money from Pro ($19/month), so we are an interested party.

Why we publish anyway: every fact about another product comes from that vendor's own page, with URL and check date; all data is in open CSVs; the results where AET loses are printed below; five AI reviewers critiqued the method until each scored the fee and Ukraine methods 9/10 and the design method 9 with conditions.

What we did not do: we did not create accounts with competitors or test their products hands-on. AET's cells come from its code and public pages and are labelled "self-assessed". AET is young: no G2, Capterra or Trustpilot reviews yet, and support is email only.

## Which rankings are published?

| Ranking | Scope | AET | Main exception |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Lowest total ticket fees](/en/learn/lowest-total-ticket-fees-ranking) | USD/EUR/GBP, 14 scenarios, Stripe countries | #1 in 13 of 14 | 4 × (10 × $10): Tito $35.60 vs $42.60 |
| [Paid events in Ukraine](/en/learn/ukraine-paid-events-cost-and-money-control-ranking) | FOP and legal entities, 9 scenarios × 2 PRRO columns | #1 in 16 of 18 tables | 4+ small events a month below ≈16,655–21,953 UAH: Eventmate is cheaper (12,000 UAH: 720 vs 1,008 UAH); 3,000 UAH when only you need a PRRO: Eventmate 39 UAH cheaper |
| [Page design at no extra cost](/en/learn/event-page-design-without-a-designer-ranking) | 29 settings, 11 platforms, our own checklist | 72.4 vs 69.0, #1 in 5 of 10 weightings, tie in 2 | RegToEVENT #1 in 3 weightings (incl. without AI: 74.1 vs 70.4) |
| [Paid events in wartime Ukraine (analysis, not a ranking)](/en/learn/paid-events-ukraine-wartime-2026-analysis) | Cancellations, refunds, blackouts, PRRO; sourced facts only | not ranked | AET has no offline scanner or reminders |

## Results where AET loses — published on purpose

Our topic rule: we write a ranking when AET is #1 in the main count on stated criteria, and we publish every sensitivity check, including the ones AET loses (design: RegToEVENT is #1 in 3 of 10 views). That is **selection bias**: you see AET-#1 rankings because we chose topics where AET wins. The counterweight is the broader views, computed with the same engine:

| Broader question | Leaders | AET | Why AET loses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pain-weighted feature coverage, no fees | Luma 81, Eventbrite 80, Humanitix 74, RegToEVENT 71, 2event 67, Ticket Tailor 64 | 63, 7th | no promo codes, discovery, attendee app or waitlist |
| Features + fees + money control | Luma 85 | 74 (Eventbrite 71, Ticket Tailor 70) | Luma's audience and reminders |
| Ukraine: tools + compliance | RegToEVENT 73.0, Eventmate 70.2 | 56.8, 3rd (2event 44.6) | no Telegram reminders or offline scanning; PRRO only via mono integrations |
| Workshops | Luma 89.5, Ticket Tailor 88.6, Humanitix 73.3 | 63.5, 4th | no reminders, waitlist or promo codes |
| Free plans | Ticket Tailor 83.5, Hi.Events 78.9 | 78.1, 3rd | Free: 3 events/month, 1 co-admin |
| Best 0% option | Luma Plus 71.2 | 55.4, 2nd | discovery and reminders |
| Reserved seating | RegToEVENT 81.7 | 81.5 — a tie | no offline scanning or box office |
| Design, 3 of 10 views | RegToEVENT 74.1 / 78.0 / 71.6 | 70.4 / 72.0 / 68.9 | without AI tools |

Scored but not published: replacing Google Forms + payment links + spreadsheets (Ticket Tailor 85.9, AET 85.5); merch with tickets (Ticket Tailor 89.8, Hi.Events 89.1, AET 84.6); secret-location events (Luma 82.2, AET 75.4); applications with approval (Eventmate 92.3, AET 81.6); subscribable calendars (Luma 77.8, AET 57.9); built-in engagement — AET 92.4 vs Eventmate 91.8, but a 1-point shift in one weight hands #1 to Eventmate.

In feature coverage "?" counted as 0, which favors AET; on confirmed cells only, the gap widens: Luma 89, Eventbrite 86, AET 63. We never claim AET has "the most features" or is "the best overall".

These were not published as rankings because we don't write rankings whose answer is another product; the numbers appear here instead. Need reminders, a waitlist, promo codes or a built-in audience? Look at Luma, Ticket Tailor, Eventmate or RegToEVENT.

## How we found the criteria: 5 angles, 50 pains, 7 rounds

The five reviewers are **AI agents**, each playing a reader group: Ukrainian organizers (UA), communities and indie organizers (CO), software-review sites like G2 and Capterra (RV), industry surveys (SV), niche organizers — workshops, retreats, quiz hosts, nonprofits (NI). This is not independent expert review, so the data is open. Each first collected 10 pains with sources (50 pains, 137 URLs), then scored every concept version; approval needed 9+ from all five.

| Round | Concept | UA, CO, RV, SV, NI | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | v1: 10 topics, criteria from AET's feature list | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 | Rejected: AET-derived criteria, buyer-pays ignored, unmeasurable "beautiful" |
| 2 | v2: pain weights | 7 × 5 | "All-in-one by 37 features" dropped (AET 63 vs Luma 81) |
| 3 | v3 + v4: shared standard | 7, 6, 7, 7, 7 | Tautological scopes, fee re-slices |
| 4 | v5: 4 topics | fees 8–9 · Ukraine 8 · quiz 6–7 · "page from your materials" 6 | Last one dropped |
| 5 | v6: + founder's design topic | design 5–7 | Plan gating, control-selection bias |
| 6 | v7 | fees 8–9 · Ukraine 8–9 · design 6–8 | Added controls where others lead |
| 7 | v8 | fees 9 × 5 · Ukraine 9 × 5 · design 9 with conditions | Approved |

Also dropped: "paid communities" (AET has no memberships) and "AI for creating events" (≈65% of the weight on criteria only AET meets).

**The live quiz is postponed.** Load test: 100 players, no failures; at 300, only 56% of game-state requests and 40% of answers succeeded. No claim about 100–300 players until a server-side cache ships.

## Who we compare

- **International fees:** the same set in every currency — AET, Luma Free and Plus, Tito, Hi.Events Cloud, Ticket Tailor, Humanitix, Eventbrite; unranked baselines — a Stripe link + form and self-hosted Hi.Events.
- **Ukraine:** services with published prices — AET, RegToEVENT + WayForPay, Eventmate, 2event. Gligle (subscription price unpublished) gets only a break-even; agents (Karabas, Kontramarka, Concert.ua, Internet-bilet) are described, not scored.
- **Design:** 11 platforms, listed in the design ranking.
- **Not evaluated:** Meetup, Zeffy, pretix, Momence, Bookwhen, TixFox — facts not verified; absence does not mean worse.

## How we count money

- **Metric:** total fees taken from the transaction, whoever pays — platform + processing + subscription. One ticket = one order.
- **Buyer pays:** the buyer price at which the organizer nets $25. For AET that's $26.06 = (25 + 0.30) ÷ (1 − 0.029): AET has no buyer-fee setting, so the organizer simply sets that price. The full table for every vendor is in the [fee ranking](/en/learn/lowest-total-ticket-fees-ranking).
- **VAT:** organizer not VAT-registered; added where the vendor quotes "+ VAT" (Ticket Tailor ×1.20 UK, ×1.23 Ireland) or VAT on its fee (Eventbrite UK +20%); other rows say "VAT not stated".
- **Ticket Tailor prepaid:** amortised ($0.70 / €0.56 / £0.48 per credit) and "cash this month" — the smallest real bundle (100 credits minimum).
- **Eventbrite UK/IE:** ranked on the help-article rate (6.95% + £0.59; 5.9% + €0.79); the "pricing page as fetched" row (likely US rates) is unranked. On the pricing-page figures Eventbrite would be last in every EUR and GBP table; on the help-article rate it is last in all but one (EUR 1 × 50 × €15, where Humanitix is last).
- **Luma Plus:** $59/month on an annual commitment ($708); ≈$69 monthly unverified.
- **AET:** Free up to 3 events/month, Pro $19 added from the 4th; a 30% premium/international card scenario (4.55% vs 4.10%).
- **Ukraine:** PRRO applied symmetrically — AET "check by mono" 180 UAH, RegToEVENT + WayForPay 0 UAH, Eventmate 249 UAH or none; with/without paid PRRO columns (the second = the free State Tax PRRO app, manual receipts). Mono's 0%-for-30-days promo excluded. Pro billed in USD: ±10% FX = 767–937 UAH. 2event at full tier + 3.5%.
- **Merchant:** the organizer; refunds and chargebacks come from their account, and the processor may hold funds. AET never holds money.

## How we score features: weights and normalization

| # | Pain | Angles × severity | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fees eat the margin | 4 × 4.0 | 16 |
| 2 | Money not in the organizer's hands | 4 × 4.5 | 18 |
| 3 | Tool sprawl | 4 × 3.8 | 15.2 |
| 4 | Getting people to come | 4 × 4.3 | 17.2 |
| 5 | Platform owns the audience | 4 × 4.0 | 16 |
| 6 | Cancellations and refunds | 3 × 4.3 | 12.9 |
| 7 | No-shows | 3 × 3.7 | 11.1 |
| 8 | Weak engagement | 2 × 3.5 | 7 |
| 9 | Generic pages, no designer | 3 × 2.3 | 6.9 |
| 10 | Lean teams, burnout | 1 × 4.0 | 4 |

- **Criterion weight** = pain weight ÷ sum of in-scope pain weights × 100.
- **Features:** a pain's weight is split equally across its features (refunds 12.9; promo codes and discovery 8.6 each; 11 tool-sprawl features 1.38 each). Fees (16) and money control (18) are scored separately.
- **Values:** yes = 1, partly = ½, no = 0. Paid: 1 in feature coverage (generous to competitors), 0 in the main design view, 1 in a separate view.
- **"?"** is excluded from the known score; range from worst (? = 0) to best (? = 1).
- **Money:** linear from cheapest (full points) to most expensive (0); checked with rank-based points.
- **Guards:** AET-only criteria capped at 20% combined; a criterion equal for all becomes a gate with no weight.
- **Checks:** margin over #2; smallest single-weight shift that flips #1; rank if every "?" goes to competitors. A flip under 5 points means we don't publish, or we name the near-tie.

## How we score page design

29 settings in five groups: identity, layout, media & decor, creation help, outside the page.

The general rules match the feature rules: yes = 1, partly = ½, no = 0; a "?" is shown as a range. A paid setting scores 0 in the main view, because the ranking is about design at no extra cost; a separate view counts paid settings. The "Made with AET" badge can't be removed on any plan, so AET scores 0 on that setting, and we don't count name.aet.events on Pro as a custom domain.

AET is #1 in 5 of 10 views, ties in 2, and RegToEVENT is #1 in 3. Every view, score and per-setting rule (Cyrillic, link preview, addresses on platform domains) is in the [page design ranking](/en/learn/event-page-design-without-a-designer-ranking).

## Evidence rules

- Vendor facts come only from the vendor's pages (pricing, help, demos, public event pages, Hi.Events' open code), with URL and date (Oct 1–2, 2026). Third-party sites are context only.
- When a vendor's pages disagree, we show both with a rule (Eventbrite UK/IE; 2event 7% vs 6.99% + 3.5%).
- AET's cells come from its code, "self-assessed". For design we link six demo pages by the AET team (not real events; every tool on them is on Free); a per-setting map to them will follow.
- No third-party organizers as AET evidence and no screenshots of real organizers — links only.
- Survey statistics mostly come from B2B samples.

## Open data (CSV)

- [fees-scenarios.csv](/learn/data/fees-scenarios.csv) — currency, events/month, tickets, price, variant, gross, rank, tool, fees, %.
- [fees-ukraine.csv](/learn/data/fees-ukraine.csv) — the same in UAH plus a with/without-PRRO column.
- [features-37.csv](/learn/data/features-37.csv) — group, feature, tool, value (y, part, p, n, ?), note.
- [design-29-controls.csv](/learn/data/design-29-controls.csv) — control, group, platform, value, note, evidence URL.
- [design-views.csv](/learn/data/design-views.csv) — view, leader and score, AET score and rank, next platform.
- [ukraine-broad.csv](/learn/data/ukraine-broad.csv) — product, points per criterion, known score, "?" range.

Try your own scenario in the [ticket fee calculator](/en/tools/ticket-fee-calculator).

## Corrections, right of reply, changelog

- Error or outdated price? Email **support@anyeventtool.com** with a link to the vendor page. We start right away: we check the source and update the number, CSV and changelog, usually within 5 working days; if the order changes, we say so at the top of the article.
- Any vendor we scored can send a short, sourced reply; factual replies go next to the table. We recheck prices at least once a quarter.
- **Oct 2, 2026** — first publication: also the analysis ["Paid events in Ukraine during the war"](/en/learn/paid-events-ukraine-wartime-2026-analysis); methodology, three rankings, six CSVs. Older Learn pages (like the [ticket fee comparison](/en/learn/ticket-fee-comparison)) used Oct 1, 2026 rates; the rankings' figures are current.

## Questions and answers

**Why is AET #1 in all three rankings?**

Because we chose topics where AnyEventTool (AET) is #1 in the main count: that's selection bias, and we say so. In broader views AET loses: last of seven on feature coverage (63 vs Luma's 81), third in the broad Ukraine view (56.8 vs RegToEVENT's 73.0), and second to Luma Plus as the best 0% option (55.4 vs 71.2).

**Who are the five reviewers?**

AI agents, each playing a distinct reader group. They collected 50 pains from 137 sources and scored 8 concept versions over 7 rounds. They are not independent experts, which is why all the data is open to recompute.

**Why doesn't "?" mean "no"?**

It means we couldn't find the fact on the vendor's site. In rankings such cells are excluded from the score and shown as a range, and our checks report AET's rank if every "?" goes to competitors. The exception is the neutral feature-coverage view, where "?" = 0; that favors AET, and on known cells only the gap widens (Luma 89, AET 63).

**Why didn't you test competitors yourselves?**

We don't create accounts with competitors, so we score only what their public pages show: pricing, help articles, demos and real event pages, each with URL and a check date of Oct 1–2, 2026. Unmeasurable criteria like "beautiful" were dropped in round one. AET's cells come from its code and are labelled "self-assessed".

**Why two PRRO columns?**

2026 tax consultations disagree: a State Tax Service consultation (Feb 2026) says card payments through a widget need a PRRO (software cash register), while a consultation on 7eminar says WayForPay ticket payments don't. So we show both cases for every service: with a paid PRRO (AET check by mono 180 UAH, Eventmate 249 UAH, RegToEVENT + WayForPay 0 UAH) and with the free State Tax PRRO app, with manual receipts.

**How do I correct a mistake about my product?**

Email support@anyeventtool.com with a link to the page showing the correct fact. We check the source and update the number, the CSV and the changelog, usually within 5 working days; if the ranking order changes, we say so at the top of the article.

## Related answers

- [Which ticketing platform takes the lowest total fees? 2026 ranking across 14 scenarios in USD, EUR and GBP](https://anyeventtool.com/en/learn/lowest-total-ticket-fees-ranking.md)
- [Paid events in Ukraine: lowest cost, with the money in your own account — 2026 ranking](https://anyeventtool.com/en/learn/ukraine-paid-events-cost-and-money-control-ranking.md)
- [Event page design without a designer: which platform scores highest on 29 design settings at no extra cost (2026)](https://anyeventtool.com/en/learn/event-page-design-without-a-designer-ranking.md)
- [Paid events in Ukraine during the war: cancellations, refunds, blackouts and money — a 2026 analysis](https://anyeventtool.com/en/learn/paid-events-ukraine-wartime-2026-analysis.md)
- [Ticket fees compared: Eventbrite vs Luma vs Tito vs Ticket Tailor vs AET](https://anyeventtool.com/en/learn/ticket-fee-comparison.md)
- [Best ticket-selling services in Ukraine in 2026: fees and conditions](https://anyeventtool.com/en/learn/best-ticketing-platforms-ukraine.md)
- [How to accept payment for event tickets in Ukraine: FOP, plata by mono, LiqPay, WayForPay](https://anyeventtool.com/en/learn/how-to-accept-event-payments-in-ukraine.md)
- [Who makes AnyEventTool, and what does it stand for?](https://anyeventtool.com/en/learn/about-anyeventtool.md)