Free Event Check In App: What the Free Tier Leaves Out

Envoy’s free plan stops at 100 entries a month, per Envoy’s pricing page. Lobbytrack’s free Starter plan stops at 100 visitors a month, per Lobbytrack’s pricing page. Zoho Backstage’s free plan allows 100 attendees per event, per Zoho Backstage’s pricing page. RSVPify’s free plan allows 100 registrations per month, per RSVPify’s pricing page.

Four vendors, four different products, one number.

So a free event check in app is a real thing you can run a door on. It’s a much narrower thing than the word “free” suggests, and the vendors draw the line in three genuinely different places. Pick the wrong shape and you find out at 8:55am with a queue forming.

Here’s the honest map: the three business models hiding behind the word, what each free tier includes on current pricing pages like Envoy’s, and the four moments where free stops working. We make one of the products below, and we’ll grade our own free tier by the same rules as everyone else’s.

Comparison data verified against vendor websites and public pricing pages as of September 9, 2026. Vendor practices, pricing, and feature sets change; verify directly with the vendor before purchasing. Trademarks are property of their respective owners. InstaCheckin is not affiliated with any product named here.

Why Every Free Event Check In App Stops at 100

Three business models wear the same word.

Free because the attendee pays. Ticketing platforms hand you the check-in app and take a cut of every paid ticket. Free event, free software. Charge for entry and the platform earns.

Free up to a cap. Registration tools and visitor management systems meter you: so many check-ins, one event or one location, a short feature list. Nothing is billed until you cross the line.

Free download, paid account. The tablet app costs nothing on the App Store. That tells you nothing about the account behind it. This one catches people out, because “free app” and “free plan” look identical in a search result.

Work out which model you’re looking at before you compare anything else. A per-ticket fee and a monthly cap fail in completely different ways, and only one of them fails silently.

100 a month is five arrivals a working day. For a slow reception desk that’s plausible. For an event it’s one morning. A 120-person breakfast briefing burns through Envoy’s entire monthly allowance before the room fills, per the entry cap on Envoy’s pricing page.

That’s the structural mismatch nobody puts on a pricing page. Metered free tiers are sized for a trickle, not a spike. If you run four events a year in your own building, a metered free plan holds fine on the quiet days and breaks on exactly the days you cared about.

Ticketing Platforms Are Free Until You Sell a Ticket

If attendance is free, Eventbrite is hard to argue with. You can publish unlimited free events at no cost, and Eventbrite charges no ticketing platform fees on events with free tickets, per Eventbrite’s organizer pricing page. The Eventbrite Organizer app is a free mobile app for checking attendees in on site.

Charge for tickets and the numbers change. Eventbrite lists a 3.7% + $1.79 service fee per ticket plus a 2.9% payment processing fee per order, and those fees are “paid by your buyers by default, or you can choose to absorb them,” per Eventbrite’s organizer pricing page. On a $40 ticket that’s real money. Just not usually your money.

Luma runs the same shape with different numbers: unlimited events, unlimited guests per event, guest check-in included, a 5% platform fee on paid events, and a ceiling of 500 invites or newsletters sent per week, per Luma’s pricing page. Ticket Tailor draws it differently again, charging no fees for issuing up to 5,000 free tickets a year and including a check-in app for scanning guests at the door, per Ticket Tailor’s pricing page.

The common weakness is the person who isn’t in the system yet. Ticket-first tools handle the scan and stall on the stranger. Our breakdown of the four event check-in app categories covers which shape of product suits which kind of event.

Badge Printing Is the Line Most Free Plans Won’t Cross

Every free plan in the table gets a name into a database. Almost none of them get a badge onto a chest.

Lobbytrack is the exception worth knowing about. Photo capture and badge printing both appear on its free Starter tier, per Lobbytrack’s pricing page, where most vendors treat them as paid features. Zoho Backstage also lists check-in and badging on its free plan, per Zoho Backstage’s pricing page. Envoy’s free Basic plan doesn’t include badge printing or visitor photos; both appear under its Premium tier, per Envoy’s pricing page.

Ours doesn’t include them either, and it’s worth saying plainly. InstaCheckin’s free tier is {{price.free.monthly}} for unlimited visitors at one location, up to 50 employee contacts, and email host notifications. Visitor badges, visitor photos, NDA capture, and pre-registration all start at our paid tiers, and SMS notifications start higher again. The InstaCheckin pricing page lists what each tier covers. Free is a genuine logbook replacement. It isn’t a badge desk.

One thing no free tier fixes: badge printing needs hardware. A Brother QL-series label printer and a roll of labels is the standard setup, and that cost arrives whichever plan you’re on.

Three Platforms That Publish No Free Tier at All

Worth knowing before you spend an afternoon hunting for a free plan that was never there.

Accelevents’ cheapest published plan starts from $7,500 for one event, per Accelevents’ pricing page. Bizzabo lists its Event Experience OS at $499 per user per month billed annually with a three-user minimum, starting at $17,999 per year, per Bizzabo’s pricing page. Whova publishes no pricing at all; its pricing page is a quote request form, per Whova’s pricing page.

None of these are hiding a free tier. They’re conference platforms priced for a conference budget, and their absence from the free conversation is the honest answer rather than an oversight.

Four Things That Break a Free Plan on Event Morning

Not features. Moments.

A walk-up who isn’t on the list. Scanners resolve a QR code and stall on a stranger. If more than a handful of people will register at the door, you need self-service entry rather than a scanner, and free registration tiers rarely include a kiosk mode. RSVPify’s self check-in kiosk and badge printing, for instance, start at its paid tiers, per RSVPify’s pricing page.

One lane, ninety people, thirty minutes. Free tiers are single-device almost everywhere. Two kiosks halve the queue, and the second one is nearly always the thing you pay for. InstaCheckin supports up to five kiosks per location, though that’s on paid tiers, not free.

The venue Wi-Fi. Ask every vendor what their app does when the network drops, and get it in writing. Eventbrite’s Organizer app supports offline check-in and syncs once back online, according to Eventbrite’s own writeup of its onsite tools. Plenty of tools don’t. A live cloud lookup and a Wi-Fi label printer are two separate points of failure, and they fail at the worst moment.

Someone asks about the NDA or the retention policy. The day legal wants a signed agreement attached to an arrival record, or someone asks how long you’re keeping attendee data, the free plan is finished. Decide the retention window before you collect anything. The Information Commissioner’s Office guidance on storage limitation states that the UK GDPR “does not set specific time limits for different types of data” and that you must be able to justify how long you keep it.

That last point describes product capabilities, not legal advice. Electronic-record and e-signature law varies by jurisdiction, and retention obligations depend on your specific data-processing context. Consult counsel before relying on any of this for a compliance decision.

If you’re weighing free tiers for a permanent front desk rather than a one-off event, our free visitor management system comparison grades the same vendors against a daily lobby instead, and the visitor management system cost guide covers how per-location pricing actually adds up.

FAQ

Is there a completely free event check in app?

Yes, with a condition attached in every case. Luma’s free plan covers unlimited events and unlimited guests per event with check-in included, per Luma’s pricing page, and Eventbrite is free for events with free tickets. Visitor management free tiers are free up to a monthly cap, usually 100 people, per Envoy’s pricing page. The question isn’t whether free exists, it’s which limit you hit first.

Can a free event check in app print name badges?

Usually not. Badge printing sits behind the paywall on most free plans, including Envoy’s and InstaCheckin’s. Lobbytrack’s free Starter tier is the notable exception, per Lobbytrack’s pricing page. Whichever plan you land on you still need a label printer, and Brother QL-series models are the de facto standard. The Brother QL-820NWB setup guide covers what that side involves.

Will a free plan handle a 300-person event?

Not a metered one. A 100-entry monthly cap is gone before the first coffee break, per the caps on Envoy’s pricing page. Ticketing platforms with no attendee cap cope with the numbers fine, but check how they handle walk-ups and badges before you rely on them. For a recurring event at your own building, per-location pricing usually beats per-attendee pricing.

What’s the catch with free ticketing platforms?

Your attendees pay it. Eventbrite’s 3.7% + $1.79 service fee and 2.9% processing fee are charged to the buyer by default, per Eventbrite’s organizer pricing page, so “free” is accurate for you and not for them. Absorb the fees instead and the platform becomes a percentage of revenue rather than a subscription.

Do free check-in apps work without Wi-Fi?

Some do, some don’t, and it’s the single question most worth asking in writing. Eventbrite documents offline check-in with later sync. Cloud-first tools that look up each attendee live will stall when the venue network does, and a Wi-Fi label printer is a second, separate failure point.

Is a free iPad app the same as a free plan?

No, and the difference catches people out constantly. Most visitor management vendors, us included, publish a free iPad app that does nothing without an account behind it. Check the pricing page rather than the App Store listing when you’re comparing free options.

Start Free and Upgrade When the Door Gets Busy

If your event happens in a building you control, and you want attendees signing themselves in on an iPad while a badge prints, that’s what InstaCheckin does. Our free tier covers unlimited visitors at one location with email host notifications, which is enough to retire the clipboard for good. Badges, visitor photos, NDA capture, and pre-registration start at the paid tiers, and you can move between them without changing anything about the kiosk.

Start a free trial, or read the event check-in walkthrough first to see the walk-up and pre-registration flows in detail.