An Eventbrite API alternative for apps that need to search events

By Elliot Harris, FindLocal · Last verified September 26, 2026

We checked Eventbrite's details against their public docs on September 26, 2026. Things change, so follow the source links. FindLocal's numbers come live from our database. Eventbrite is a trademark of its owner, and this page isn't affiliated with or endorsed by them. Spotted a mistake? Email a correction.

What Eventbrite’s API does well

If you run events on Eventbrite, the Platform API is good. You can create and update events, manage ticket classes, pull orders and attendee lists, and get webhooks when someone registers. It works well for organizer back-office jobs like syncing sales into a CRM, printing badges or reconciling payouts.

That’s what it was built for, and Eventbrite has kept it focused there.

Why it doesn’t work for a discovery app

Discovery apps start from a place and a time. A user wants to know what’s happening near them tonight, and Eventbrite stopped answering that. In December 2019 it removed public access to GET /v3/events/search. Keys that had been whitelisted kept working until February 20, 2020, and then the endpoint was turned off. Category search was deprecated at the same time.

The endpoints that remain assume you already know what you’re looking for. You can get:

• an event by id
• the events at a venue id
• the events belonging to an organization id

To build a city feed on top of that, you’d have to find the ids somewhere else, make one request per venue or organizer, and merge everything yourself. Eventbrite does offer broader access through its distribution partner program, but you have to apply for it.

Coverage is the other issue. Eventbrite only has events whose organizers use Eventbrite. A lot of what makes a local feed useful never goes through a ticketing site at all: the weekly trivia night at a bar, an open mic, a storytime at the library.

How FindLocal handles it

We read venues’ own calendars every day and put the results in one searchable catalogue. GET /api/events takes the filters a discovery UI usually needs:

• city, or near=lat,lng with radius_km for “near me”
• when (today, weekend, week, or a date), worked out in the city’s time zone
• cat for categories, free=1, max for a price ceiling, tod for time of day
• q for free text, performer for one act’s upcoming dates

Each event has its venue, coordinates, neighborhood, a price label and links to the venue’s event page and ticket page. If the venue sells through Eventbrite, the ticket link goes there.

Moving code off the old search endpoint

If you still have code written against Eventbrite search, most parameters have a direct equivalent:

The response is JSON with a data array and a meta object (count, total, page). The playground in our docs runs real queries without a key, so you can look at the output before signing up.

Using both

If people create events on Eventbrite through your product, keep using its API for that. Use FindLocal for the part of your app that shows what else is going on nearby. They don’t overlap much. One manages events you own and the other finds events you don’t.

When to pick Eventbrite

Pick Eventbrite’s API if you’re the organizer, or if you’re building tools for organizers who already sell there. It hasn’t been an option for searching a city’s events since 2020.

Try the same query on FindLocal

The kind of query Eventbrite's search endpoint used to handle. Free events in Chicago this weekend, soonest first.

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $FINDLOCAL_KEY" \
  "https://findlocal.community/api/events?city=chicago&when=weekend&free=1&sort=date"

No key yet? Run it in Explore to see the results and map, or use the keyless playground. Full reference: API docs · docs as Markdown for your LLM.

FAQ