Dawat vs Luma
Short answer: both are free to use. The difference is what you get: Luma gives you free plan covers unlimited events and unlimited guests per event, while Dawat gives you a personally addressed link per guest, seeing who opened the invitation, an animated envelope opening.
Dawat is free at every guest count: 53 card designs, unlimited guests, unlimited sends, RSVP tracking with your own questions, and a personally addressed link for each guest. The only paid item is a Dawat Signature cinematic experience at $89 once per event.
Event pages and calendars with RSVP, invites, ticketing, and check-in, popular with tech meetups and community organizers. This page compares it with Dawat on fees, on whether the product can handle a private guest list rather than a public listing, and on what your guests have to do before they can reply.
Luma pricing checked 2026-09-16 against its own published pages. Sources · Method
On this page
Side by side
| Dawat | Luma | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Free | Free tier, paid upgrades |
| What the free tier gives you | Everything except Signature: all card designs, party pages, unlimited guests, sends, RSVP tracking and analytics. | Unlimited events and guests, 500 invites or newsletters per week once verified, check-in, up to 3 admins. |
| Cost for 100 guests | Free | Free (RSVP event); $125 platform fee on 100 paid $25 tickets |
| Cost for 250 guests | Free | Free (RSVP event); $312.50 platform fee on 250 paid $25 tickets |
| Charges per recipient | No | No |
| Guests need an account | No | No |
| Ads shown to guests | No | No |
Where Dawat is different
- Per-guest personal links. Dawat includes a personally addressed link per guest. Luma does not publish whether it supports this.
- Open tracking. Dawat includes seeing who opened the invitation. Luma does not publish whether it supports this.
- Animated envelope. Dawat includes an animated envelope opening. Luma does not.
- Registry links. Dawat includes linking a gift registry. Luma does not publish whether it supports this.
- AI wording help. Dawat includes writing the wording with AI. Luma does not publish whether it supports this.
- Works inside ChatGPT / Claude. Dawat includes being driven from an AI assistant. Luma does not publish whether it supports this.
- Multilingual & right-to-left. Dawat includes Arabic, Urdu and other right-to-left scripts. Luma does not publish whether it supports this.
Create your invitation — free →No card required. Unlimited guests. 53 designs.
When Luma is the better choice
Dawat does not sell tickets or take money from guests. If your event needs either, this is not a close comparison: Community, meetup, and startup organizers who want a fast, free event page with invites and light ticketing.
- Free plan covers unlimited events and unlimited guests per event
- Guests do not need a Luma account or sign-in to register
- Invites go out by email plus SMS, WhatsApp, and push
- CSV or paste-in guest import with automatic de-duplication
- Luma Plus removes the platform fee entirely on paid events
Where Dawat does not compete with it:
- No ticket sales, payments from guests or door scanning
And where Luma will cost you something:
- Free plan takes a 5% platform fee on paid events
- Free plan capped at 500 invites or newsletters per week
- Private events are unlisted links, not a locked per-guest invitation
- Stripe processing fees apply on top of the platform fee
- Free plan limited to three calendar admins
What Luma costs, in dollars
As of September 2026: Free forever plan with unlimited events and guests and a 5% platform fee on paid events; Luma Plus is $59/month billed annually and drops the platform fee to 0%.
18 of the 33 platforms tracked here can send an invitation without payment. Luma is one of them, and Dawat is another.
| Dawat | Luma | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Free | Free tier, paid upgrades |
| 100 guests | Free | Free (RSVP event); $125 platform fee on 100 paid $25 tickets |
| 250 guests | Free | Free (RSVP event); $312.50 platform fee on 250 paid $25 tickets |
| How that is worked out | Dawat has no per-guest or per-send charge, so the guest count does not change the price. | Free-plan 5% platform fee applied to $25 tickets; Stripe processing (about 2.9% + $0.30) is charged on top. |
Dawat is free to send. Luma can also be used without paying; the differences are in what each free tier includes, which the table below sets out.
The guest experience compared
Ticketing platforms are built around a stranger buying entry. A guest you already know is a different person with a different tolerance, and an account-creation screen is where that difference shows up.
| Feature | Dawat | Luma |
|---|---|---|
| Guest account required | No | No |
| Ads shown to guests | No | No |
| Animated envelope | Yes | No |
| Per-guest personal links | Yes | Not published |
| Open tracking | Yes | Not published |
| Calendar file | Yes | Yes |
| Multilingual & right-to-left | Yes | Not published |
On Dawat, the link is addressed to the person holding it. The envelope opens with their name on it, their RSVP is already prefilled, and answering is one tap. Luma does not publish whether it addresses each guest individually.
What happens as the list grows
Guest count is not the axis here — Luma does not bill per recipient. The thing that changes as the list grows is administration: chasing replies, keeping a headcount honest, and knowing who never opened the thing. Dawat gives every guest their own link, so the dashboard shows sent, opened and answered per person instead of a pile of replies you have to reconcile.
Switching, or running both
If part of your event is ticketed and part is invited, running both is the right answer: Luma for the public tickets, Dawat for the guest list you already have.
If you are moving across, the fastest route is Dawat's import: paste the link to your existing invitation and Dawat reads the wording, date, venue and colour mood off the page and rebuilds it as a prefilled draft you can edit. Guest lists come in from your phone's contacts, a .vcf file, or pasted text.
What does not come across: Luma's designs, and any replies already collected there. Export your RSVPs before you switch, and send the Dawat invitation only to the people who have not answered.
Feature by feature
| Feature | Dawat | Luma |
|---|---|---|
| Free to send | Yes | Yes |
| Per-guest fees | No | No |
| Unlimited guests | Yes | Yes |
| RSVP tracking | Yes | Yes |
| Custom RSVP questions | Yes | Yes |
| Email delivery | Yes | Yes |
| SMS or WhatsApp | Partial | Yes |
| Per-guest personal links | Yes | Not published |
| Open tracking | Yes | Not published |
| Animated envelope | Yes | No |
| Printed cards | No | No |
| Guest account required | No | No |
| Ads shown to guests | No | No |
| Event website | Partial | Yes |
| Registry links | Yes | Not published |
| Meal choice or seating | Partial | Not published |
| Calendar file | Yes | Yes |
| AI wording help | Yes | Not published |
| Works inside ChatGPT / Claude | Yes | Not published |
| Multilingual & right-to-left | Yes | Not published |
"Not published" means no vendor documentation could be found either way, not that the feature is missing. How this grid is built →
Questions
Is Luma free?
Yes. Luma publishes a 'Free, forever' plan with unlimited events and unlimited guests per event. Free events cost nothing. Paid events on the free plan carry a 5% platform fee, and Stripe processing fees apply separately.
How much does Luma Plus cost?
Luma Plus is listed at $59 per month billed annually. It removes the 5% platform fee on paid events, raises weekly invite and newsletter sends from 500 to 5,000, and increases calendar admins from three to five.
Do guests need a Luma account to RSVP?
No. Luma's help centre states that guests do not need a Luma account or a sign-in to register. Name and email are required for all guests, and hosts can add custom registration questions.
Can you make a Luma event private or invite-only?
Luma offers a private visibility setting: the event is unlisted, hidden from every Luma calendar including your own, and only people with the link can register. Hosts can also send invites by email, SMS, WhatsApp, and push.
Is Dawat free?
Yes. All 53 card designs and every party-page theme, unlimited guests, unlimited sends, RSVP tracking, custom questions and the per-guest analytics cost nothing, and no card is required. The only paid item is a Dawat Signature cinematic experience at $89 once for that event, and it is labelled as paid before you publish.
Does Dawat have designs as good as Luma?
Dawat's 53 designs are animated card experiences with an envelope opening, plus 8 long-scroll Signature experiences. Whether that beats Luma depends on whether you want a designed occasion or a quick notice.
Can I send printed invitations from Dawat?
No. Dawat is digital only. Luma does not print either.
Create your invitation — free →Takes about ten minutes. Sign in only when you publish.
Other comparisons
Luma alternatives
Eight products that do what Luma does, ranked and priced.
Event and ticketing platforms
Every product in Luma's category, side by side.
Luma against the rest:
Dawat against the rest:
How these figures were checked
Every figure above was read from Luma's own published pricing or help pages on 16 September 2026, and each source is linked below. Coins, credits and per-card rates are converted into dollars at a real guest count, because that is the number you are deciding with. Full methodology and the open dataset →
Reading this through an AI assistant? Dawat runs an MCP server, so ChatGPT or Claude can choose the design, write the wording, add your guest list, publish the invitation and send it without you leaving the conversation. Luma does not publish one.
Sources
- Luma pricing — checked 2026-09-16
- Luma Plus overview — checked 2026-09-16
- Event registration process — checked 2026-09-16
- Setting your event visibility — checked 2026-09-16
- Inviting and adding guests to your event — checked 2026-09-16