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Last Updated on November 30, 2020 by Yovana
As you may or may not know by now, we are pretty frugal (where it makes sense for us) and active side hustlers. We don’t normally like to pay full price for stuff, even with entertainment. Scoring free concert tickets (or close to free) isn’t all that hard and we have found a couple of tricks over the years to show you show.
Unfortunately, most of the time people get turned off from going to concerts due to how expensive they can be. This is because they don’t know of the many ways you can get cheap and free concert tickets. You have to get creative sometimes to do the things you want to do for cheap.
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How to Score Free Concert Tickets: 14 Real Ways We’ve Tried
These 14 tips and tricks are all things that we actually tried and worked for us. You are bound to find something in this list that will work for you and grant you free admission to your favorite bands and live events!
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1. Check out the ‘Absolutely Free Tickets’ at StubHub or Ticketmaster.
Many cities have free concerts that go on periodically. For this purpose, Ticketmaster and StubHub have a section of their site and apps called ‘Absolutely Free Tickets’. Using this section you can easily score yourself some free concert tickets.
Check here to see what tickets are available for free in your neck of the woods.
2. Enter online sweepstakes for free tickets.
Currently, over at thebalance.com they have some amazing sweepstakes listed that are going on right now! They include prizes of free concert tickets, movie tickets and more. What is great about this site is that they publish new lists of sweepstakes currently going on almost every day. You can find millions of things to win for free, not just free concert tickets.
Check it out here.
3. Enter social media contests, giveaways and Facebook groups.
Search for your local event and concert venues on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. request to add them and follow them so you can get any status updates on social media contests and giveaways that they may have going on.
I do this with a local venue in our area called The Pageant. A good friend of mine won 2 free tickets to one of their concerts last summer by entering one of their Facebook contests which were a thread where you ‘Like’, ‘Share’ and ‘Comment’ on their post about the event to be entered into the contest and giveaway. The next day she was notified on Facebook via tag that she won!
Facebook groups are great for this too. Just type in the search bar on Facebook ‘free concert tickets’ or ‘cheap concert tickets’ or ‘free events’ , etc. You will see a roll-up of groups specifically for your city (and maybe even specific events in your area in the search results too) and others that are a wider range. I found a good group for Chicago through this method.
4. Sign up to be a seat filler.
Search on Google for a seat filler company in your city or visit SeatStir.com. Seat filler memberships help venues fill their unsold seats by granting free tickets to a wide variety of events, not just concerts. For a small fee, you can gain free admission to every event or concert going on in your city!
5. Utilize the Groupon + InboxDollars (or Ebates/Rakuten) hack.
InboxDollars is an app that pays you to read emails, take surveys, play games, complete offers and much more. You basically get paid to play around on your phone to pass the time when you are bored. InboxDollars also has a specific section of the app just for Groupon purchases.
In the InboxDollars app, click the item that says Groupon to be redirected through the InboxDollars app to Groupon. Then you will see Groupon offers (including a ton for concerts) that are already giving you a huge savings, plus what InboxDollars will pay you for purchasing.
Did I mention they pay you an additional $5 just for signing up? Click here to read our full review of the app.
Or better yet, use Groupon with the Ebates Google Chrome browser extension (plus get a $10 welcome bonus on Ebates/Rakuten when you sign up with my link). Currently, Ebates has 6% cash back on all Groupon purchases so you can save even more on concert tickets.
Rewards hacking has never been so fun!
6. Volunteer at the event or concert.
Did you know you can volunteer for free concert tickets? You can sign up to be a volunteer through the event, concert’s website or contact the venue where it is taking place. Volunteering at the concert means you get your admission for free!
If it is a music festival you can volunteer some hours or some days and have the rest for absolutely free without having to work the entire time!
About 4 years ago I signed up to volunteer at a music festival called Summercamp. It was an amazing volunteer agreement because over the course of a couple of days all I had to do was fulfill at least 4 hours of volunteer hours and I got my admission completely free! This included free camping and parking as well. Talk about an amazing deal!
7. Check with your employer.
Some employers often give away free concert tickets and free tickets to sports games. It is one of the many ‘unspoken’ perks you can get at a job. Usually, your employer will send emails out asking if anyone would like the tickets available for that season and list them.
In other cases, you will have to check with your HR department to see if you need to be added to those certain distribution lists. Give it a try though and ask someone about them, chances are they will have something to giveaway that season!
8. Purchase tickets online with coupons and cashback browser apps.
When you purchase tickets online with Ticketmaster or StubHub you should use one of these cashback apps and browser extensions to get a good chunk of money back from your purchase.
Who knows, with these signup bonuses you could end up covering the entire cost of your concert tickets and thus, getting more free concert tickets!
My favorite cashback sites and apps:
- BeFrugal (My absolute favorite cashback site.)
- Ebates (Now called Rakuten.. they did a slight brand change)
- Ibotta: Get cash back for scanning your receipts or shopping through the app online. Sign up with my link to get $10 cash back on Ibotta.
- TopCashBack
- CouponGreat
- Dosh: All the perks of a cash back credit card without having to actually get one! Just link your current cards to the app and get cash back! No receipt scanning, no waiting for the bank to approve your rebate, nothing but instant cash back! You also get a $5 free bonus once you sign up and link your first card for instant cash back on Dosh. Read our review of this amazing app here.
- Swagbucks (Swagbucks offers cashback on almost every single site known to man, and no you don’t have to do any surveys to get this feature!)
Combine a cashback extension like Ebates/Rakuten with Swagbucks for even more cashback potential. See how this looks in our browser when you apply both.
Then just click to ‘Activate’ on both browser extensions. You will get cash back for both of them and you will get the signup bonuses for each app on top of that if it is your first time using these!
9. Use a rewards card to get a portion of your purchase back in cashback!
Using rewards cards gets you some great savings! Now that everyone is offering them, no matter where you shop, why not get in on the action because paying full price is just throwing away your money these days.
Most rewards cards like the travel hacking ones we use will give you an option to cash out your points. You could use that cashout for basically free concert tickets!
10. Check Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace.
Listing apps and sites like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace can be a goldmine for cheap or even free concert tickets. Sometimes people just want to get rid of their tickets for whatever reason and offer them for free.
If you can’t find any free tickets on her, you are bound to find some extremely discounted tickets. I say this is worth a try!
11. Use a cheaper ticket distributor.
Ticketmaster can sometimes be the worst site to go through for tickets. If you can’t find any ‘Absolutely Free Tickets’ or make cashback apps work the best for you to get the most amount back for your purchase, then you end up paying the full price plus a load of fees.
There are a couple of cheaper ticket distributors you can go through though to make your life 100% easier.
Some of the cheaper ticket sites are:
Sign up for TicketNetwork today and get $25 off your next purchase with them!
The best thing about Tickets.Expert is you can even score cheap tickets to sold-out shows in the area. How do they do this? No idea, but it is awesome.
12. Become an event blogger.
Did you know it is possible to go to all of your favorite concerts and events for free or maybe even get paid for it through blogging and promoting brands? Well, it is very much possible and hundreds of bloggers achieve this every day.
The way that event bloggers and brand ambassadors achieve free admission to events and concerts is by getting a press pass.
Bloggers can also make money while attending events and concerts by:
- Sponsorship to attend the event or concert and blogging or vlogging about it
- Promoting ads or affiliate links on their posts
If you have not yet started a blog and want to, or are having trouble with where to start, check out How To Create A Self Hosted WordPress Blog.
13. Do it the old fashioned way and call your local radio station!
The radio has been around forever and has always been people’s first go-to for free concert ticket giveaways and announcements.
It still is a great option when you are on the lookout to get the hottest tickets for free. Listen to your radio station periodically throughout the day and on your commute to see if any ticket giveaways are going on. Most will have a website now and will also have those announcements there.
14. Check your city’s free events.
Our city has tons of free concerts offered throughout the year. From a free festival and concerts downtown under the St. Louis Arch for the 4th of July to the free concert series at the Botanical Gardens throughout the entire summer, our city has it all.
St. Louis isn’t a very big city either. Which tells me that it can’t be the only city that offers so many free events like this.
My suggestions for finding these free events and concerts are the following:
- Go to your Facebook app and click where it says ‘Events’ and browse the upcoming events in the area. Chances are that some of these are free.
- Google ‘free concerts near me’ or ‘free events near me’.
- Check out these event apps for finding these free events.
- Eventbrite has a section of free events in their app that you can also check.
How to Save Money on Concert Tickets
If you exhausted all of the above options to try and get free or almost free concert tickets and had no luck, no worries. You can still use savings hacks to get discounted tickets.
Sign Up for Alerts
Songkick is a website that will help you organize and track all your favorite bands. They will send you alerts when your favorite bands come to your town and when the ticket prices get posted (and when those drop in price).
But my favorite site to sign up for ticket alerts on has to be SeatGeek. SeatGeek is by far the best when it comes to when ticket prices drop.
Wait Until It Gets Closer to The Date
SeatGeek is also the best website to find the lowest price for a ticket on either the day before or the day of the concert. Even if the tickets are sold out, you will find them on SeatGeek.
You can check StubHub and see if you have any luck but in my experience, you will find the cheapest prices last minute on SeatGeek.
You can also surf on Facebook groups or the venue’s Facebook page for any posts from people looking to unload their tickets if they found out last minute that they are no longer able to go.
Scope Out Cheaper Concerts
You might not be able to go to that Beyonce concert because, those ticket prices just aren’t budging. That’s understandable because Beyonce is the queen. Like, THE queen. You could still find cheaper options explained above or you could scope out cheaper concerts in the area.
Look at your venue’s website and facebook page to see the cheaper concerts going on, google for cheap concerts in your area or keep checking your email alerts.
You will find something.
Wrapping Things Up
There are so many ways to get free concert tickets but some of them require a bit more craftiness than what most people are willing to put up with. That isn’t a problem though with the abundance of concert apps and ticket apps that are willing to give away tickets for cheap and pretty close to free.
With these tips, I hope you will find a couple of concerts to get free admission to or at least score your tickets at a less expensive rate.
What are some ways that you have scored cheap or free concert tickets? I would love to hear of ways that I have yet to encounter!
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Daniella is the creator and author of iliketodabble.com. When their wife Alexandra and them aren’t globetrotting or playing with their 7+ animals, they are dabbling and working towards a future of financial freedom.
Thanks for sharing very useful information with us. I always love watching live concerts. But I never try how to get free concert tickets so thank you.
I love getting free concert tickets and there are so many ways now that you can on apps and sites, etc.
Thanks this is very useful indeed!!!
These are great tips! I love all of the ideas, especially volunteering for events. I can’t wait to try these out!
The seatfiller doesn’t work, do you know who’s the contact? the link for the contact doesn’t work either.
Usually, you just have to contact your local venues for seatfiller opportunities. I found that website and now it is not working me anymore either. I have since found seatstir.com and updated the post with that website. That site should be bale to help you 🙂
I love that! Too bad we don’t have that where I live! ?