Luma (lu.ma) is a tool for people who run events: create a page, manage your guest list, collect RSVPs. Vently is a tool for people who want to find events: see what is happening near you, see who else is going, and show up connected. These two apps are aimed at almost opposite sides of the same room. Knowing which side you are on makes the choice obvious.
Luma is a capable event management platform, and it is used heavily in the San Francisco tech scene for good reason. If you are running a startup event, a founder dinner, an investor panel, or a recurring community series, Luma gives you a clean set of tools to do it: a polished event page, RSVP collection, guest list management, calendar invites, and basic analytics on who registered and who showed up. You can embed a Luma event widget on your own website. You can make events public, private, or approval-required. The organiser experience is well thought out.
Luma is free for basic events and charges for larger events and analytics features. For the kinds of professional communities that run the SF tech and startup circuit, from VC networking nights to developer meetups, Luma is often the platform of record. The lu.ma/events page for San Francisco surfaces a real slice of what is happening in the city, particularly in the professional and startup space.
If you want to host and manage an event, Luma is a reasonable first call.
Vently is not an event management platform. It does not have RSVP infrastructure, guest list tools, or organiser analytics. It is not trying to be those things. What Vently is built for is the other side of the equation: you want to find something to do, figure out what is worth going to, and know who else is planning to be there before you leave the house.
Open the app and you see local events happening near you in San Francisco. That is the starting point. What makes it useful is the social layer on top of that: you can see which of your connections are interested in or attending the same events. That "who is going" signal changes how you decide. Most people will commit to a plan more readily when they can already see that someone in their network is heading there too. Luma does not build that layer for attendees. It is not what Luma is for.
If you are an attendee who wants to discover what is happening nearby and connect with other people going to the same things, that is Vently's lane. Browse events happening in San Francisco now to see what is on.
Here is the part worth being straight about: Vently is not a pure competitor to Luma. Vently actually uses Luma to manage RSVPs for its own events. If you find a Vently-hosted event and want to RSVP, you will often do that through a Luma page (lu.ma/vently). That is not a contradiction. It is what each tool is actually good at.
The practical reality is that Vently and Luma can sit in the same workflow. You might discover an event on Vently, see that people in your network are going, and click through to a Luma link to register. Vently handles the discovery and the social context. Luma handles the RSVP and guest management on the organiser's side. They are doing different jobs.
The fact that Vently uses Luma for its own events is honest evidence that these are complementary tools, not direct substitutes. What Vently adds is the layer Luma does not have: surfacing events to people who did not already know about them, and showing those people who else from their network is going.
The decision is mostly about your role. Are you trying to run something, or find something?
The table below covers the attributes that matter most when you are deciding which tool fits your situation.
| Attribute | Luma | Vently |
|---|---|---|
| Primary user | Organiser | Attendee |
| Event discovery | Public event pages; searchable on lu.ma | Location-based feed of local events near you |
| Social layer (see who is going) | Not available for attendees | Yes, see which connections are interested or going |
| Event creation and management | Yes, full RSVP, guest list, and organiser tools | No (Vently is for finding events, not hosting them) |
| Private or approval-required events | Yes | No, open events only |
| Organiser analytics | Yes (paid tiers) | No |
| Free tier | Yes (basic events free; paid for larger events) | Yes, free |
| Platform | iOS, Android, and web | iOS |
Vently is free on the web and iOS. See what is happening near you in San Francisco, find out who in your network is going, and stop showing up to things cold. Read more about how Vently works or browse events on the web.
Also compare: Vently vs. Eventbrite, Vently vs. Facebook Events, Vently vs. Timeleft, Vently vs. Fever, vs Bumble BFF, and vs 222, and vs DayOfUs, and vs Strangrs.