Meetup
Platform · this deep dive is built from the official pages of the platform itself and of the tools that support it.
Overview
Meetup is a platform for offline and online gatherings. The unit here is not a post but an event: an organiser creates a group, schedules meetings, and members sign up and turn up. The platform describes the arrangement like this: the core of Meetup is "groups", communities that hold "events"; events can be online (a webinar, for example) or in person (a hike, a workshop, a conversation over coffee).
The key difference from the other platforms in this guide: organising here costs money. Searching for groups, joining and signing up for meetings are free; running a group requires a subscription. This is a rare case where the price of a business being present on a platform is published directly and in a currency.
The owner has changed: the site footer gives "© 2026 Bending Spoons US Inc." and the signature "Made with by Bending Spoons" — the Italian company that bought Meetup.
Who's here
Meetup gives no public audience figures — MAU, DAU or the number of groups — on its open pages. The claim closest to reach is in a blog post by a product lead: the platform «supports a community of members and organisers in 10,000 cities and 193 countries». This is the platform's own statement, without a measurement date or a methodology.
Another figure of its own is on the "About us" page: «more than 250,000 women gather in Meetup groups around the world to develop development skills». It describes one subject area, not the platform as a whole.
The interface language is English: the pages carry neither a language switcher nor a list of locales.
Getting started
For a member it is free and simple: the platform describes the route as «find by interest and city → join → sign up and come → get to know people».
For an organiser it costs money. The prices are named in the blog post that announced the increase: Standard — $44.99 a month, $178.99 for 6 months, $299.99 for 12 months; PRO — $55.00 a month per group when paying monthly and $47.00 a month per group when paying for 6 months. The prices are before tax. The same page sets out the timing: the new prices took effect on 6 June 2024 and apply to all Standard organisers and to new Pro organisers who subscribed after 6 June; an existing Standard organiser pays the old price until their next renewal and receives an email 28 days before it, while Pro organisers who subscribed earlier are not affected by the increase.
Note: these are the prices as of the date of the post. The platform shows the current price for your country in the subscription dashboard; the help articles about prices sit on help.meetup.com, which at the time of checking answered with code 403 and required scripts to be executed.
What Pro gives is listed by the platform openly: a platform for managing a network of groups, access to members' email addresses, extended network analytics, customisable registration forms, a branded network page, access to the API. A separate Pro page adds: custom headers, network logos and links to a website and social networks, an unlimited number of groups worldwide, multi-group and hybrid events, cross-group mailings.
What you can publish
Publishing here means an event and a message to members. The platform lists the organiser's instruments like this: creating and managing a group (its purpose, topics, membership rules), scheduling events with a date, a time, a place (physical or virtual) and a description, announcements and messages to members, community growth tools and collecting feedback.
The option of taking money from members is named separately: organisers may collect member dues or a fee for an event in order to cover costs. This is an option, not an obligation.
There are no restrictions on description length, image size or number of events on the open pages: judging by the structure of the site they are described in the help centre, access to which was closed.
How to grow
Meetup makes few promises about its algorithm, but they do exist. In a blog post the platform names two lines of work: major investment in bringing new members onto the platform and the introduction of AI models for personal recommendations of events and groups. That is, a recommendation feed is declared to exist, but the platform does not disclose its mechanics.
On the effect of the paid Pro plan the platform gives figures of its own: «+40% event sign-ups, +50% members, +400% engagement». The basis of comparison, the period and the methodology are not stated on the page — this is a marketing claim by the seller, not a measurement.
Meetup has no ad account: there is nowhere on the open pages to buy impressions inside the platform. Promotion here means holding events regularly and investing in your own channels.
Path to monetization
Meetup does not pay authors and organisers. The money flows the other way round: the organiser pays the platform for the right to run a group (from $44.99 a month on the Standard plan), and can earn only directly from members — the platform permits collecting dues and a fee for events.
Neither a share of advertising revenue, nor a fund for organisers, nor a partner programme with payouts is described on the pages we checked. The terms, commissions and geography of processing payments for events are not named publicly either.
Tools and automation
The official API
Meetup does have an API, and there is one — GraphQL. The platform explains the choice like this: unlike REST, where there are many entry points, GraphQL has one entry point, and several queries can be combined into a single request. The entry point is named in the examples: https://api.meetup.com/gql-ext, the request being a POST with the header Authorization: Bearer {token}.
Authorisation is OAuth 2 over HTTPS. The addresses: https://secure.meetup.com/oauth2/authorize for authorisation and https://secure.meetup.com/oauth2/access for tokens. The server's response contains expires_in with a value of 3600, that is an hour, and a refresh_token for renewal. The requirements for redirect_uri are strict: the host and port must match the registered callback address exactly, and the path must be a subdirectory of it.
Paging is cursor-based: by default a page contains 20 records, the size is set by the first argument, and the cursor is taken from the endCursor field of the pageInfo object.
The main limitation is that access costs money. The platform puts it directly: «Get access to the API and more with Meetup Pro… in addition to all the capabilities of the standard plan, Pro gives access to the API». That is, automation starts with the Pro plan, not with a free account.
What people do through the API
The platform names three examples of use: showing statistics in your own dashboard (the most active groups, events with low sign-up), displaying upcoming events and groups on external, non-Meetup pages, and scheduling events with group management through existing CRMs. The example queries in the documentation show reading an event by its identifier and walking the groups of a network through proNetwork and groupsSearch.
Limits and rules
- Organising costs money. The lowest published price is $44.99 a month on the Standard plan, before tax. The platform warns that the price depends on the country and on the way the subscription is paid for — it shows the exact amount in the dashboard.
- The API is Pro only. Access to the API is part of Pro; it is not on the standard plan.
- A token lives for an hour.
expires_inis 3600 seconds, and an integration is obliged to refresh the token. - The terms of use and the community rules — the links in the footer lead to
help.meetup.com; at the time of checking the domain answered with 403 and required scripts to be enabled. - The owner and jurisdiction. The site operator is given as Bending Spoons US Inc..
Who it's for
It suits companies and professional communities that hold regular offline meetings: developer meetups, clubs, courses, local events. Meetup solves not the task of "showing content" but the task of "gathering people in one room".
It suits networks and franchises: the Pro plan is aimed directly at an unlimited number of groups worldwide, multi-group events and cross-group mailings, and access to members' email addresses and to the API comes with it.
It does not suit you if you do not have the resources to hold meetings regularly: the subscription is charged whether or not a meeting took place. It does not suit media promotion: there is no ad account, and there is nowhere to buy impressions inside the platform. It does not suit content monetization: the platform does not pay authors.
Verified data
The checked data this deep dive rests on.
About the platform
the platform describes itself as follows: «Find Meetup events, join groups, or start your own. Make new friends and connect with like-minded people. Meet people near you who share your interests.»
Self-description: this is the platform's claim about itself, not an independent assessment
source, checked 2026-07-28
the site operator is given as Bending Spoons US Inc.
The site footer: «© 2026 Bending Spoons US Inc.»
source, checked 2026-07-28
the core of the platform is «groups», communities that hold «events»; events can be online or in person
The platform's own machine-readable llms.txt index
source, checked 2026-07-28
Who's here
the platform reports that it supports a community of members and organisers in 10,000 cities and 193 countries
The platform's claim in a blog post, without a measurement date or a methodology
source, checked 2026-07-28
the platform reports: more than 250,000 women gather in Meetup groups to develop development skills
A figure for one subject area, not for the platform as a whole; there is no date
source, checked 2026-07-28
Promotion
the platform gives figures of its own for the effect of Pro: +40% event sign-ups, +50% members, +400% engagement
A marketing claim by the seller: the basis of comparison, the period and the methodology are not stated
source, checked 2026-07-28
the platform announces the introduction of AI models for personal recommendations of events and groups; it does not disclose the ranking mechanics
A blog post; there is no description of the algorithm
source, checked 2026-07-28
How the money works here
the platform does not pay organisers: the money flows the other way — the organiser pays for a subscription; earning is possible only from members, through dues and a fee for an event
«Collect Funds (Optional): Organizers can charge member dues or event fees to cover costs»
source, checked 2026-07-28
Paid subscriptions
Meetup Pro gives: a platform for managing a network of groups, access to members' email addresses, extended network analytics, customisable registration forms, a branded network page and access to the API
The «Get API access and more with Meetup Pro» block in the documentation
source, checked 2026-07-28
Pricing
organiser subscription prices before tax: Standard — $44.99 a month, $178.99 for 6 months, $299.99 for 12 months; PRO — $55.00 a month per group when paying monthly and $47.00 a month per group when paying for 6 months
The price table in the platform's blog post; the new prices took effect on 6 June 2024
source, checked 2026-07-28
the new prices apply to all Standard organisers and to new Pro organisers who subscribed after 6 June 2024; an existing Standard organiser pays the old price until their next renewal and receives an email 28 days before it; Pro organisers who subscribed earlier do not get the increase
A blog post by a product lead
source, checked 2026-07-28
API access
there is one API and it is GraphQL; the entry point is https://api.meetup.com/gql-ext, the request being a POST with the header Authorization: Bearer {token}
The curl examples in the API guide
source, checked 2026-07-28
authorisation is OAuth 2 over HTTPS: https://secure.meetup.com/oauth2/authorize and https://secure.meetup.com/oauth2/access; the response contains expires_in = 3600 seconds and a refresh_token; the host and port of redirect_uri must match the registered address exactly, and the path must be a subdirectory of it
The «Authentication & Security» page of the documentation
source, checked 2026-07-28
paging is cursor-based: the default page size is 20 records, set by the first argument, and the cursor is taken from the endCursor field of the pageInfo object
The «Example: Pagination» section
source, checked 2026-07-28
access to the API is part of the Pro plan; on the standard plan the API is not available
«In addition to all of the feature you already have with a standard plan, pro gives you API access»
source, checked 2026-07-28
Languages
the interface language of the home page: en-US
The language is taken from the markup attribute, the versions from hreflang
source, checked 2026-07-28
Catalogue section: all similar See also: catalogue index · region: USA and Canada · scheduler comparison · find by situation · platform restrictions