Broadway and Off Broadway shows are essential parts of New York's cultural life, but the ever-rising cost of tickets can make it hard to take full advantage of what the city's stages have to offer. Last season, good tickets to see Denzel Washington in Othello or George Clooney in Good Night and Good Luck went for as much as $900 a seat! The situation is not as dire as it may seem, however: Discount Broadway tickets are everywhere, and modern technology makes it easier than ever to find cheap seats, even at the last minute. If you play your cards right, and with a little luck, you can even score affordable tickets to sold-out hits like Hamilton and Oh, Mary!
If you’re ready to dive in, click through our guide to getting cheap Broadway tickets.
RECOMMENDED: Full guide to all Broadway shows
RECOMMENDED: Discount theater tickets
TKTS: a Times Square staple with a sibling uptown
The classic way to find deeply discounted tickets is to wait in line, on the day of the show, at TDF’s TKTS Booth under the red steps in Duffy Square (47th Street and Broadway). All but the biggest Broadway hits are on sale there, up to 50 percent off. If you are not looking to see a musical, the Times Square booth has a "Play Express" window that will cut down your wait time. The Times Square TKTS Booth is open every day of the week, starting at 3pm for evening performances and 11am for matinees on Wednesdays, Thursdays and weekends. The booth closes at 8pm. You can buy tickets to either same-day performances or next-day matinee performances.
In addition to its flagship Times Square location, TDF operates another booth at Lincoln Center’s David Rubenstein Atrium (Broadway at 62nd Street), which opened in 2016. It’s only 15 blocks from the main booth, but it’s far less crowded—and it’s indoors, which is a big plus in inclement weather. The Lincoln Center outpost is open from 11am every day except Sunday and Monday, but unlike the Times Square booth, it closes at 6pm.
As a general rule, the earlier you get to TKTS the better, but blocks of good seats are sometimes released closer to curtain time. To see what is available on a given day, download the TKTS app or visit its website. You can buy up to six tickets per person at a time; there is a $5–$6 fee per ticket, which is substantially lower than the fees on most ticketing websites.
Shop around for discount codes
As great a resource as it is, TKTS has limitations: You have to wait there in person, often for a long time, and you can only get tickets on the day of the show (or the day before a matinee). Thankfully, your phone and the internet provide alternatives. The popular TodayTix app lets you find discounted tickets on your mobile phone up to a month in advance; discount deals are listed alongside tickets being sold at regular prices. Another reliable online source for cheap Broadway seats is New York Show Tickets; membership there costs about $5 per month. Good discounts can also be found at BroadwayBox, TheaterMania and Playbill. Consider visiting all of these options and shopping around for the best bargain.
Feeling lucky? Enter a digital lottery
Most Broadway shows now conduct digital lotteries on the morning of or just before each performance, either on their own or through TodayTix. But perhaps the most competitive of these lotteries are held weekly: the Hamilton lottery (which offers 46 $10 seats a day) and the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child lottery, both of which are now held once a week on Fridays. To find out which shows offer lotteries, consult the handy listings at Broadway on a Budget or Playbill (which offers both Broadway and Off Broadway guides).
Snag rush tickets or standing-room tickets
Many productions offer special same-day rush tickets, which in some cases are the only way to get tickets at a reasonable price for shows that are otherwise sold out. Rush tickets to Broadway productions tend to be in the $40–$60 range. Go to the theater's box office as soon as it opens on the day of the performance to check; that means 10am on most days, and 11am or noon on Sundays. Conveniently, some shows offer mobile rushes through TodayTix. Some productions also offer standing-room-only (SRO) tickets to sold-out shows; these likewise go on sale daily when the box office opens. They’re just what they sound like—you’ll stand and watch the show from the very back of the audience—and they’re a good option if you don’t mind being on your feet. Again, you can find out which shows offer what via Broadway on a Budget and Playbill's Broadway and Off Broadway guides.
Get student and age-based discounts if you can
The city’s biggest nonprofit theaters all have programs aimed at encouraging younger audiences. Theatergoers ages 18 to 40 can buy tickets to Roundabout Theatre Company for just $30 per show by joining its Hiptix program. If you're between 18 and 35, you can join Lincoln Center Theater's LincTix program, which offers $32 tickets to all shows. Manhattan Theatre Club’s 30 Under 35 program, as the name suggests, allows patrons 35 or younger to buy tickets for $30. Other major companies, such as Playwrights Horizons, also offer programs for young theatergoers.
Gather up the gang and buy group tickets
Groups of ten people or more can get discounted tickets by buying in a block. The exact size of the discount varies from show to show and may also depend on the date of the performance. Group sales are handled separately from individual ticketing: You’ll need to write an email to apply for them. But many websites, Broadway.com, have pages devoted to facilitating this process. One less obvious advantage of buying this way is that you save on the processing fees that usually get tagged on to ticket sales—and which can add up very fast.
Ready to commit? Explore memberships and subscriptions
For $42, if you're eligible, you can get an annual membership to TDF, which lets you use ticket deals days or weeks before the show. TDF also lets you see Off-Off Broadway shows for just $11 through its Go Off-Off and Beyond program, which is a $5 monthly membership fee. And most of the city's major theater companies offer subscription packages: You pay a fee upfront (say, $65) in return for discounted tickets all year; what's more, you get the chance to buy tickets before they go on sale to the general public, which can be a big deal when it comes to shows with a lot of advance buzz. The trick is to pick companies that showcase consistently strong work, such as the Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Second Stage, New York Theatre Workshop, Atlantic Theater Company or Ars Nova.
Visit the box office in person
If the show you want to see is a big hit, you probably won’t be able to secure a discounted ticket, but there are still ways of minimizing the amount you’ll pay. Buying tickets directly at the box office will let you avoid cumbersome service fees, and you can sometimes find very good seats—formerly reserved for house seats or premium sales—that have only recently been added back to the ticket pool and have not yet been scooped up and marked up by scalpers on the resale market. (Be nice to the box-office attendants and they may give you some tips.) Some theaters also have cancellation lines at the box office for tickets that become unexpectedly available on the day of the show.
Take advantage of Broadway Week and Off-Broadway Week
Twice a year, in January and September, you can avail yourself of the two-for-one deals offered through the Broadway Week program (which actually spans several weeks). In February and October, you can avail yourself of similar savings through the Off-Broadway Week initiative. Tickets for both usually go on sale about two weeks before they start; the earlier you buy, the better your chances of landing good seats. But remember: The usual online ticketing fees, generally $10 to $15 per ticket, tend to apply when you use these discounts, and that can bite into your savings.
Stay smart about days and seasons
Not only are you likely to find better seats if you attend a show early in the week—on Tuesdays through Thursdays, and especially on Wednesday matinees—but tickets to these performances are often cheaper than on weekends, when there’s more demand for them. The same is true of performances in the less busy months of the year: January and February are especially good times to find deals, and September is also relatively better.
Game the resale market
Tickets from resale outlets—formerly known as scalpers—usually cost more, not less. But you can sometimes snag tickets at great prices if you are willing to go to the theater right before the show begins. Even for very popular shows, prices on sites like StubHub and TicketNetwork can fall dramatically right before curtain time, as vendors scramble to unload their unsold tickets. If you’re in the right place at the right time, you might get lucky. On the day of the show, you can sometimes find good prices among the Last-Min options on the resale app Theatr, but you’ll want to refresh the screen often to scoop them up before anyone else.
Join a papering service
When shows are not selling out, producers sometimes “paper” the house by offering free tickets on the sly; the idea is to stimulate word-of-mouth buzz and also to give paying customers the experience of being in a fuller crowd. This process is necessarily hush-hush, but several services exist to distribute these tickets; you simply pay an annual fee, and then you can access all the shows they have on offer. Just be sure to check multiple times a day to grab the best things as they turn up. The cheapest papering site is Club Free Time ($25), but other options include Play-by-Play ($99), Theater Extras ($99) and TheaterMania Gold Club ($80). Be warned that papering has tapered off since the pandemic shutdown, so you won’t see many Broadway shows this way; Off and Off-Off Broadway shows, concerts and comedy events are more common. But if the selection is limited, you really can’t beat the price.
