Naboo alternatives for UK event teams
Naboo is an AI event procurement platform built for large enterprises: a venue and supplier marketplace with sourcing agents, voice agents that call venues, payments and spend control, and a human project manager on each brief. If you are a UK company that wants an AI to do the planning legwork for your own event team, price flights for your own attendees and chase your own stakeholders for decisions, the closest alternative is Comtev, priced at a flat £250 per event. If you only need a venue, HeadBox and Hire Space are UK venue finders. If you want a US-style AI venue-sourcing service, Nowadays.
This page compares them on what they actually do, not on who has raised the most. Every claim about another product links to that product's own page and was checked on the date above.
What each one actually does
| Feature | Comtev | Naboo | HeadBox and Hire Space | Nowadays |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | AI that does the legwork for an in-house event team: one living event document, agents that source and negotiate, stakeholder chasing, and a budget the team controls. | AI event procurement platform and marketplace for enterprises. Send a brief, get venue and supplier options, book and pay through Naboo with a project manager on the account. | UK venue-finding marketplaces. Describe the event, get AI-curated venue options, compare proposals, contract and pay. | US AI event planner. Enter the event, the AI emails and phones venues from a 400,000-venue database, negotiates and compares proposals. |
| Best for | UK in-house event teams and executive assistants who plan several events a year and want the work done without giving up the decisions. | Enterprise procurement and events teams that want one governed marketplace and a managed service, mainly in France and the UK. | Finding and contracting a venue in the UK quickly. | US teams that want venue sourcing and RFPs handled, with agency-style pricing on top. |
| Venue sourcing | Ranked venue shortlist from one brief, with capacity fit, decision axes and watch-outs. You pick; Comtev does the back-and-forth. | Marketplace of vetted venues with per-person pricing shown; sourcing agents search the web and voice agents call venues for quotes. | Large UK venue inventory (HeadBox states 100,000+ venues globally) with AI-curated shortlists and side-by-side proposals. | Database of 400,000+ vetted venues; AI outreach by email and phone; proposals compared side by side. |
| Vendor sourcing and negotiation | Reaches caterers, AV, transport and other suppliers over WhatsApp, SMS, email and voice call, in their language, negotiates for better rates and normalises quotes to all-in cost. | Catering, activities and transport bookable through the marketplace; negotiation is part of the managed service. | Venue-focused. Suppliers beyond the venue are not the product. | Vendor coordination is handled centrally as part of the service; negotiation is offered on the Explorer and Enterprise tiers. |
| Travel for attendees | Flights priced per named attendee from live fares, hotel room blocks compared and awarded. Nothing is charged until the named approver says yes. | Travel and events compliance is part of the enterprise offer; per-attendee flight pricing is not a self-serve feature on the public site. | Not offered. | Flight estimator and flight booking assistance on paid tiers. |
| Stakeholder sign-off | Stakeholder register plus tracked asks (approval, question, content, date hold) sent over Slack and email. Comtev nudges, switches channel, re-addresses to a delegate and escalates. | Not offered as a product feature. | Not offered. | Not offered. |
| Approvals before spend | Bookings, cancellations and outbound messages wait for a named approver with a spending ceiling. Decide in the app, on Slack, by push or by email. | Policy compliance and spend control at the enterprise account level. | Contracting and payment through the platform. | Contract signing and payment handling through the platform. |
| Living event document | The Event Document: what the event is and what still needs a decision. Items from the venue, vendor and travel boards land on it. Preview, try a scenario, circulate, put into the budget. | Not offered. | Proposal comparison for venues only. | Registration pages and a shared portal on paid tiers. |
| Automation | Automate: plain-sentence flows (when a guest replies, when a quote arrives, when a budget threshold is crossed) with approval before any step spends money. | Not offered as a self-serve feature. | Not offered. | Not offered. |
| Pricing | £250 per event, every planning tool included. Enterprise for year-round teams. No commission from venues or suppliers. | Enterprise contract; venue prices shown per person in the marketplace. No public flat price. | Free for organisers; venues pay commission. | Basic free (one city, five RFPs). Explorer 10% service charge with a $250 refundable deposit. Enterprise custom. Priced in US dollars. |
| UK and GBP | Built in the UK, priced in pounds, run by UK event teams. | London office; the UK is Naboo's largest market outside France. Pricing in EUR, GBP and USD by venue. | UK-native. | US-native; no UK pricing page. |
Checked 2 September 2026. Claims about other products come from their own pages, linked under Sources below. Tell us if something has changed.
Where Naboo genuinely wins
Supply and scale. Naboo has organised more than $500 million of events, runs six offices including London, and puts a human project manager on every brief. Its marketplace shows per-person venue pricing up front, and its enterprise customers get policy compliance and spend reporting across every event in the company. If your procurement team wants one governed channel for all event spend, Naboo is built for exactly that.
Naboo also claims an average 15% saving on event budgets and about ten hours saved per booking. Those are Naboo's own figures; we have not verified them and neither should you without asking for references.
Where Comtev is the better fit
You are the event team, not a procurement department. Comtev works for the people who actually plan the event: it keeps one living document of what the event is and what still needs a decision, goes out to venues and suppliers for real quotes, prices flights for the people who are actually coming, and chases the CFO, the exec sponsor and the head of department for the sign-offs the plan is waiting on. You keep every call. Nothing is booked until your named approver says yes.
Pricing is a flat £250 per event with no commission from venues or suppliers, so the shortlist has no reason to favour anyone. And it is built in the UK for UK teams, in pounds.
When a venue finder is enough
If the whole job is a room in London next month, HeadBox or Hire Space will get you options and a contract fast, at no cost to you. Where they stop is everything after the venue: the caterer and AV quotes, the hotel block, the flights, the budget your finance team wants to see, and the decisions that are still sitting in someone's inbox. That is the work Comtev was built to do.
Questions buyers ask
What is the best Naboo alternative for a UK company?
For an in-house event team that wants the planning legwork done and the decisions kept, Comtev: one brief sources and negotiates venue, vendor and travel quotes, keeps a living event document, and chases stakeholders for sign-off, at £250 per event in pounds. For venue-only needs, HeadBox or Hire Space. For a US-style managed venue sourcing service, Nowadays.
Is Comtev a marketplace like Naboo?
No. Comtev does not sell venue or supplier inventory and takes no commission. It sources from the open market for your event, negotiates on your behalf, and puts the quotes in front of you to decide.
Does Comtev handle the whole event or just the venue?
The whole event: venue, vendors, attendee flights and hotel blocks, the budget, the guest list, stakeholder sign-offs and the automations between them. Most alternatives stop at the venue.
Does Comtev replace our event team?
No. Comtev works for the team. It does the legwork (sourcing, negotiating, pricing travel, chasing stakeholders for decisions) and the team keeps every call. Nothing is booked or spent until a named person approves it.
See the legwork done on your next event.
Bring a real brief. We will show you the shortlist, the quotes, the travel and the Event Document, and you keep every decision. £250 per event, in pounds.