The Complete Gigging Toolkit for UK Bands: Everything GigXchange Gives You, FreeProfile, EPK, promo makers, a stage plot, setlists, contracts, rate data and direct booking. The whole working kit for a gigging act, in one place

Most gigging acts run their career across a dozen browser tabs. A profile on one site, a flyer in a design app, a setlist in Notes, a contract someone emailed you in 2019, a spreadsheet of venue contacts, and a vague memory of what the last function paid. I have done all of that, on the UK circuit since 2009, and it is exhausting. GigXchange puts the whole working kit in one free account. This is everything a band gets, tool by tool.

If you want the quick start instead of the tour, jump to For Artists or the Free Tools hub and start building. Otherwise, here is the full kit.

Your Profile and EPK: Get Found

Your public profile is the foundation, and it is built to be discovered. You get a media-rich page with photos, video, audio, your genres, your patch and your links, and it is server-rendered so it shows up properly in Google and looks right when someone shares it. Crucially, it is structured so AI assistants can describe your act accurately when a booker asks for "a function band in Manchester" or "an acoustic act near Brighton". That is the gap between being a name in a list and being the result that gets recommended.

On top of the profile sits a full electronic press kit: the one link you send a venue or agent that has your story, your best media, your social proof and your booking details in one place. No more attaching a 40MB PDF to an email. For the craft of making the page actually convert, read how to create a killer musician profile.

Two more tools hang off the profile. The fan mailing list lets fans join from your page in one tap, then sends them branded email updates with your flyers and posters attached. And the availability and booking manager is an embeddable widget for your own website: mark the dates you can play once, and visitors see live availability and can book you direct.

Four Promo Generators, No Designer Needed

You should not need a graphic designer to look professional. GigXchange gives you four generators, all exporting at 2× native resolution so they stay crisp on a phone and in print:

• Flyer maker for a single gig or a residency: your details, your artwork, a clean layout in minutes.
• Tour-poster maker for a run of dates, so a multi-city run reads as one tour rather than six separate posts.
• Setlist-poster maker with square and story formats and a build-from-Song-Bank flow, so the set you played becomes shareable content.
• Stage-plot maker, the newest of the four, covered next because it solves a problem every working band knows.

Take the tour-poster maker as an example. The same run of dates, four ways, each exported ready to post or print:

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The Stage Plot: The Tool Sound Engineers Wish You Had

A stage plot is a top-down map of your stage: where each player, amp, monitor and microphone goes, paired with an input list of what plugs into each channel and a few tech notes. Send it ahead and the sound engineer knows your setup before you arrive, which is the difference between a relaxed line check and a stressful 20 minutes before doors.

You build one by tapping instruments onto the stage from a 14-icon palette, dragging them into position, rotating and labelling each one, then filling in your input list and notes. When it is done you can download it as a PNG or a proper PDF rider, or share it straight to a venue or organiser in chat. New plots start with 5 example input rows so you are not staring at a blank page, and a "not drawn to scale" badge keeps expectations honest. It lives alongside the Setlist Builder in your artist tools.

The Standalone Free Tools

Three tools on the Free Tools hub work whether or not you are mid-booking, and they are genuinely free, no account wall on the basics:

1. Setlist Builder: drag songs into order, see your set length add up live, and save versions per venue. Pairs with the advice in building a setlist that gets you rebooked.
2. Booking Contract Generator: a watertight gig contract in minutes, with cancellation tiers, deposit terms and force majeure built in. What to put in one is covered in what to include in a UK gig contract.
3. Rate Calculator and the GX Index: price any gig against live UK market data instead of a guess, with the Gig Pay Survey feeding it.

The set you played turns into shareable content in a tap — the Setlist Builder exports a poster in four styles:

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Finding the Gigs: Smart Match, the Directory and Open Mics

The hard part of gigging is not playing, it is finding the rooms. GigXchange gives you three ways in. Smart Match is the guided one: tell it what you are after and it surfaces a shortlist of venues and promoters worth approaching, then you invite the ones you picked in a single step instead of sending 30 cold emails.

The Gig Directory is the open one: live gigs across the UK that you can apply to directly. And the Open Mic Finder tracks 1,100+ weekly nights, 98% of them free to play, each showing the day, signup time, slot length and PA, so you can find a stage this week. For the wider strategy, read how to get more gigs as a UK artist.

Booking, Contracts and Getting Paid Safely

When a gig is agreed, the booking, the contract and the money all run through one flow. You can generate and sign a contract, and the fee is held securely in escrow and released to you after you have performed. No chasing an invoice for six weeks, no hoping a deposit clears, no awkward "did you get my bank details" message. For work that does need paperwork, the invoice generator builds a numbered, dated invoice from the booking in seconds. Every completed booking can earn you a review, and those reviews are the reputation that wins the next booking.

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This is where the 0–5% platform fee matters: a traditional agency takes around 20% of your fee and stands between you and the venue. Here you keep the relationship and almost all of the money. For the full picture, read getting paid as a UK musician and how much gigs pay in the UK in 2026.

All of It in Your Pocket

The whole kit travels. The GigXchange Android app is live on Google Play with the same account, data and tools as the web, and the iPhone app has been submitted to the App Store and is in review. Profiles, the promo generators, Smart Match, messaging and bookings all work on mobile, so you can answer an offer from the green room and send a stage plot from the car park.

The app's Explore view also carries a Live Music Map and a Compare tool, so you can see the artists and venues across any UK city at a glance and line up a few profiles side by side. The Platform page walks through how the web and the app fit together.

What It Costs

Joining is free, every tool is free, and applying for gigs is free. There is no monthly subscription. The only money GigXchange makes from a band is the optional 5% protected-payment fee, charged only when a booking is settled through the platform (settle privately and there is no charge), against the roughly 20% a traditional agency charges. On a £400 function that is the difference between keeping £380–£400 and keeping £320, on every gig, all year.

If you are a UK act, building a profile takes a few minutes. See how booking works, then create your free profile and start with the promo generators and Smart Match.

Annual refresh commitment

This guide was published on 28 June 2026 and is refreshed every June. The artist toolkit grows as we ship new tools, so annual verification matters. We re-verify every reference, recommendation, and data point once a year. Next scheduled refresh: June 2027. If any claim is outdated before then, email support@gigxchange.app and we will update it within 24 hours.