Quick answer: At the typical event, more than half of invited guests (55%) reply on their own, and three in four of those who reply (75%) say yes. So of 200 invitations, expect roughly 110 replies, about 82 of them a yes. Half of replies arrive within a day of a WhatsApp invitation, 61% of WhatsApp invitations are read, and 92% of guests reply on a phone. On events that send a follow-up, about 4 in 10 replies come in after the guest's reminder. Evenings are the busiest time to reply (28% between 6 and 10pm), and about half of replies arrive in the final month before the event. Every figure below carries the sample size it rests on.
When you are planning an event, two questions decide almost everything else: how many people will answer, and how many of those will say yes. Real numbers for either are surprisingly hard to find.
So here they are, measured on 25,008 real RSVPs. The method is summarized at the end.
1. More than half of invited guests reply on their own
Invited guests · 32 completed events, 6,224 inviteesInvite 200 people and, at the typical event, about 110 will answer the invitation themselves. Counting the answers hosts recorded after a call or a text as well, nearly two in three invited guests answered.
The spread is worth knowing as well as the middle: half of events landed between 44% and 74%. The rest of this page is about what sits behind that range: how fast guests answer, how many replies come in after a follow-up, and when in the day and in the run-up to the event they arrive.
2. Three in four replies are a yes
Invited guests · 3,458 who replied, 45 eventsAmong invited guests who answered, 75% accepted, 25% declined and under 1% said maybe. The tiny "maybe" share suggests that when guests are given a clear choice, they take it rather than defer.
Read this together with the previous figure, because the two are easy to confuse. Of 200 invitations, roughly 110 people reply on their own; of those, about 82 accept and 27 decline. A clear no is useful too: it frees a seat and closes the question, where silence leaves it open.
What invited guests answered
3,458 invited guests who replied, across 45 events
| Response | Share of replies |
|---|---|
| Yes | 75% |
| No | 25% |
| Maybe | under 1% |
| All replies (3,458 guests, 45 events) | 100% |
3. Nearly half of replies arrive within a day of the invitation
Invited guests · 3,279 replies timed from the invitationAbout 1 in 4 replies arrive within the hour: 27% overall and 29% on WhatsApp, where a quarter of replies came within 38 minutes of the invitation. The median WhatsApp reply arrives about 24 hours after the invitation is sent.
The other half takes days or weeks rather than minutes. A guest who is still silent after a couple of days is often not saying no; the invitation may simply have slipped down their chats. That slower half is where follow-ups come in.
| Invitation channel | Median reply | Within 1 hour | Within 24 hours | n |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23.9 hours | 28.6% | 50.0% | 2,725 | |
| SMS | 47.2 hours | 20.2% | 43.3% | 351 |
| 2.5 days | 12.5% | 40.2% | 184 | |
| All invitations (incl. 19 links hosts sent themselves) | 27.0 hours | 26.8% | 48.8% | 3,279 |
4. On events that follow up, about 4 in 10 replies come in after the reminder
Invited guests · 26 completed events that sent a follow-upOn events that sent a follow-up, about 4 in 10 replies (38%) came in after that guest's own reminder. On events that never followed up, only 8% of replies arrived that late: more than 11 days after the invitation, when the typical event sends its first follow-up.
Put that next to reply speed: nearly half of replies come within the first day, and on events that follow up, a large share of the rest arrive after the guest has been asked a second time.
| Completed events | Replies | Came in after the follow-up point |
|---|---|---|
| Sent a follow-up | 2,566 | 37.5% |
| Never followed up | 812 | 8.3% |
One or two reminders is plenty
Following up does not mean following up often. Of the replies that came in after a reminder, 98% arrived after the first or the second. Fewer than 2% came after a third or later. Most hosts stop there anyway: at the typical event that followed up, no guest received more than two follow-ups.
5. 61% of WhatsApp invitations are read
Invitation messages · 5,822 WhatsApp invitationsA read receipt is the closest thing to proof that an invitation reached a person rather than an inbox. It also tells a host who has seen the invitation and who has not: QuikRSVP shows each guest's message status, so the guests who have not opened it yet are easy to find, and they are the ones a follow-up is for.
6. More than nine in ten guests RSVP on a phone
All guest replies · 24,666 measured form repliesOnly 7.6% came from a wider tablet or desktop screen. This is the least surprising figure on the page and probably the most consequential: an RSVP form that is awkward on a narrow screen is not a minor inconvenience for a minority, it is the default experience.
It also has to survive being opened inside a messaging app's built-in browser rather than a full one, which is where a large share of invitation links are actually opened.
7. Each acceptance brings almost two people
All guest replies · 21,941 accepted repliesThat is almost two people per accepted reply. Counting every reply, declines included, it works out to about 1.7 people per reply. In practice, 25 accepted replies is about 45 to 50 guests.
The figure sitting just under two reflects how invitations are issued in practice: mostly to couples and pairs rather than to individuals. On forms that ask about adults and children separately, 20% of accepted replies include at least one child.
8. Evenings are the busiest time to reply
All guest replies · 24,666 form repliesFour evening hours carry more than a quarter of the day's replies. Before that, replies hold a long, steady plateau of about 6% an hour through the working day; the quietest stretch is 1am to 5am, about 1% combined.
When RSVPs arrive, by the guest's own local hour
24,666 guest form replies. A long daytime plateau, then the evening window.
View as table
| Local hour | Replies | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 12am | 339 | 1.4% |
| 1am | 119 | 0.5% |
| 2am | 67 | 0.3% |
| 3am | 40 | 0.2% |
| 4am | 67 | 0.3% |
| 5am | 110 | 0.4% |
| 6am | 262 | 1.1% |
| 7am | 618 | 2.5% |
| 8am | 1,013 | 4.1% |
| 9am | 1,369 | 5.5% |
| 10am | 1,424 | 5.8% |
| 11am | 1,566 | 6.3% |
| 12pm | 1,536 | 6.2% |
| 1pm | 1,468 | 5.9% |
| 2pm | 1,472 | 6.0% |
| 3pm | 1,456 | 5.9% |
| 4pm | 1,391 | 5.6% |
| 5pm | 1,572 | 6.4% |
| 6pm | 1,674 | 6.8% |
| 7pm | 1,783 | 7.2% |
| 8pm | 1,816 | 7.4% |
| 9pm | 1,604 | 6.5% |
| 10pm | 1,213 | 4.9% |
| 11pm | 687 | 2.8% |
| All hours | 24,666 | 100.0% |
Because this is computed in each guest's own local timezone rather than a single server clock, the pattern holds regardless of how the guest list is spread geographically. An invitation or a follow-up sent in the late afternoon is waiting on the guest's phone when the evening window opens.
9. About half of replies arrive in the final month before the event
All guest replies · 19,775 replies on completed eventsThe other half arrive earlier, and only 2.5% come in on the day itself. When replies arrive closely follows when invitations go out: on events whose RSVP form was set up less than a month ahead, the median reply came 9 days before the date; on forms set up more than four months ahead, 81 days before. Open RSVPs early and the answers come early.
| RSVP arrived | Replies | Share |
|---|---|---|
| More than a month before | 9,576 | 48% |
| 2 to 4 weeks before | 4,645 | 24% |
| 1 to 2 weeks before | 2,583 | 13% |
| 4 to 7 days before | 1,477 | 7% |
| 1 to 3 days before | 997 | 5% |
| On the day or later | 497 | 3% |
| All replies | 19,775 | 100% |
How we measured this
Response rates, answers and reply speed come from events that sent their invitations through QuikRSVP, so the real invite list is the denominator. The headline rate is the median of the 32 completed events with at least 25 invitees (6,224 invited guests). Everything else comes from all 25,008 guest RSVPs across 1,000+ events, November 2025 to October 2026, however the guest got their link.
- Guest replies only. Rows a host typed in or recorded for a guest are left out of every figure except the "nearly two in three" that also counts answers hosts recorded. Test forms are excluded.
- No single event decides a figure. No single event can move a published figure by 2 or more points: figures where one event could are reported with each event's weight capped at 5% (the yes/no split and the never-followed-up comparison) or as the typical event (people per accepted reply). Host self-test replies are excluded.
- Per person, after the invitation. Each invited guest counts once, a reply counts only if it followed that guest's own invitation, and guests invited less than 48 hours before the event are left out. Some guests reply through a forwarded link that cannot be matched back to their invitation, so the rates are conservative.
- Reply speed is timed on server clocks from each guest's first invitation message. Channel timings come from different guest pools, not a head-to-head test.
- Follow-ups show order, not cause. A reply counts as "after a follow-up" when it arrived after that guest's own first reminder, or a repeat invitation at least 6 hours later. The 8% comparison is replies on events that never followed up arriving later than the typical 11-day gap between an event's invitation and its first follow-up; hosts who follow up may differ in other ways. Reminder rounds count messages to the same guest within 6 hours as one round; the round figures cover the 963 replies that came after a follow-up on 25 completed events.
- Read rate covers WhatsApp invitation messages only; reminders are excluded.
- Children are counted only on forms that ask about adults and children separately (8,299 accepted replies on 328 forms), where hosts tend to expect children.
- Timing. Reply hour uses each guest's own time zone. Lead time uses events at least a week past and reflects when hosts send invitations as much as guest habits.
- Who is in the data. Guests in the US (23%), Israel (20%), Germany (8%), France (5%) and Mexico (5%) lead; replies are in English 56%, Hebrew 11%, Spanish 10%, French 9%, German 8% and Portuguese 4%. This is our customer base, not a representative global sample.
- Aggregate and anonymized. No individual guest, host or event is identifiable from any figure on this page.
Citing this research
These figures are free to quote and reuse with attribution. If they are useful to you, a link back is appreciated.
QuikRSVP (2026). RSVP Statistics: What 25,008 Real RSVPs Tell Us. https://quikrsvp.com/resources/rsvp-statistics
We refresh this page as the dataset grows, so figures may change between visits. The "updated" date at the top always reflects the most recent run. If you are a journalist or researcher who needs a cut we have not published, get in touch.
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