The first known tickets were used in the Greek period, they were using tickets for events, like theaters. A ticket is a voucher to indicate that one has paid for admission to a theatre, movie theater, amusement park, zoo, museum, concert, or other attraction, or permission to travel on an airplane, public transit, boat trip, etc., typically because one has paid the fare.

A ticket may be bought at a ticket window or counter, also called box office (this term is also used for the total receipts). The ticket check may be there, or it may be separate.

Where applicable, a ticket may be for an arbitrary seat ("free seating") or for a specific one. Sometimes, e.g. for some train journeys, one can either just buy a ticket, or also a seat reservation.

Paper is generally used, although plastic may be used instead for durability. Some have a barcode or magnetic stripe for keeping simple data stored on them, higher end ones use chips to store more data and prevent counterfeiting.

Counterfeit tickets are a problem at high-priced concerts and other events, so holograms are used on tickets for the Olympic Games, Super Bowl, World Cups and other high-profile events.

No tickets are needed in the case of voluntary contributions, e.g. after a street performance; in fact, a ticket system is often neither practical nor legal in such a case.

Free tickets are applied in virtual queueing. In a place where one has to wait one's turn, there may be the system that one takes a ticket with a number from a machine. It applies at the doctor/hospital, and at offices where many people visit, like the town hall, social security office, labor exchange, or post office.

Sometimes the pass replaces the tickets, sometimes it entitles the holder to free tickets. In the latter case typically at the ticket check both the pass and the ticket has to be shown.

Alternatively, there is the discount pass, for services such as those above: for a fee per unit time (or as a benefit on other grounds) one gets a discount on each purchase. Alternatively, a multi-use ticket (either valid a limited time, or indefinitely) may provide a discount. For example, a pass for entering a cinema 6 times within a year may cost the price of 4 or 5 tickets. A multi-use ticket may or may not be personal. If not, there may be a limitation to the number of people who can use the same multi-use ticket at the same time.

A ticket may be a pick-up ticket, for example when retrieving clothing from a dry cleaning shop or an automobile from a repair shop, or putting things in storage at a train station, cloakroom, etc. It is also used in places where people are required to "take a number" to queue up, such as in a waiting room or at a customer service desk. Often, this simply has a number printed on it.

A ticket often refers to a single election choice which fills more than one political office or seat. A ticket can also refer to a political party. In this case, the candidates for a given party are said to be running on the party's ticket. "Straight party voting" (most common in some U.S. states) is voting for the entire party ticket, including every office for which the party has a candidate running. Particularly in the era of mechanical voting machines, it was possible to accomplish this in many juridisctions by the use of a "party lever" which automatically cast a vote for each member of the party by the activiation of a single lever.

In IT Security, a ticket is a number generated by a network server for a client, which can be delivered to itself, or a different server as a means of authentication or proof of authorization, and cannot easily be forged. This usage of the word originated with MIT's Kerberos (protocol) in the 1980s. Tickets may either be transparent, meaning they can be recognized without contacting the server that generated them; or opaque, meaning the original server must be contacted to verify that it issued the ticket. Some magic cookies provide the same functionality as a ticket.