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We conduct a laboratory experiment to test three regulations imposed on a common-pool resource game: an access fee and subsidy system, transferable quotas, and non-transferable quotas. Theory predicts that they all reduce resource use from free access to the same target level without hurting users. We find that, on average, the regulator’s target is less likely to be met with fees than with the other regulation tools. The fee system tends to select the most efficient users more consistently, but leads to more inequality. All regulations fail to make every user better off, although the two market-based instruments outperform the non-transferable quotas on this criterion.