diff --git a/esphome/components/prometheus/prometheus_handler.cpp b/esphome/components/prometheus/prometheus_handler.cpp
index c6f5751420e..9ab689ba061 100644
--- a/esphome/components/prometheus/prometheus_handler.cpp
+++ b/esphome/components/prometheus/prometheus_handler.cpp
@@ -618,8 +618,9 @@ void PrometheusHandler::event_row_(AsyncResponseStream *stream, event::Event *ob
     stream->print(ESPHOME_F("\",name=\""));
     stream->print(relabel_name_(obj).c_str());
     stream->print(ESPHOME_F("\",last_event_type=\""));
-    // get_last_event_type() returns StringRef pointing to null-terminated string literals from codegen
-    stream->print(obj->get_last_event_type().c_str());
+    // get_last_event_type() returns StringRef
+    auto event_type = obj->get_last_event_type();
+    stream->print(event_type.c_str(), event_type.size());
     stream->print(ESPHOME_F("\"} "));
     stream->print(ESPHOME_F("1.0"));
     stream->print(ESPHOME_F("\n"));
diff --git a/esphome/components/web_server/web_server.cpp b/esphome/components/web_server/web_server.cpp
index 4c218479e06..e4baebe3cba 100644
--- a/esphome/components/web_server/web_server.cpp
+++ b/esphome/components/web_server/web_server.cpp
@@ -1966,7 +1966,7 @@ void WebServer::handle_event_request(AsyncWebServerRequest *request, const UrlMa
 }
 
 static std::string get_event_type(event::Event *event) {
-  return event ? std::string(event->get_last_event_type()) : "";
+  return event ? std::string(event->get_last_event_type()) : std::string();
 }
 
 std::string WebServer::event_state_json_generator(WebServer *web_server, void *source) {