Average Gym Membership Cost Statistics (2026)

The average US gym membership cost $69 a month in 2024, the latest industry estimate from the Health & Fitness Association (HFA), as quoted in Planet Fitness's 2025 annual report. HFA publishes the figure in a members-only report, so the SEC filing is where it appears publicly.

The average was $65 in 2023 (2024 10-K) and $59 in 2022 (2023 10-K), a rise of 17% over two years by our arithmetic.

At $69 a month, a year of membership costs about $828 before any joining or annual fees.

Prices split into three tiers. High-value, low-price chains such as Planet Fitness charge $15 to $25 a month. Mid-priced chains such as LA Fitness charge $30 to $50. Premium clubs such as Life Time cost several times more.

The FTC's 2025 complaint against LA Fitness describes its memberships at $30 to $50 a month with annual fees of about $40 to $60, and says other brands owned by the same company charge up to $299 a month (FTC complaint). The company has more than 600 locations and over 3.7 million US members.

Boutique studios usually sell class packs instead of open-gym access. Xponential Fitness, which owns Club Pilates and StretchLab, sells memberships of 4, 8 or unlimited classes a month.

Planet Fitness charges new members from $15 a month for its Classic Card and $24.99 for its PF Black Card, plus a $49 annual fee (Planet Fitness 10-K). In its 2023 annual report the Classic Card started at $10.

A year on the Classic Card costs $229 including the annual fee, and on the Black Card about $349, by our arithmetic. Average monthly dues per member were $19.51 in 2025, up from $16.91 in 2019, and 66.5% of members were on the Black Card.

The chain had 20.8 million members and 2,896 clubs at the end of 2025, and about 21.5 million members and 2,962 clubs by September 30, 2026 (Q3 2026 release). About 22% of its clubs are in areas the government classes as low income.

Life Time reported average center revenue of $3,531 per center membership in 2025, up from $3,160 in 2024 and $2,810 in 2023 (Life Time 10-K). That figure includes spending inside the club, such as training and spa services, as well as dues.

Membership dues and enrollment fees brought in $2.11 billion in 2025, 72.6% of center revenue. A junior add-on costs $30 to $100 a month and most memberships put on hold cost $15 a month.

Life Time had 822,380 center memberships at the end of 2025, and revenue per membership rose 12.0% in the third quarter of 2026 (Q3 2026 release). Its members' median household income was $160,000.

The BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey puts average household spending on social, recreation and health club memberships at $283.12 in 2025 (BLS). That is an average across all 137,994,000 households, and only 18.13% reported this kind of spending in a given quarter.

Spending fell to $169.39 in 2020, when many gyms closed, and has risen every year since. The 2025 figure is 37% above 2019 by our arithmetic.

Households also spent $148.16 on fees for participant sports, $116.56 on recreational lessons and $257.62 on sports, recreation and exercise equipment in 2025.

The BLS does not break health club spending out by income or age, but it does for the wider category of fees and admissions, which also covers sports fees, lessons and event tickets alongside memberships. The highest-income fifth of households spent $2,677 on it in 2025 and the lowest fifth $211 (BLS table 1101).

By age, households headed by someone 45 to 54 spent the most, $1,530, and those under 25 the least, $465 (BLS CE by age).

Across all households, fees and admissions averaged $979 in 2025, up from $654 in 2021.

The closest official price measure is the CPI index for club memberships and participant sports fees. It fell 1.1% in the 12 months to September 2026, while all prices rose 3.7% (BLS CPI table 2).

The index is broader than gyms: it also covers shopping clubs and fraternal organizations. Its annual average rose 28.1% from 2016 to 2025, against 34.1% for all items, by our arithmetic from BLS index values.

The industry average membership rose faster, from $59 in 2022 to $69 in 2024. The two measure different things: one is a price index for a broad category of fees, the other an average membership price.

A record 81 million Americans belonged to a gym, studio or other fitness facility in 2025, up 5.2% from 2024 and 26.1% of people aged 6 and older (HFA). More than 100 million used a facility during the year, counting non-members.

That was 77 million in 2024, 25% of the population (HFA), and 72.9 million in 2023 (HFA). Membership rose 20% between 2019 and 2024.

Gen Z adults aged 18 to 24 had the highest membership rate of any age group at 35.5%, and members aged 65 and older grew 8.6% in a year. Studios were the most popular facility type in 2024, with 23.1 million members against 22.2 million at fitness-only gyms.

The average member visited 81 times in 2023, up from 78 in 2022 and 72 in 2021 but below 119 in 2019 (HFA). In 2024 members averaged about 1.5 visits a week, against 2.1 in 2019 (HFA).

At the 2024 average of $69 a month and the 2023 average of 81 visits a year, each visit costs about $10 by our arithmetic. Total visits reached nearly 7 billion in 2025, above the 2019 peak, and facilities averaged more than 184,000 visits per location (HFA).

Traffic softened in 2026. Visits per facility fell 0.5% in the second quarter against a year earlier, the first quarterly decline since early 2021, with luxury clubs down 2.3% and boutique studios up 2.5% (HFA).

HFA says only 4.6% of members did not use their membership at all in 2025, down from around 10%, although it does not say what year the earlier figure is from (HFA).

The best-known study of the question, Paying Not to Go to the Gym, followed 7,752 members of three US clubs. Members paying over $70 a month went 4.3 times a month, more than $17 a visit when a 10-visit pass cost $10 a visit, and 80% would have been better off paying per visit.

Members in the study expected to go 9.50 times a month and went 4.17 times, and on average 2.31 full months passed between their last visit and cancelling.

23% of members used a personal trainer in 2024 and 32% took part in small-group training, according to HFA. Personal-training users averaged 21 sessions a year, down from 28 in 2019 (HFA).

More than a quarter of members belong to more than one facility, and over 75% of studio users hold at least one other membership.

Life Time's figures show the scale of extra spending at premium clubs: in-center revenue was $797.3 million in 2025 on top of $2.11 billion of dues and enrollment fees (Life Time 10-K).

In August 2025 the FTC sued LA Fitness, alleging the chain made it hard to cancel and charged consumers "hundreds of millions of dollars in unwanted recurring fees" (FTC). The complaint cites tens of thousands of consumer reports and says early cancellation of personal training cost 50% of the remaining balance.

The FTC's click-to-cancel rule, finalized in October 2024, would have required cancelling to be as easy as signing up. The FTC said it was receiving nearly 70 negative-option complaints a day in 2024, up from 42 in 2021 (FTC).

The 8th Circuit vacated the rule in July 2025, in a case where the Health & Fitness Association filed in support of the challengers (8th Circuit opinion). The FTC began a new rulemaking in March 2026 (FTC).

In an HFA poll of 2,000 adults in December 2024, 32% of people prioritizing fitness named the cost of memberships or programs as a challenge, behind motivation at 40% and time at 38% (HFA).

A December 2025 HFA poll found Americans with health or fitness goals planned to spend about $61 a month, or $733 a year, on them in 2026. Only 23% said they would cut fitness spending, against 44% who would cut dining out (HFA).

Both polls were commissioned by the trade association for the gym industry, so they measure intentions as reported to an industry survey.

47.2% of US adults met federal aerobic activity guidelines in 2024, from 54.0% of those aged 18 to 34 to 38.4% of those 65 and older (CDC). 24.2% met both the aerobic and muscle-strengthening guidelines in 2020 (CDC).

HFA reports that 49.4% of members meet or exceed the aerobic guidelines, against 24.5% of people who do not use fitness facilities, and that 4.7% of members report no physical activity in a typical week against 33.1% of non-users.

On an average day in 2025, 23.4% of Americans aged 15 and older took part in sports, exercise or recreation, spending 1.47 hours on it (BLS American Time Use Survey).

Planet Fitness reported system-wide sales of $5.3 billion in 2025, up from $4.5 billion in 2023, and revenue of $1.3 billion (Planet Fitness 10-K).

Xponential Fitness had about 774,000 boutique members at the end of 2025, 3,097 studios worldwide and average sales of $695,000 per studio (Xponential 10-K).

The BLS counted 46,015 private fitness and recreational sports centers employing 679,921 people in 2025, a category that also includes recreational sports facilities (BLS QCEW).

The $69 average is an industry estimate from HFA's members-only report, quoted by Planet Fitness. Chain prices are what each company or the FTC published, and local prices vary by club and promotion.

BLS household spending figures are averages across every household, including those with no membership, so they are well below the price of a membership. The CPI index used here also covers shopping clubs and fraternal organizations (BLS).

For context on where memberships sit in the wider budget, the subscription spending statistics page covers recurring charges generally.