What should your gym charge?
Three numbers — your fixed costs, the members you expect, and the margin you want — and you'll have the fee your own business actually requires.
Each member carries $60 of your fixed costs a month.
To break even
You need at least
$62per member, per month
That covers your fixed costs and payment processing, and leaves nothing. It is the floor, not a price.
For a 20% margin, charge
$77a month
At 200 members that’s $15,291 a month in, and $3,058 left after costs and processing.
| At $77 a month | Per month |
|---|---|
| Membership revenue | $15,291 |
| Your fixed costs | −$12,000 |
| Payment processing | −$233 |
| Left over | $3,058 |
You’d break even at 160 members on that fee — worth knowing, because it’s the number that matters in your first year rather than the one you’re planning for.
Start from your costs, not the competition
Most gyms price by looking sideways. They check what the gym down the road charges, land near it, and find out eighteen months later whether the maths worked.
The problem is that their rent isn’t your rent, their member count isn’t yours, and their margin might be one you’d refuse. Copying a price copies someone else’s cost base without meaning to.
So start here instead: the fee your own numbers require. Then compare it to local rates — which is a comparison worth making, because now you know what a gap actually means.
If the number this gives you is well above local rates, that is information, not a failure. It usually means the member count is optimistic or the cost base is heavier than the business plan assumed.
What we assumed
Stated plainly, because a calculator you can’t check is a calculator you can’t trust.
Margin is a share of revenue
A 20% margin means 20 cents of every dollar taken is left after costs and processing — not a 20% mark-up on cost, which is a different and smaller number. Before tax, and before whatever you pay yourself.
Payment processing is included
Direct debit at about 1% + $0.40 per transaction, capped at $4 — the rail most New Zealand gyms use, and the same rate our cost calculator uses. If your members pay by card, processing costs more and the required fee rises.
One fee for everyone
Real gyms have concessions, off-peak rates, couples and corporates. This solves for a single average, so treat the answer as the average you need to hit rather than a price list.
Every member pays every month
No allowance for failed payments, freezes or people who join on the 28th. All three make the real figure slightly worse, so leave yourself room.
Nothing about what the market will bear
This is a cost model, not a demand model. It can tell you what you need to charge. It cannot tell you whether anyone will pay it — only your area can.
Questions people ask
No, and it deliberately doesn’t try. We don’t know what gyms near you charge, and a made-up market rate would be worse than none. What this gives you is the fee your own costs require — then you compare that against local rates yourself, which is the part only you can do.
Everything that arrives whether or not anyone trains: rent, wages, power, insurance, equipment finance, software, cleaning, waste. Leave out anything that scales with members — that is what the fee is covering.
Independent gyms commonly target 15–25% before the owner’s drawings. Below 10% leaves nothing for a quiet month or a broken treadmill. What matters more than the number is that you picked it deliberately rather than discovering it at the end of the year.
Because it comes off every payment before you see it. At roughly 1% + $0.40 per direct debit, capped at $4, it is small per member and real across a year. A pricing model that ignores it flatters every result.
Then one of three things is true: your fixed costs are higher than theirs, they expect more members than you have modelled, or they are running on a thinner margin than you want. All three are worth knowing before you open rather than after.
Open with the system you won’t outgrow
Fourteen days with everything switched on, no card. Software is one of the fixed costs above — ours is on the website, and it doesn't take a cut of what your members pay.
14 days · No card · Cancel any time
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