Why Do Gyms Charge an Annual Fee? When It's Billed and What It Adds

Gyms charge an annual fee because it keeps part of the year's price out of the monthly price, the number on the banner that people compare. No chain prints that as its reason, but it's what the numbers show. The fee is a flat sum, $49 to $69 at the big chains in San Antonio, billed once a year on top of your dues. On a $9.99 plan, a $59.99 annual fee is half a year's dues. It isn't a mistake on your statement: it's in the membership terms, with its own billing date.

In San Antonio, six big chains put it on every plan they sell, and it comes to 14% to 29% of a first year's cost.

What is a gym annual fee?

It's a flat charge, once a year, separate from the monthly dues and from the joining fee you pay on day one. On a gym's price page it sits on its own line, beside the other two.

Two things set it apart from the dues. It's billed on a date, not when you work out: either the same calendar day for every member, or the anniversary of the day you joined. And it's per member. LA Fitness's San Antonio pages list it as "Annual Fee Per Person", so a couple there pays $138 a year in annual fees alone.

Taxes can come on top, too. Planet Fitness's terms say its fee is $49.00 "plus applicable state and local taxes".

Why do gyms charge an annual fee?

The chains' price lines give an amount and a date. They don't say what the money is for. What the fee does to the price you compare is plain to see.

It moves part of the year into a line you don't see first. A $9.99 plan with a $59.99 annual fee costs $179.87 over twelve months in dues and fee. A $14.99 plan with no annual fee costs $179.88. Same year, give or take a cent, but one of them gets to say $9.99 on the sign.

It doesn't depend on how often you go. It's billed on its date whether you trained every day that year or twice. At a gym that bills everyone on December 1, someone who joins in October and leaves in January has paid it once.

It's the same on every tier. At all six chains below, every standard plan carries the fee, cheapest to dearest. Planet Fitness's $49 sits on both the $15 Classic and the $24.99 Black Card; Crunch's $59.99 on Base, Peak and Peak Results. A cheaper tier won't skip it.

How much is the annual fee, and when is it billed?

The six chains charge between $49 and $69, and most bill it on one fixed day late in the year:

Most of them bill late in the year, on one day for everyone. LA Fitness is the odd one out: its fee comes 14 days after you join and then every year on that date, so it's part of your first month's cost, not December's.

The Planet Fitness annual fee

Planet Fitness's is the one most people search for. At its San Antonio clubs it's $49, on both plans. Most clubs' terms say it "will be billed on or shortly after December 1st"; two say November 1st.

One October offer at the Huebner Rd club was headlined "$1 Down - No Annual Fee!", and the same offer still listed a "$49 Annual Fee", with terms that bill $49.00 on or after December 1st.

What the annual fee adds to your first year

TrueGymCost's first-year cost is twelve months of dues plus the joining fee plus the annual fee (how it's worked out). On the cheapest standard plan at each chain, that sum puts the annual fee at 14% to 29% of the first year:

The cheaper the plan, the bigger the fee's share. On the two $9.99 plans it's more than a quarter of the first year. At Gold's Gym and LA Fitness, where the dues are higher, it's about a seventh.

The cheapest first year of any San Antonio gym with a checked price is at Crunch Fitness's Thousand Oaks Drive club: $179.88, with a joining fee of one cent. A third of that is the annual fee.

That's the case for comparing first years, not monthly prices. Fitness Connection's $14.99 plan looks a cent cheaper than Planet Fitness's $15 one. Once the joining and annual fees are in, it's $32.87 dearer for the year. What a gym membership really costs goes through every fee that does this.

Is it normal for gyms to have an annual fee?

At the big budget chains, yes. Everywhere else, much less so. Of the 153 San Antonio gyms with a checked price in TrueGymCost's data, 47 list an annual fee, and all 47 are clubs of the six chains above: 15 Planet Fitness, 14 Gold's Gym, 7 Crunch, 6 LA Fitness, 3 Fitness Connection and 2 EōS.

The other 106 don't list one on their price pages, the independent gyms, CrossFit boxes and studios among them.

A gym with no annual fee isn't automatically the cheaper one, though. A studio at $40 a month is $480 a year before anything else, more than any chain's first year in the table above. The fee is one line of the year's price, not the price.

What the annual fee costs per visit

Another way to see the fee is to spread it over the visits you'll really make. Go twice a week for a year, 104 visits, and a $59.99 fee is about 58 cents a visit. Go once a week and it's about $1.15.

The whole first year works the same way. Crunch's $219.87 is about $2.11 a visit at twice a week, and about $4.23 at once a week. A membership pays off once that number is under what a day pass costs you. Is a gym membership worth it? runs that sum for the gyms that publish both.

How to avoid a gym annual fee

1. Pick a gym that doesn't list one. In San Antonio that's 106 of the 153 gyms with a checked price. The cheap gyms list shows the annual fee beside each one.
2. Read the terms, not the banner. The Planet Fitness offer above is the example: "No Annual Fee" in the headline, "$49 Annual Fee" in the offer.
3. Know the billing date before you join. At a gym that bills everyone on one day, the first fee can arrive a few weeks after you sign up. Ask whether the first one is prorated: Crunch's SA Colonnade club says a prorated annual fee of $5.00 may be due at signup.
4. Count it in the first-year cost, and compare gyms on that total, not on the monthly price.
5. Leaving anyway? Cancel before the billing date, with whatever notice your contract asks for. How to cancel a gym membership goes through it.

What won't work at the six chains above is a cheaper tier: the fee is on every standard plan. And an annual fee is one of the lines worth reading twice in a contract, along with the cancellation terms. Gym contract red flags lists the others.