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Gyms and health clubs

Gym membership retention rate: the honest benchmarks.

Published figures for the gym membership retention rate disagree — 51.9% kept for a year in one UK dataset, 66.4% member retention in a global survey — mostly because they measure different things. Here they are by source type, with where each comes from.

Gyms bill monthly and lose most members early. Convert before you compare.

Read every gym figure for its unit, denominator, contract, source, year

Convert monthly to annual →See the benchmarks

Reading a gym retention figurefive checks

  1. 01Unita month, a year, or per 1,000PERIOD
  2. 02Basememberships or peopleCOUNT
  3. 03Freezescounted as kept, or left outRULE
  4. 04Contracttwelve-month or rollingTERMS
  5. 05Sourceoperator, survey or studyWEIGHT

Compare onlylike with like

51.9%
UK club joiners still members at twelve months
Bedford · UK operator dataset, 2009–12 ↗
3–4%
Members lost a month, historically, at Planet Fitness
Q1 2026 earnings call · US operator ↗
66.4%
Member retention across 175 fitness companies
HFA 2025 · sector survey, 27 countries ↗
c.18 mo
Average member tenure at a UK no-contract chain
The Gym Group 2025 · UK operator ↗

01/ how to calculate gym retention

What a gym retention rate actually measures.

Retention rate = members at the end of a period who were members at its start ÷ members at the start. Joiners in the period stay out of it. The general formula and an association calculator are on membership retention rate.

A gym membership retention rate adds three choices. Memberships or people: Life Time’s 10-K counts nearly 1.6 million members in nearly 873,000 memberships, and says couples and family memberships have “higher retention”. Freezes: decide whether a frozen member is kept, and say so. Contracts: a twelve-month contract holds people who have stopped coming, so it flatters the rate until month thirteen.

The unit gyms prefer is per month, or per 1,000 members a month: Bedford’s UK study reports 55.1 cancellations per 1,000 a month and recommends survival analysis by joining cohort.

MeasureWhat it counts
Retention rateStarters still members at the end ÷ starters
Churn or attritionMembers lost in the period ÷ members at its start
Per 1,000 a monthCancellations a month for every 1,000 members
TenureMonths from joining to cancelling
Cohort survivalShare of one month’s joiners still members at month m

→ Cohort survival

Can you compare your rate with a benchmark?

  1. 01Is your rate in the same period as the benchmark — month or year?

  2. 02Do you both count the same thing — memberships or people?

  3. 03Do you know how frozen members are treated in each figure?

  4. 04Are the contract terms alike — rolling against rolling?

  5. 05Is it the same kind of figure — cohort survival against cohort survival?

Answer the 5 questions to see where you stand.

Our checklist, not a standard.

02/ average gym retention rate

Gym membership retention rate benchmarks, by source.

There is no single average gym membership retention rate. There are three kinds of figure, and they should not be blended.

Operator data is records: Bedford’s UK National Retention Report followed 342,759 members and found 51.9% still members at twelve months. Earlier UK studies he cites found 60% (2002) and 66% (2008). Listed operators publish rates of their own, in their own units.

Sector surveys are self-reported: the Health & Fitness Association’s 2025 benchmarking puts member retention at 66.4% across 175 companies, 114 of them American; its definition is in the paid report.

Studies follow joiners: Sperandei and colleagues found 63% of 5,240 members of a Rio de Janeiro gym stopped paying before month three. Clavel San Emeterio’s Spanish study summarises the literature as 30% to 60% still members after a year.

UK clubs, records of 342,759 members

  • All clubs51.9%
  • Private sector57%
  • Public sector47%
  • Aged 55 and over66%
  • Aged 16–2450%
Bedford, National Retention Report; his 2017 summary · UK operator dataset, 2009–12 — dated.
−48%−53%−42%−26%Join12 mo24 mo36 mo48 mo
  1. Join 100%
  2. 12 mo 51.9%Median stay 12.3 months
  3. 24 mo 24.4%
  4. 36 mo 14.1%
  5. 48 mo 10.4%One in ten
Bedford, National Retention Report · UK operator dataset, 342,759 member records, 100 clubs, 2009–2012 — dated, and the largest openly published.

A sector survey, an operator dataset and a study are three strengths of claim. Quote the source and the year with any gym figure.

03/ gym churn rate

Monthly churn to annual retention, compounded properly.

Gyms bill and lose members monthly; associations renew yearly. A monthly churn rate compounds: annual retention = (1 − monthly churn)¹².

Multiplying by twelve overstates the loss, because a member can only leave once. 4% a month is 61% kept over a year, not 52%. Set your rate, or pick a published one, and watch a cohort of 100 thin month by month.

What a lost member costs is on the churn cost calculator.

Your rate

Published rates

4.00%Monthly churn
61.3%Annual retention, compounded

What a cohort of 100 does

−4.0%−4.0%−4.0%−12%−11%−12%−22%−22%JoinM1M2M3M6M9M12M18M24
  1. Join 100 of 100
  2. M1 96 of 100
  3. M2 92 of 100
  4. M3 88 of 100
  5. M6 78 of 100
  6. M9 69 of 100
  7. M12 61 of 100
  8. M18 48 of 100
  9. M24 38 of 100
17.0 moMedian stay
25.0 moAverage stay

The ×12 shortcut says 48.0% lost a year; compounded it is 38.7%.

Half to three quarters last the year

61 of 100 remain at month 12. Read it against the benchmarks above, in the same unit.

Our arithmetic on your input: annual retention = (1 − monthly churn)12; monthly churn = 1 − (annual retention)1/12; median stay = ln 0.5 ÷ ln(1 − monthly churn); average stay = 1 ÷ monthly churn. It assumes the same rate every month, and real gyms lose most in the first months. Nothing you set leaves your browser.

Presets: Planet Fitness, Q1 2026 earnings call — monthly attrition “historically between 3% and 4%” (US operator); Bedford — 55.1 cancellations per 1,000 members a month (UK operator dataset, 2009–12); Health & Fitness Association 2025 — 66.4% member retention (sector survey), read here as annual. The conversions are our arithmetic. Bedford’s 5.51% compounds to 50.7% at twelve months against the 51.9% he observed.

04/ budget, mid-market and premium

Budget, mid-market and premium: what is published.

No open source compares retention across price tiers like for like. Bedford warns the labels have no agreed meaning, and found low fees with no contract were “not a formula for longer retention”. What operators publish, they publish in different units.

Budget, UK: The Gym Group runs no-contract memberships, says “relatively high rates of churn are built into our model”, and reports average tenure of about 18 months. Budget, US: Planet Fitness, 3% to 4% a month. Premium, US: Life Time gives no rate; it reports 149 visits per membership in 2025 and higher retention among couples and families.

The luxury end has its own page: luxury fitness clubs.

TierOperator or sourceWhat is published
Budget, UKThe Gym Group 2025Average tenure c.18 months; no contract
Budget, USPlanet Fitness3%–4% attrition a month
Premium, USLife Time 10-KNo rate; 149 visits per membership
Private, UKBedford57% at 12 months (2009–12)
Public, UKBedford47% at 12 months (2009–12)

Different units, years and definitions. A row is what that source publishes, not a benchmark for the tier.

Average monthly fee, UK, by sector

Leisure DB, State of the UK Fitness Industry Report 2025, reported by Health Club Management · UK market data, March 2025. Low-cost average “exceeded £25” for the first time.

05/ why gym members cancel

Why gym members leave, in the evidence.

People join expecting to come more than they do. In DellaVigna and Malmendier’s study of three US clubs, members forecast 9.5 visits a month and made 4.17; they cancelled 2.31 months after their last visit on average. Among Basic-Fit and HealthCity ex-members, Middelkamp’s sample found 19.5% never attended in 24 months.

Asked directly, Norwegian dropouts ranked priority — time, energy, other things — as the biggest barrier, in Gjestvang’s one-year study. Seasons matter: Bedford found UK quits peak in July–August and November–December, and Life Time reports more attrition in the third and fourth quarters.

Operators report money too: Xplor Resamania says 57% of UK operators commonly hear members can’t afford it as living costs rise — a vendor claim citing a survey it does not link. Ask your own leavers with an exit survey, and your current members with a member satisfaction survey.

  • Visits a month9.5Expected at joining: 9.5. What happened: 4.17.

DellaVigna and Malmendier 2006 · peer-reviewed, US, 7,752 members of three clubs over three years.

Ex-members who never attended in 24 months (Middelkamp et al. 2016, Europe, sample of 400)

New members who had dropped out of exercise at 12 months (Gjestvang et al. 2020, Norway, n = 250)

Exercised regularly at every follow-up in year one (Gjestvang et al. 2020)

Peer-reviewed studies; attendance and exercise, which come before cancellation.

06/ the first 90 days

The first 90 days decide the year.

The UK low-cost operator The Gym Group says “the highest rate of churn is in the first 45 days of membership, before a habit has formed.” In Rand’s UK study attendance fell from 7.48 visits in month one to 0.92 in month twelve; first-quarter frequency and going at the same time and place in month three predicted who was still coming in the fourth quarter.

How much is enough? Kaushal and Rhodes found new gym members needed at least four sessions a week for six weeks to form an exercise habit (Canada, n = 111). The onboarding programme itself is on member onboarding; what to ask joiners is on the new member survey.

−21%−11%−11%−11%−9.1%−12%−6.8%−7.3%−18%−16%−15%M1M2M3M4M5M6M7M8M9M10M11M12
  1. M1 100%
  2. M2 79%
  3. M3 70%
  4. M4 62%
  5. M5 55%
  6. M6 50%Half have stopped coming
  7. M7 44%
  8. M8 41%
  9. M9 38%
  10. M10 31%
  11. M11 26%
  12. M12 22%Still paying: all of them
Rand, Goyder, Norman and Womack 2020, Table 1 · peer-reviewed, UK, 1,726 new members of six venues on non-cancellable 12-month contracts. Attendance, not membership: every one was still paying.

  1. Day 45

    Peak churn ends

    The Gym Group’s highest-churn window. · The Gym Group 2024

  2. Week 6

    Habit can form

    Four sessions a week, six weeks. · Kaushal & Rhodes 2015

  3. Month 3

    63% gone in Rio

    Monthly payers who stopped paying. · Sperandei 2016

07/ fitness member retention

Levers that move gym retention, and one that didn’t.

The biggest test is Milkman’s megastudy: 54 four-week programmes for 61,293 members of a US chain. 45% raised weekly visits, by 9% to 27%; the best paid small rewards for returning after a missed workout. Only 8% left an effect after the four weeks. Weekly reminders raised attendance in an Italian gym, with some habit left afterwards.

Light touch is not a lever: in Riseth’s Norwegian trial, two calls and an email in the first eight weeks raised trainer bookings and changed neither visits nor cancellations over four years. Contracts cut both ways — UK twelve-month contracts cut the risk of quitting by about 18% (Bedford), while US monthly payers were 17% more likely to stay past a year (DellaVigna).

Lever 01

Measure visits for every member

Visits come before cancellation. The Gym Group reports members visiting 4+ times a month as a core KPI.

+150bps4+ visits a month, 2025

How many proven levers do you pull? · 0/5 answered

  1. 01Do you record a visit for every member?

  2. 02Do new members get a fixed weekly routine?

  3. 03Do you act when a member misses a week?

  4. 04Can a leaver step down before cancelling?

  5. 05Do you report retention by joining month?

Answer all 5 to see your result.

Our scoring, not a benchmark. The levers are from the studies cited in this section.

08/ UK, European and US context

UK, European and US context, labelled.

UK: Leisure DB’s 2025 report counts 11.3 million gym members, 16.6% of the population, in 7,202 gyms (trade-press reports of the report). Europe: EuropeActive and Deloitte count 75.5 million members at the end of 2025, 9.3% of the population, 12.2 million of them in the UK. Worldwide: the HFA Global Report found memberships up 6% in 2024.

Cancellation rules are changing. In the UK, new subscription rules — reminders, an easier exit and a 14-day cooling-off period — come in from January 2027, the Prime Minister’s Office says. In the US, Planet Fitness expects attrition in the top half of its range partly because members can now cancel online.

Share of the population with a gym membership

Europe 2025, total population (EuropeActive/Deloitte); UK March 2025 (Leisure DB via WellNation); US aged 6+, HFA Global Report as quoted by EuropeActive. Different bases and years.

Every gym rate on this page names its country. A US rate is not a UK norm.

09/ questions

Gym retention, asked and answered.

It depends on the source. The largest openly published UK dataset, Bedford’s National Retention Report, found 51.9% of joiners still members at twelve months (2009–12 data). The Health & Fitness Association’s 2025 survey of 175 companies reports member retention of 66.4%. Studies that follow joiners find lower figures where members pay monthly. Quote the source, year and definition with any figure.

One that beats your own last cohort, measured the same way. As outside markers: above Bedford’s 51.9% at twelve months for a UK club, which he called the figure to beat; and for a monthly-billing gym, monthly churn below the 3% to 4% that Planet Fitness reports as its historical range.

Take the members you had at the start of a period, count how many of them are still members at the end, and divide. Leave joiners out. For gyms, track it by joining month (cohort survival), and state whether you count memberships or people and how you treat frozen members.

Published figures sit around 3% to 6% a month. Planet Fitness gives 3% to 4% as its historical range (US); Bedford’s UK study found 55.1 cancellations per 1,000 members a month, about 5.5%. Both are operator figures in different years and countries.

Annual retention = (1 − monthly churn) to the power of 12. At 4% a month that is 0.96¹² = 61.3% kept over a year. Do not multiply by twelve: that says 48% lost, when the compounded loss is 38.7%. The converter above does it both ways.

Mostly because they stop going first. Members overestimate how often they will attend — 9.5 visits a month forecast against 4.17 made, in a US study — and dropouts in a Norwegian study named lack of priority (time, energy) as the main barrier. Cost matters too; ask your own leavers.

Early. The Gym Group says churn is highest in the first 45 days. In a Brazilian gym, 63% of new members stopped paying before month three. Through the year, Bedford found UK cancellations peak in July–August and November–December.

They hold members, not necessarily keep them. Bedford found UK twelve-month contracts cut the risk of quitting by about 18%, with the gap gone by around month 18. A US study found monthly payers 17% more likely to stay beyond a year than annual ones. A contract also delays the cancellation of members who stopped coming.

There is no standard rule. Choose one — kept, lost or excluded — and apply it every month, and never compare your rate with a benchmark whose freeze rule you do not know. Reporting frozen members as their own line is the clearest option.

Gyms lose members much faster. Associations renew yearly, and Marketing General’s 2026 US survey puts median renewal at 82%; a UK gym keeps about half its joiners for a year. Benchmark each against its own kind. The association figures are on membership retention rate.

15 minutes · video or phone

Book 15 minutes on your gym’s retention.

Bring your rate and how you count it. We’ll read it against the right benchmark and find the first lever.

  1. 0115 minutes, video or phone
  2. 02Your rate, read in the right unit
  3. 03The benchmark that fits
  4. 04One lever to test first
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A gym membership retention rate you can compare honestly.

The right unit, the right benchmark, and the first 90 days measured by cohort.

Book a call →Convert your rate first

10/ related

Keep exploring

/membership-retention-rate

Membership retention rate

The formula, association benchmarks and calculator.

/member-onboarding

Member onboarding

The first 90 days, as a programme.

/health-club-marketing-agency

Health club marketing agency

Acquisition and retention for gyms and clubs.

/industries/luxury-fitness-clubs

Luxury fitness clubs

The premium end of the market.

/member-exit-survey

Member exit survey

Ask leavers why, in their words.

/tools/membership-churn-cost-calculator

Churn cost calculator

What the members you lose cost.

11/ sources

Every claim, and where it came from

Every source was read on 8 October 2026. Country, date and source type are labelled; US, dated and vendor sources say so.

  1. Dr Paul Bedford, Health Club Management — Attention retention — The National Retention Report, September 2013UK operator dataset, 342,759 records, 2009–12 — dated
  2. Dr Paul Bedford, Retention Guru — Retention in black and white, October 2017UK operator dataset summary; practitioner
  3. Health & Fitness Association — 2025 Fitness Industry Benchmarking Report — 66.4% member retentionSector-body survey, 27 countries, US-weighted
  4. Health & Fitness Association — 2025 HFA Global Report — memberships up 6% in 2024Sector body, global
  5. Planet Fitness (Motley Fool transcript) — Q1 2026 earnings call — monthly attrition 3%–4%, Q1 3.8%Operator disclosure, US
  6. The Gym Group plc — Annual Report and Accounts 2024 — highest churn in the first 45 days; off-peak 10.5%Operator disclosure, UK
  7. The Gym Group plc — Annual Report and Accounts 2025 — average tenure c.18 monthsOperator disclosure, UK
  8. Life Time Group Holdings — Form 10-K, year to 31 December 2025 — members, memberships, attrition by quarterOperator disclosure, US
  9. Health Club Management — UK fitness industry metrics at an all-time high says Leisure DB, June 2025Trade press reporting Leisure DB, UK
  10. WellNation — State of industry report: UK fitness “period of strong growth”, June 2025Trade press reporting Leisure DB, UK
  11. EuropeActive with Deloitte — European Health & Fitness Market Report 2026 — key findings, April 2026Sector body, Europe
  12. Rand, Goyder, Norman and Womack, Psychology of Sport and Exercise — Why do new members stop attending health and fitness venues? (2020)Peer-reviewed, UK
  13. DellaVigna and Malmendier, American Economic Review — Paying not to go to the gym (2006)Peer-reviewed, US
  14. Sperandei, Vieira and Reis, Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport — Adherence to physical activity in an unsupervised setting (2016)Peer-reviewed, Brazil
  15. Clavel San Emeterio et al., European Journal of Sport Science — Prediction of abandonment in Spanish fitness centres (2019)Peer-reviewed, Spain
  16. Gjestvang, Abrahamsen, Stensrud and Haakstad, Scand. J. Med. Sci. Sports — Motives and barriers to exercise adherence in a fitness club setting (2020)Peer-reviewed, Norway
  17. Middelkamp, van Rooijen and Steenbergen, Perceptual and Motor Skills — Attendance behavior of ex-members in fitness clubs (2016)Peer-reviewed, Europe
  18. Kaushal and Rhodes, Journal of Behavioral Medicine — Exercise habit formation in new gym members (2015)Peer-reviewed, Canada
  19. Milkman et al., Nature — Megastudies improve the impact of applied behavioural science (2021)Peer-reviewed field experiment, US
  20. Calzolari and Nardotto, Management Science — Effective reminders (2017)Peer-reviewed field experiment, Italy
  21. Riseth, Nilsen, Mittet and Steinsbekk, Preventive Medicine Reports — The effect of initial support on fitness center use (2021)Peer-reviewed randomised trial, Norway
  22. Xplor Resamania — The importance of member retention for gyms, February 2026Vendor article citing unlinked operator reports — vendor claim
  23. Marketing General Inc. (Tony Rossell) — Just released: the 2026 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report — 82% median renewalIndustry survey, US (associations)
  24. Prime Minister’s Office — Ending rip-off discounts and subscription traps, 9 August 2026Government announcement, UK