How to Price Your Fitness Studio
With Free Pricing Calculator
Studio owners are generous people. You'll stay late to fix someone's form, comp a class for a member having a rough week, and remember everyone's kids' names. That generosity is great for community and terrible for pricing.
How should a boutique fitness studio set its prices?
Your fitness studio pricing should cover your true operating expenses, pay you appropriately, include your target profit, and reflect your studio's positioning. Research competitors so you know your local market, but don't copy them. Base your final prices on what your studio needs to earn per client to run profitably.
It's worth getting right because a small price change makes a much bigger difference to your profit than you'd think. Say you have 100 members paying $150 a month. That's $15,000 coming in. Your expenses are $12,000, so you keep $3,000.
Raise your rate by $10 with nothing else changing. If your expenses stay the same, that extra $1,000 goes straight into your pocket. You now keep $4,000 a month, a 33% jump in profit from a price increase your members will barely notice. It works the other way too. Knock $10 off with a discount and a third of your profit is gone. Research backs that up in large companies, too. Raising prices 1% boosted operating profit by about 8%.
What are the most common fitness studio pricing mistakes?
The four I see most are offering too many options, copying competitors, cost-plus pricing, and pricing low to get people in the door.
1. Offering too many options
Tons of class packs and memberships with every variation and commitment term imaginable sound like they'll help more people to buy. However, choice paralysis abounds, and instead of assisting a client by giving them tons of options, it decreases conversion. In a classic jam study, shoppers who saw 6 options bought 30% of the time, compared to 3% of those who saw 24 varieties. That's a new client staring at your pricing page.
2. Copying competitor prices
You Google nearby studios and match their prices. Staying in the same ballpark makes sense, but odds are those owners threw a dart at their pricing too.
3. Using cost-plus pricing
You add up what it costs to operate and tack on a markup. It keeps the lights on, but you're leaving money on the table.
4. Using penetration pricing
Then there's the new studio in town that prices low to get people in the door. That strategy attracts cost-conscious clients, which makes raising prices later painful, and it's hard to pay the bills while you wait for volume to catch up. The math is unforgiving: in this analysis, volume would have to rise by 18.7% just to offset the profit hit of a 5% price cut.
Why do so many studio owners undercharge?
Mostly because they're uncomfortable asking for money, and if my client is a woman, she is almost always undercutting her rates. In a 2020 Randstad survey, 60% of women said they've never negotiated pay with an employer, even if they knew they were being lowballed. We're also more likely to attach morality to our prices, suffer from imposter syndrome, and accept less than we know we deserve. Your prices are a negotiation you have with yourself, and it's worth having on purpose
Here's the good news: when you know better, you do better, so now you won't be falling victim to the undervaluation traps.
How Should You Price Your Boutique Fitness Studio?
Some coaches will tell you it doesn't matter what other studios charge, and I agree with them to an extent. However, it is still important to conduct market research to determine where you stand in the market or if you're even in the right range. Look up the studios in your area with similar offerings and target clients, and log their intro offers, drop-in rates, class packs, and memberships in a spreadsheet like the one below. You're checking that you're in the right range, not trying to match or beat anyone.
Once you know the going rate, you can decide to price above it on purpose if you're positioned as a high-end experience. I'd steer clear of pricing below market unless you've deliberately chosen a long-term budget model.
How do you calculate your studio's base price?
Pricing is an art that takes both data and intuition. Your ideal price is the one that makes your customer want to sign with you over other gyms but also allows you to profit and pay yourself what you want.
We're stepping away from competitive and cost-plus pricing. Start with your foundation price, the minimum you need to charge per client to cover expenses, pay yourself, and hit your profit goal. Before you run the numbers, get clear on your target profit margin, how much you want to take home, whether you're a bargain, luxury, or middle-of-the-road studio, and how confident you are in your value proposition and sales pitch. Those answers shape where your price lands. Your calculation should include more than how much it costs to run your gym or how much your neighbor charges. We want to make money, not just cover expenses.
For a gut check on the market, Mariana Tek's pricing guidance puts unlimited monthly boutique memberships generally between $110 and $360, depending on the studio and location. That's a wide range, which is exactly why your own numbers matter more than any average. The free calculator below walks you through one of the four formulas I use with coaching clients.
It's impossible to cover all the intricacies of gym pricing in a blog post. If you’re new to coaching, I recommend booking a strategy call to customize the perfect pricing strategy that helps you reach your profitability goals. However, to get you started, I've included one of the four formulas I use to develop a studio's foundation pricing- the base cost per person needed to profit.
How many pricing options should a fitness studio show on its website?
Your fitness studio's pricing is ready to share with the world, right? Not quite. Again, remember that too much information is overwhelming. I usually recommend you give web viewers around three options to choose from with the option to contact you for more help.
You don't want the client to feel like you're hiding something- that makes them less likely to purchase and creates an unnecessary barrier to entry. Give them enough information to start, whether an intro package, a drop-in or your most popular purchase item. Then get them in the studio or on the phone to convert them into a long-term option with your well-practiced sales pitch.
Pricing and sales are the foundation of your studio's long-term financial success. I know how it feels to be frustrated month after month that your fitness business's revenue isn't checking out. Please reach out for help if your numbers aren't what you need them to be. What about those of you who are updating and changing your pricing for existing members? We’ll cover that in the next blog.
Here's to your success!
FROM ONE STUDIO OWNER TO ANOTHER: MEET NIKI, FOUNDER OF LIMITLESS
Hi, I'm Niki Riga, founder of Limitless Studio and a business coach specializing in boutique fitness studios. I've spent over a decade in the industry, and now I help you fix the stuff that's quietly costing you money: your intro offers, your pricing, your sales conversations, using actual buyer psychology instead of whatever everyone else in the industry is copying from each other.
I've got a Master's in Small Business, and I've spent years helping studio owners like you build their dream businesses. If you want that kind of strategy in your corner, join the waitlist, and I'll reach out personally when a spot opens up.
