Most gyms grow by adding members. When that stops working, one lever is left. You raise what each member is worth.
Life Time did exactly that last quarter. It added 1.2% more members and grew revenue 13.7%. That gap is the whole story, and the number underneath it is one you can work out for your own business this afternoon.
What revenue per member means
Revenue per member is your total revenue for a period divided by your average number of active members over that period. It tells you what one member is worth to you, all in. Dues, class packs, personal training, retail, café, workshops, late fees. Everything.
Four rules, because this is where the maths usually goes wrong. Use a quarter, not a month. Monthly is too noisy at studio scale, and one strong January will look like a strategy. Use average members, not the count on the last day. An end-of-period count flatters you in a growing quarter and punishes you in a shrinking one. Run it twice. Once without joining fees, once with them. The gap between the two numbers tells you how much of your revenue depends on a constant flow of new people. Then plot eight quarters. The direction of that line matters far more than any single figure.
Why does revenue per member matter more than member count?
Because member count can rise while the business gets weaker. A chain can open locations, sign up more people and still earn less from each one, and the headline number hides that until something breaks. Revenue per member catches it early. It is also the one you can move without spending more on marketing, which is why operators reach for it when member growth slows. Life Time grew revenue by double digits on almost no new members because it raised this number by 11.8%.
What good looks like
Here is the spread across the American gym market. Note which figures are disclosed and which are ours, because they are not the same kind of number.
| Operator | Revenue per member, per month | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Life Time | About $331 | Disclosed. $993 per quarter, Q2 2026 |
| Mid-market boutique studio | $150 to $200 | The Run Rate estimate |
| Planet Fitness | About $22 | The Run Rate estimate, from list prices |
That is roughly a fifteenfold spread across one industry, and only Life Time reports the figure directly.
One caution, because this is where the arithmetic usually goes wrong. Planet Fitness reported $365.2 million of revenue for the quarter. Divide that by its 21.5 million members and you get $5.66 a month. That looks like an answer and it is not one. That money is what the franchisor collects in fees, not what a member pays. The estimate above uses list prices and the disclosed tier mix instead.
Where the extra money comes from
Life Time charges $245 a month in dues. Its revenue per member is about $331. So roughly $86 a month, more than a quarter of what each member generates, comes from something other than the membership itself.
That ratio is the strategy. Life Time did not get to $331 by charging $331 for a membership. It charged $245 and built a business inside the building.
When we scored the fifteen fastest-moving brands in fitness on The Run Rate Index, pricing power came out as Life Time's strongest signal of the six. This is what that looks like in the accounts.
Its results release puts in-center revenue at 28.7% of total centre revenue. On the earnings call, chief financial officer Erik Weaver named the two things driving it: personal training and spa. Not retail. Not café. Not apparel.
That narrows your menu usefully. Most operators trying to lift non-dues revenue start with merchandise, because it is easy to buy and easy to display. It is also the thing in the building with the lowest repeat rate. The categories that compound are the ones a member buys again and books in advance.
Add a tier. Do not raise the floor.
Planet Fitness sells a $15 Classic membership and a $24.99 Black Card. That is a premium of about 1.67 times the base. On its August earnings call, the company put Black Card penetration at 68% of members, up 210 basis points on the year. More than two thirds of members at the most price-sensitive gym chain in America choose to pay two thirds more.
What sits inside that tier is unglamorous. Access to every location, the right to bring a guest, recovery amenities. Translated to a studio, that is unlimited against limited classes, a guest privilege, priority booking, and recovery access. Solidcore built a second class format and an upgraded tier on the same logic this month.
The move is to add the tier rather than lift the floor. Raising your base price costs you the price-sensitive member in an economy that is visibly splitting. A tier above it lets the members who can pay more decide for themselves, and a good share of them will.
Then stop. Planet Fitness itself is the warning here. It had built a tier that two thirds of members happily paid for, and then planned to raise that tier to $29.99. In May 2026 it paused the national rollout. It cut its full-year same-club sales outlook to roughly 1% growth, and the stock fell 33% in a day.
The pause is still in force. On the August call, chief executive Colleen Keating called it “an appropriate decision to pause the nationwide rollout of the Black Card price.” What the company is doing instead is the part worth copying. It is adding to what the tier already contains, including spa treatments in 100 clubs. The ladder works. The ratchet does not.
Add the tier. Then leave the price alone and put your effort into what goes inside it.
Turn the target into a number your manager can hit
“Get non-dues revenue to 15%” is a slogan until you do the arithmetic on your own base. For non-dues revenue to be 15% of your total, it needs to equal about 17.6% of your dues revenue.
Take a studio with 200 members paying $150 a month. That works out at about $5,300 a month of non-dues revenue. At $85 a session, that is 62 personal training sessions. Which is one session per member per quarter.
That is the whole target, restated as something a general manager can actually be measured on. For reference, Life Time clears about $86 per member per month above its dues, which is roughly double the 15% starting point.
What this means for you
Run your number for the last eight quarters and look at the line. If members are rising while revenue per member falls, that is the shape that showed up at Xponential well before it cut guidance and put itself under strategic review.
Then pick one move. Add a tier at roughly 1.65 times your base, or build one bookable service members buy again. Not both this quarter.
Two exceptions. If your line is falling because people leave rather than because they spend less, start with the retention benchmarks. If you have never set your base price deliberately, start with how to price a studio.
Then change what you report in your weekly meeting. Headcount tells you what marketing did last month. Revenue per member tells you what the business is worth.
We made the longer case for this in The Take, looking at the four operators who reported inside three weeks and what each of them chose to count.