How Much Do Gym Owners Make? Gym Profit Margins 2026

Search "how much do gym owners make" and several of the top results lead with the same salary-site figure, about $86,000 a year, quoted secondhand from ZipRecruiter. It is a strange number to lean on. Gym owners do not draw a salary from a job posting. They take home whatever is left after rent, payroll, equipment, and the card processor get paid.

This article uses sources that measure that. Franchise disclosure documents, which franchisors must file by law, show revenue per location. The Health & Fitness Association's benchmarking reports show margins across thousands of facilities. Two-Brain Business's 2025 report, built on software data from about 7,000 gyms, shows real monthly owner take-home. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows how many recreation businesses are still open after five years.

The short answer: a typical independent group-training gym, with a median of 129 clients, pays its owner roughly $34,000 to $78,000 a year. Above-average owners clear $78,000 and up. Boutique studios and small boxes performing at their segment's median generate six figures of operating profit before debt service. The gap between the bottom and the top is mostly retention, pricing, and payroll discipline. The long answer follows.

The Salary-Site Number and Why It Misleads

Salary aggregators model "gym owner" as a job title. Salary.com lists $76,306 a year as of October 2026 with a 25th to 75th percentile range of $69,692 to $81,339, a spread far too narrow to describe business owners. Indeed's page for the title resolves to a generic "owner" role at $100,681, drawn from 471 job postings. Both describe employed managers, not profit.

The closest government proxy is the BLS occupation "Entertainment and Recreation Managers," which reported a median wage of $73,460 in May 2023. That is a salaried manager running a facility for someone else. It is a useful floor for what an owner-operator should expect to pay themselves, and nothing more.

The real question is what the business earns. Start there.

What a Gym Location Actually Brings In

Franchise Disclosure Documents are the most reliable public data on gym revenue because the Federal Trade Commission requires franchisors to disclose it, and because they cover hundreds of locations at once. Three segments, three very different businesses:

Segment	Brand (source)	Average revenue per location	Per member per month
Boutique HIIT studio	Orangetheory, 2026 FDD Item 19 (1,189 studios)	$802,145 total sales (median $750,643)	about $151 in total sales, at 444 average members
24-hour small box	Anytime Fitness, 2026 FDD Item 19 (1,683 centers)	$446,814 total revenue (median $398,982)	not disclosed cleanly; membership dues are about 76% of revenue
High-volume low-price	Planet Fitness, FY2025 10-K	about $2.0 million AUV	$19.51 average monthly dues

Sources: Orangetheory Fitness Franchise Disclosure Document, Item 19 (2026 issue, twelve months ended February 2026); Anytime Fitness Franchise Disclosure Document, Item 19 (2026 issue); Planet Fitness Form 10-K for fiscal 2025. The Orangetheory per-member figure is our division of disclosed sales by disclosed member count.

Two things stand out. First, a boutique studio collects nearly eight times per member what Planet Fitness collects in dues, which is why a 444-member studio can out-earn a club with thousands of members. Second, averages hide a wide spread. Orangetheory's top-quartile studios averaged $1,205,826 while the bottom quartile averaged $475,979, in the same brand with the same playbook. Anytime's top quartile averaged $746,996 against a median of $398,982.

The spread also includes closures. Orangetheory's 2026 FDD excludes 95 studios that closed during the year. Anytime's excludes 66. Franchise averages are averages of survivors.

Independent gyms do not file FDDs, so the best owner-reported data comes from Two-Brain Business, whose 2025 State of the Industry report draws on software data from about 7,000 mostly group-training microgyms. The median microgym has 129 clients, and the median big-group gym brings in $18,750 a month, or about $225,000 a year. That is the typical independent CrossFit-style or group-training gym: about half of an Anytime's revenue on a fraction of the members.

Gym Profit Margins: What the Industry Reports

Revenue is not income. The Health & Fitness Association's 2025 Fitness Industry Benchmarking Report, built from 175 companies operating more than 17,000 facilities, puts the median EBITDA margin at 23.6%, with two-thirds of clubs reporting positive EBITDA. For U.S. respondents the median was 21.3%. The top half of clubs ran a 32% median margin. The bottom half ran 13%.

The 2026 edition, covering 2025 results, put the median at 22.1% with median revenue up 10.7% and net membership up 6.9%.

Public filings agree. Planet Fitness reports a four-wall adjusted EBITDA margin of about 42.7% at its corporate clubs, or 35.3% after the 7% franchise royalty. Anytime Fitness's eleven company-owned centers, with expenses adjusted to franchisee terms, ran a 28.67% EBITDA margin after paying a $46,563 manager salary, per its 2026 FDD.

So the honest range for a gym profit margin is roughly 13% to 32% of revenue depending on which half of the industry you are in, with the HFA sample skewed toward larger operators. The "10 to 30%" range that circulates online is close to what the data shows.

What That Means for Owner Income

Put the two together and you get a realistic model of what a location produces for its owner:

Gym profile	Annual revenue	Margin	Illustrative EBITDA
Median microgym, 129 clients, bottom-half margin	$225,000	13%	about $29,000
Median microgym, top-half margin	$225,000	32%	about $72,000
Boutique studio at the Orangetheory median	$750,000	21%	about $158,000
Small box at the Anytime median	$399,000	28.7%	about $115,000

These are illustrations built from the sourced figures above, not survey results. EBITDA is not take-home pay: loan payments on the build-out, equipment replacement, and income tax all come out of it before the owner is paid, and a franchisee also owes royalties. The illustrations also assume the owner is not drawing a manager's salary. If you coach classes or work the desk, add the wage you are not paying someone else.

The owner data lands in a similar place. Two-Brain's 2025 report classifies monthly owner benefit for big-group gyms as $2,799 or less (below average), $2,800 to $6,499 (average), and $6,500 or more (above average). The average owner take-home in its earlier dataset of 13,444 owners was $3,967 a month, including personal expenses run through the business. That is roughly $48,000 a year for the typical microgym owner, with the above-average tier at $78,000 and up. Small-group and one-on-one studios set their "above average" thresholds higher, at $7,000 and $8,500 a month.

The headline number, then: a typical independent gym owner makes $34,000 to $78,000 a year, and the owners of well-run boutique studios or small boxes at the median of their segment can clear six figures of operating profit before debt service.

Where the Money Goes

The difference between a 13% gym and a 32% gym is almost never revenue alone. It is cost discipline on two lines.

Payroll is the biggest expense. The HFA 2025 report puts payroll at a median of 38.4% of revenue, and the 2026 edition at 36.4%. In that 2026 edition, the most profitable half of clubs ran payroll at 32.4%. Four points of payroll on a $400,000 gym is $16,000 a year of operating profit.

Rent is the second. By our calculation from Planet Fitness's corporate-club disclosures, rent runs about 23% of revenue in the bottom third of clubs and 16% in the top third, because the lease is fixed while revenue grows. Gym real estate adviser Stu Brauer's rule of thumb, quoted by Kilo, is to keep rent under 25% of revenue. A gym paying 30% of revenue in rent has little room left once payroll and everything else is paid.

Payment processing is the quiet third. Nearly every dollar a gym earns comes through a card. At 2.9% plus 30 cents, a common published rate, a $400,000 gym pays $11,600 a year in percentage fees alone, plus 30 cents on every transaction, before any monthly software or terminal fees. It is worth reading the processing-rate breakdown once a year.

Software, marketing, insurance, and equipment fill in the rest. Software is the easiest line to shrink: GymPoint is free for unlimited members, with billing, scheduling, the member portal, and POS included on the free plan.

Are Gyms Profitable? The Failure-Rate Myth

You will see the claim that 81% of gyms fail in their first year. No one who repeats it cites a source. Gymdesk traced it to an unsourced remark in a 2018 webinar about boutique studios, and it has been copied ever since.

The federal data says the opposite. The BLS Business Employment Dynamics survival tables for Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation, the sector that includes fitness centers, show that of establishments opened in the year ended March 2020, 81.3% were still open after one year, 70.3% after three, and 57.0% after five. The comparable figures for all private businesses are 80.9%, 63.6%, and 51.3%. BLS does not break out fitness centers on their own, but the recreation sector survives at or above the all-industry rate at every horizon, and about four in ten recreation establishments opened in 2015 were still open ten years later.

Demand is not the problem either. HFA counted a record 81 million U.S. gym members in 2025, 26.1% of the population aged six and up. Athletech News, reporting on the same study, noted that the share of members who never used their membership fell to 4.6%.

So: are gyms profitable? Two-thirds of clubs in the HFA sample reported positive EBITDA. The ones that struggle tend to struggle on the cost lines above, not on demand.

Three Levers That Separate the Top Half

Retention. The HFA reports an average member retention rate of 66.4%, which means the typical gym replaces a third of its members every year just to stay flat. Every point of retention is revenue that did not need a marketing dollar to earn. The retention playbook is the first place to look.

Price and mix. Two-Brain's 2025 benchmark for above-average revenue per member is $187 a month at big-group gyms, up from $169 the year before. HFA reports that U.S. clubs earn 29.5% of revenue from non-dues sources. By our calculation from Anytime's 2026 FDD, its franchised centers earn about 16.5% of revenue from coaching and personal training, and its company-owned centers about 32%. Personal training, merch, and renting the floor during dead hours are the three non-dues lines most independent gyms underuse.

Payroll discipline. The gap between a 36% and a 32% payroll ratio is the gap between the median club and the top half in HFA's 2026 report. That usually means the owner coaches fewer classes and manages more, pays staff for the hours actually worked, and uses software to do the scheduling, billing, and follow-up that a part-time admin used to do. GymPoint's time tracking records clock-in and clock-out hours that feed the payroll page directly.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a gym owner make per year?

A typical independent gym owner takes home $34,000 to $78,000 a year before tax. Two-Brain's 2025 report, built on data from about 7,000 microgyms, classifies $2,800 to $6,499 a month as average owner benefit and $6,500 or more as above average. Boutique studios or small boxes performing at their segment's median can produce six figures of operating profit before debt service.

What is a good profit margin for a gym?

The Health & Fitness Association's 2025 benchmarking report puts the median EBITDA margin at 23.6% globally and 21.3% for U.S. clubs. The top half of clubs ran 32% and the bottom half 13%. A margin above the U.S. median of about 21% puts an independent gym in the healthier half of the industry.

How much revenue does a gym make?

It depends on the segment. Orangetheory studios averaged $802,145 per location with 444 members in their 2026 franchise disclosure. Anytime Fitness centers averaged $446,814. Planet Fitness clubs average about $2 million. The median independent group-training gym brings in about $225,000 a year.

Is owning a gym profitable?

For about two-thirds of clubs in the HFA sample, yes. The BLS recreation sector, which includes fitness, survives at or above the all-industry rate, with 57% still open five years after launch versus 51% of all businesses. The clubs with the best margins keep rent under about 25% of revenue, run payroll near 32%, and retain more than the 66% industry average.

What percentage of gyms fail?

The widely repeated "81% fail in year one" has no cited source. BLS data for the recreation sector shows about 19% of new establishments close in year one and 43% within five years, which is slightly better than the average for all private businesses.

How Much Do Gym Owners Make? Real Numbers on Gym Profitability in 2026