A few minutes of read-only financials and a short questionnaire surfaces what a buyer would discount your gym or studio for — your true member churn behind the recurring dues, whether the business runs without you on the floor, the equipment refresh a buyer assumes, and your lease and competition risk. We value the NET membership base a buyer actually underwrites, not gross billings. Preview costs nothing.
Enter two numbers for an instant Gyms & Fitness Studios ballpark. No signup — the real number comes from your books.
We answer each one from your books first — so you fix the story before a diligence team writes the number.
A gym looks like recurring revenue, but it behaves like a leaky bucket: boutique studios churn 35–45% a year and low-price clubs often worse, with many quitters leaving in the first 90 days. A buyer underwrites the NET recurring base after churn, not your gross billings — so without 24 months of cohort retention and net member growth, they price the leak. Cutting churn is the single biggest lever on your value.
If members come for you and book your classes, your departure is a retention event. When you're the brand and the lead trainer, a buyer discounts for the churn your exit would cause — unless there's a general manager and a trainer bench already in place so members belong to the gym, not to you.
Cardio and strength gear wear on a roughly 5–7 year cycle, and deferred equipment refresh is a classic way EBITDA gets flattered before a sale. A buyer adds back a normalized refresh reserve (roughly 3–10% of revenue) — real money off the price — so an aging fleet that hasn't been refreshed reads as a near-term capital outlay they'll fund.
A gym is its location. A short remaining lease, weak renewal options, or a saturating trade area caps what a buyer will pay regardless of cash flow. And if you're a franchisee, the buyer inherits franchisor transfer approval, ongoing royalties, remodel obligations, and a capped territory — risk that can pull your price below an equally-profitable independent.
Each lever is sized for a typical owner-operated single site, ~$1.2m revenue, ~15% owner-normalized ebitda — about $350K EBITDA. Same number whether we frame it as “what a buyer discounts” or “what you keep by fixing it.”
A sub-3%/month (sub-30%/year) churn rate with documented cohort data is the strongest multiple driver in the trade. Better onboarding, failed-payment recovery, and early-member engagement lift the net recurring base a buyer pays a premium for.
adds about 0.4–0.8× to your multiple · usually takes 12–24 months
Push recurring auto-draft dues toward 70%+ of revenue and add PT, retail, and ancillary so the business isn't a one-product membership bet. A deep, diversified, low-churn EFT base is what a buyer can underwrite.
adds about 0.3–0.6× to your multiple · usually takes 6–18 months
Install a general manager and a trainer bench 12–24 months before selling so members belong to the gym, not to you. This moves the business off the SDE basis onto a higher EBITDA basis and removes the owner-dependence discount.
adds about 0.4–0.8× to your multiple · usually takes 12–30 months
Secure renewal options or extend your term before going to market, and be ready to speak to your trade-area competition. A short lease caps the multiple regardless of cash flow; a long one removes a real discount.
adds about 0.1–0.3× to your multiple · usually takes 1–6 months
Typical impact ranges blended from lower-middle-market transaction data, sub-$50M M&A databases, and observed consolidator pricing in the $300K–$3M EBITDA band. Directional, not a guarantee — your memo computes your actual numbers from your books.
The metrics buyers grade gyms on. The diagnostic fills the “your business” column from your actual QuickBooks data.
| Metric | Gyms & Fitness Studios benchmark | Your business | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recurring / contracted revenue | ~70% of revenue | Your data | Higher is better — the top multiple lever |
| Gross margin | ~70% | Your data | Pricing and job-costing discipline |
| EBITDA margin | ~15% | Your data | What flows to the bottom line |
| Healthy customer-concentration ceiling | top customer under 5% | Your data | Above it, buyers price the risk |
| Typical industry growth | ~5% / yr | Your data | Beating it can add to your multiple |
| Typical sale multiple | 2.8–4.5× EBITDA | Your data | Where the bidding starts; the levers above move you up |
Benchmarks are blended industry composites, service businesses $1M–$10M revenue, 2026-Q1 — directional, not a precise bar. Your memo measures you against your own books. Connect QuickBooks to fill in your numbers →
The diagnostic arrives as formats you can actually use, plus a private, scoped link to share a curated package with a specific buyer — you decide, card by card, what they see.
A branded slide deck, ready to present — for the buyer meeting, the lender, or the board.
A written diagnostic that holds up with buyers, yours to edit — plain-English summary, how we rebuilt your real earnings, every add-back listed.
Live formulas, not a dead printout — the path from raw profit to your real number, plus the cash-tied-up scenarios a buyer can stress-test.
For a $500K–$2M studio, the realistic buyer is an individual operator or a local multi-unit franchisee adding a location — not the national platforms, which rarely buy a single independent site. Those platforms set the comp narrative: franchisors like Planet Fitness, Anytime Fitness and Orangetheory (Purpose Brands, backed by Roark Capital), and Xponential Fitness (Club Pilates, CycleBar); and PE-backed operators like Crunch (Leonard Green) and F45 (Kennedy Lewis). A franchise resale carries transfer-approval, royalty and remodel obligations a buyer inherits; an independent's value rests on its net EFT base and how low its churn really is. The memo maps which pool fits a gym your size.
Read-only, through Intuit. We never write to your books. About 5 minutes.
Just what the books can’t show — agreements, key accounts, who runs the crews.
Buyer-readiness score, normalized EBITDA, value range and top flags — instantly.
The full engine, all three deliverables, the dashboard and the buyer deal room.
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Start with the free preview. Pay once — $499 — only when you want the full memo. No subscription, no per-seat pricing.
Most Gyms & Fitness Studios businesses in the $1M–$10M revenue range trade at roughly 2.8× to 4.5× normalized EBITDA, with a typical deal near 3.4×. Smaller, owner-dependent shops sit at the low end; larger, manager-run businesses with recurring revenue reach the top. Your actual number depends on your books — that's what the diagnostic computes, blending recent lower-middle-market closings, main-street marketplace sales, and academic M&A survey data.
No. EFT dues are recurring, but gym churn (35–45% a year) is far higher than software, so a buyer values the net recurring base after churn, not a clean subscription multiple. Owner-operated single sites trade around 1.8–3.2x SDE; multi-site, manager-run operators on EBITDA around 2.8–4.5x. Cut your churn and the multiple follows.
It depends on the FDD. A healthy brand (national marketing, a turnkey playbook, a built-in buyer pool) can support your multiple, but the buyer inherits royalties, remodel obligations, transfer approval, and a capped territory — which can pull it below an equally-profitable independent. Have your FDD and royalty terms ready.
Yes, if you haven't built a bench. When members come for you, your exit is a churn event. The fix that raises your value is to put a GM and trusted trainers in place 12–24 months before selling so the business — not you — owns the members. The diagnostic scores where you sit and shows what moving up would be worth.
Sixty seconds. Four numbers. No signup, no email. Just a real answer.