The Member Retention Benchmark 2026

The full report · 3 min read

The current industry anchor is 66.4% annual member retention, from the Health & Fitness Association’s 2025 benchmarking report: 175 companies, more than 17,000 facilities, 27 countries, surveyed April to June 2025. That is the number to measure yourself against.

For context, IHRSA’s last published Profiles of Success (2019, built on 2018 data) put overall retention at 69.3%, with a sharp split: independent clubs 75.8%, chains 62.3%. You will also see “71.4%” quoted on vendor blogs as an IHRSA figure. We could not trace it to a published IHRSA report, so we don’t use it.

Use the tool above to place yourself. Then the only number that matters is the one you set for next quarter.

Why this matters for operators

Retention is mostly an onboarding problem. The best long-run data we have points at the early months: in a study of 5,240 members at one gym in Rio de Janeiro, 63% of new members stopped before their third month. In the UK’s 2013 National Retention Report, covering 342,759 memberships, only 51.9% were still members after 12 months. Different countries, different decades, same shape: most of the loss happens early.

That is good news. The lever is early, structured and cheap compared with replacing members. Win-back discounts treat the symptom; a deliberate first 90 days fixes the cause.

Independent studios should hold themselves to a higher line. 75%+ is a defensible target, in line with IHRSA’s independent-club average, and it is where pricing power and referrals actually come from.

This is a living Sqwod Intelligence report. We refresh the anchor as new HFA and industry data lands (see the update log).