A Category Splitting in Two
Fitness franchising in 2026 is not one market — it's two, moving in opposite directions. 6 of our 14 brands are growing. 7 are shrinking. And the dividing line isn't size, brand recognition, or investment cost — it's whether the brand figured out what post-COVID fitness consumers actually want.
Club Pilates is adding locations at 17.5% per year — a growth rate that would be impressive in tech, let alone in a category where you're signing 5-year real estate leases. Meanwhile, F45 Training is losing studios at -5.1%, and Snap Fitness at -5.3%. Same industry, same customer base, radically different trajectories.
The 12 brands that disclose Item 19 financial data show a median revenue of $981K/year. But that average hides a 7.5x spread: Planet Fitness at $1.89M versus Snap Fitness at $250K. Picking the right brand in fitness isn't a marginal decision — it's the difference between a thriving business and a lease you're trying to escape.
The Numbers: 14 Fitness Brands Ranked
| Brand | Investment | Royalty | Revenue | Units | Growth | Health |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Club Pilates | $385K–839K | 8% | $984K | 1,029 | +17.5% | 94 |
| Crunch Fitness | $928K–3743K | 5% | $2506K | 423 | +13.0% | 89 |
| Planet Fitness | $1525K–5222K | 7% | $1886K | 2,568 | +4.4% | 89 |
| Rumble Boxing | $510K–1141K | 7% | $493K | 85 | +12.9% | 79 |
| Row House | $277K–500K | 7% | — | 54 | +94.4% | 76 |
| Gold's Gym | $1794K–4537K | 5% | $1963K | 211 | +0.5% | 74 |
| Massage Envy | $719K–1081K | 6% | $1138K | 1,009 | -4.2% | 69 |
| Orangetheory Fitness | $822K–1377K | 8% | $857K | 1,298 | -2.2% | 59 |
| Anytime Fitness | $459K–908K | $820/mo | $443K | 2,301 | -0.3% | 57 |
| CycleBar | $411K–1110K | 7% | $424K | 189 | -14.3% | 54 |
| F45 Training | $349K–786K | 7% | $454K | 753 | -5.0% | 44 |
| Snap Fitness | $431K–1118K | $700/mo | $250K | 493 | -5.3% | 39 |
| Pure Barre | $314K–629K | 7% | $369K | — | — | 30 |
| 9Round | $149K–416K | 6% | — | 200 | -39.5% | 24 |
The Revenue-to-Investment Ratio
Fitness has a wider investment range than almost any franchise category — from $314K for a Pure Barre studio to $5.2M for a Planet Fitness build-out. The question is whether the revenue justifies the capital. Here's how each brand's minimum investment compares to its average revenue:
Club Pilates stands out at 0.4x — a $385K minimum investment against $984K in average revenue. That's not quite QSR-level capital efficiency (Domino's runs 0.1x), but for a fitness brand it's exceptional. Planet Fitness hits 0.8x, which looks reasonable until you remember the realistic build-out is $2.5M–$4M, not the $1.5M minimum — pushing the practical ratio closer to 1.5x.
The danger zone: Snap Fitness at 1.7x and Anytime Fitness at 1.0x. When your minimum investment exceeds one year's average revenue, you're looking at a 3-5 year payback period before accounting for operating costs, debt service, and royalties. And that's at average performance — half the system is below average by definition.
Boutique vs. Big-Box: Two Different Businesses
The fitness franchise data reveals a structural divide that matters more than any individual brand comparison. Boutique concepts (Club Pilates, Pure Barre, F45, Orangetheory) and big-box gyms (Planet Fitness, Anytime Fitness, Snap Fitness) are fundamentally different businesses that happen to share a category label.
Boutique studios run 1,200–3,000 sq ft, charge $150–$250/month, and need 200–400 active members to break even. The model is high-touch, instructor-dependent, and class-based. Your biggest cost is labor (instructors), and your biggest risk is that one bad instructor drives away a third of your client base.
Big-box gyms run 10,000–30,000 sq ft (Planet Fitness averages 20,000), charge $10–$25/month, and need 3,000–6,000 members. The model is low-touch and equipment-dependent. Your biggest cost is rent, and your biggest risk is that a competitor opens across the street and splits the membership pool. Planet Fitness's $1.5M–$5.2M investment range reflects this reality — you're not buying a franchise, you're buying a commercial real estate project with a gym brand attached.
The FDD data says boutique is winning the growth game: Club Pilates at +17.5% dominates the entire fitness category. But Planet Fitness wins on absolute revenue — $1.89M average versus $984K for Club Pilates. If you have $500K, you're choosing boutique by default. If you have $3M, the question gets more interesting.
The Flat-Fee Royalty Question
Two brands in our fitness database use flat-fee royalties instead of percentages: Anytime Fitness at $820/month and Snap Fitness at $700/month. Every other brand charges 6–8% of gross revenue. The difference is enormous and tilts the math in predictable ways.
At Anytime Fitness's average revenue of $443K, that $820/month flat fee works out to 2.2% of gross — less than a third of Club Pilates's 8% rate. On paper, flat-fee royalties are a screaming deal for high-performing locations. A top-quartile Anytime Fitness doing $600K pays the same $820/month as a struggling location doing $250K.
The catch: flat-fee brands have less incentive to help you grow. When a franchisor earns 8% of your revenue, every dollar you make puts eight cents in their pocket. When they earn a fixed $820/month regardless, the economic alignment disappears. Club Pilates corporate has a direct financial interest in making each studio more profitable. Anytime Fitness corporate gets paid the same whether you thrive or struggle — and the -0.35% system growth rate suggests the franchisor isn't investing in system-level growth the way percentage-royalty brands do.
The data supports this: the two flat-fee brands (Anytime and Snap) are both shrinking, while the highest-royalty brand (Club Pilates at 8%) is growing fastest. Correlation isn't causation, but the incentive structure is real.
The Cautionary Tales
Massage Envy: Strong revenue, shrinking system. At $1.14M average revenue and a 6% royalty, Massage Envy has the second-best top line in the fitness category. But the brand is losing locations at -4.2% per year — roughly 44 net closures annually from a 1,009-unit base. The revenue-per-unit data says individual locations can work. The system contraction says something structural is broken.
The likely culprit is a labor problem that the FDD barely hints at. Licensed massage therapists are in short supply nationally, and Massage Envy's membership model (monthly sessions at $60–$80) requires a stable roster of therapists to fulfill appointments. When therapists leave — and they do, because higher-paying spa jobs exist — members cancel. The FDD shows revenue; it doesn't show the therapist turnover rate that predicts next year's revenue.
F45: From celebrity darling to -5.1% decline. F45 Training was the hottest fitness franchise in 2019 — backed by Mark Wahlberg, expanding globally, with a SPAC IPO in 2022 that valued the brand at $1.5B. Three years later, the FDD tells a different story: 753 units (down from 800+), $454K average revenue, and a health score of 44. The SPAC hangover is real — the company went through bankruptcy proceedings in 2023, and while it emerged with new ownership, the franchisee base has been bleeding.
F45's 7% royalty on $454K average revenue means the typical franchisee is sending $31K/year to corporate for a brand that's contracting. At a $349K–$786K investment range, the math doesn't work unless you're in the top quartile of the system — and the FDD doesn't tell you where the top quartile cutoff is.
Snap Fitness: The 24/7 model's weakest link. Snap Fitness and Anytime Fitness compete in the same "24/7 access gym" niche with nearly identical models: keycard entry, minimal staffing, basic equipment. But the outcomes diverge sharply. Anytime Fitness averages $443K revenue with 2,301 units. Snap Fitness averages $250K with 493 units. Snap's average revenue is 44% lower — and the system is shrinking at -5.3%, the worst decline in our fitness database.
The 24/7 gym model depends on density — you need enough members in a small radius to fill a location, but not so many competing gyms that the pool gets split. Anytime Fitness has the scale (2,301 units) to own territories and maintain brand awareness. Snap Fitness, at a quarter the size, doesn't. When a Planet Fitness or Anytime opens nearby, Snap locations lose the membership war.
The Post-COVID Landscape
COVID didn't kill fitness franchising — it rearranged it. The brands that adapted share three traits visible in the FDD data:
Club Pilates (+17.5%) and Planet Fitness (+4.4%) represent opposite ends of the spectrum, but both offer something home workouts can't replicate. Club Pilates sells the reformer experience and instructor relationships. Planet Fitness sells the Judgement Free Zone brand identity and social belonging at $10/month. The brands that shrank — Snap (-5.3%), Anytime (-0.35%), F45 (-5.1%) — sold access to equipment, which Peloton and garage gyms replaced during lockdown and members never fully returned.
Club Pilates charges $150–$250/month. When inflation hit, they had room to hold pricing. Snap Fitness and Anytime Fitness, competing at $30–$50/month, had almost no pricing power — a $5 increase is a 10-15% hike that triggers cancellations. Planet Fitness is the exception: their $10/month base price is so low that members keep it even when they stop going, creating a "gym membership as insurance" dynamic that protects revenue.
A 1,500 sq ft Club Pilates studio with 12 reformers can break even with 150 members. A 20,000 sq ft Planet Fitness needs 3,000+. Post-COVID, getting back to 150 members took months. Getting back to 3,000 took years. The brands with smaller footprints snapped back faster — and the ones that snapped back first captured members from competitors that were still struggling to reopen.
The Orangetheory Question Mark
Orangetheory Fitness is in our database with a health score of 10 — the lowest in the category — but not because the brand is failing. Orangetheory's FDD didn't provide sufficient data for our scoring model: no investment range, no royalty disclosure, no Item 19 revenue, no unit count. The 10 reflects data completeness, not business quality.
In reality, Orangetheory operates roughly 1,500 studios worldwide and is one of the most recognized boutique fitness brands. The lack of FDD transparency is itself a data point — it means you'll need to do significantly more diligence through franchisee validation calls, since the FDD isn't giving you the numbers that other brands disclose. If you're considering Orangetheory, the Item 20 franchisee list is your best friend: call operators in your target market and ask for the numbers the FDD won't provide.
What the Data Says to Buy
The FDD data points clearly in 14 directions depending on your capital and risk tolerance:
The single most important thing these FDDs won't tell you: your specific market matters more than any brand-level average. A Club Pilates in an affluent suburb with no reformer Pilates competition will outperform one in a saturated market by 3-5x. Use the FDD data to eliminate bad brands — the ones with shrinking systems, weak revenue, and poor capital efficiency. Then validate the survivor brands by calling franchisees in markets similar to yours.