LA Fitness charges a $69 annual fee, and it lands on your account 14 days after you sign up. Not at the twelve-month mark. Fourteen days.
That single line is why most articles about LA Fitness membership cost get the number wrong. On 17 September 2026 we opened the published rate page at 13 LA Fitness clubs across seven US states, and the annual fee was $69 at every one of them. All thirteen. The page currently ranking near the top for this query prints the annual fee as “$49 – $59” and labels its entire table “Est.”
Monthly dues ran from $19.99 in San Antonio to $44.99 at most clubs. That is a $25 spread. A $44.99 membership costs $608.88 in the first year before tax, which is $50.74 a month once you count the fees that never make it into the headline.
Here is where all of it goes.
Last checked: 18 September 2026. Every figure below links to the LA Fitness page it came from.
The $69 annual fee arrives two weeks after you join
LA Fitness prints this on its own rate pages, in the same small type at 13 clubs we checked: “The indicated Annual fee, per person, will be billed in 14 days, and every year thereafter.” It is not buried in a PDF. It sits directly under the price.
So somebody who joins on 1 October pays $69 around 15 October, then again every October after that. The annual fee is not a year-two problem, which is how almost every competing article frames it. It lands much sooner. It is a first-fortnight problem, and it is the charge people go searching for when an unexplained $69 turns up on a statement three weeks after they signed anything.
The official offers page is more honest about the arithmetic than a promotional page needs to be. Its headline deal is $44.99 a month with $0 enrollment. The total it says you owe at enrollment is $158.98 plus tax, made up of $89.98 for the first and last months’ dues plus that $69 annual fee two weeks later. Read the total again.
“$0 enrollment fee” and “$158.98 due” are both true at once.
Who actually owns LA Fitness, and what happened to Esporta
LA Fitness is run by Fitness International, LLC, founded on 1 November 1984 by Chinyol Yi and Louis Welch and still headquartered in Irvine, California. The company operates close to 700 clubs across the United States and Canada. Nearly all of them are American. In its August 2025 court filing the FTC put the group at more than 600 locations and 3.7 million members.
It sells gym memberships under five names. That is where the confusion starts.
| Brand | Status in 2026 | Does your LA Fitness Classic card work there? |
|---|---|---|
| LA Fitness | The main brand | Yes, on Classic |
| City Sports Club | Launched October 2012 | Yes, on Classic |
| Club Studio | Launched December 2022, 18 locations as of March 2026 | No, separate membership |
| Esporta Fitness | Launched January 2020, discontinued by 2025 | Brand no longer operating |
| XSport Fitness | Acquired 2024, 35 locations | Not listed in the Classic access wording |
Esporta is the one people still ask about. It was Fitness International’s lower-priced brand, several LA Fitness clubs were converted into it around 2020, and it has been wound down entirely. If your local Esporta became an LA Fitness again, that is why. The sign changed back. The name still appears in the FTC’s 2025 complaint because the conduct it describes covers the years the brand existed.
City Sports Club matters more for your wallet. It is folded into LA Fitness Classic access at no extra charge, which means a Classic membership quietly covers a second chain of gyms. Most members never notice.
LA Fitness sells two plans, and the cheaper one only works at one gym
Every one of the 14 rate pages we opened listed the same two plan names: BASIC and CLASSIC. The difference is not equipment. Both plans list identical amenities on the page, right down to the functional turf and the complimentary fitness assessment. The difference is the door. Classic opens more of them.
| Plan | Access | Typical monthly | Annual fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | “Club of Enrollment” only | $19.99 – $39.99 | $69 |
| Classic | “All LA Fitness and City Sports Clubs nationwide” | $29.99 – $44.99 | $69 |
Basic locks you to the single club named on your agreement. Change jobs, move across town, spend three weeks at your parents’ house, and the card stops working. Classic covers the whole network, City Sports Club included. Basic does not.
Signature clubs are not a price tier
Plenty of pages claim LA Fitness Signature locations charge more, and after reading fourteen rate pages we could not find a single figure that supports it. Woodland Hills in California is a Signature club, and it prices Basic at $24.99 and Classic at $44.99. Bear, Delaware charges the same. Signature describes the building, not the bill.
What 13 US clubs are charging right now
This is the table nobody else publishes, because it takes an hour of clicking instead of a guess. We did the clicking. Each row came off that club’s own online rate page on 17 September 2026.
| Club | Plan | Monthly | Initiation | Due today | Annual fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| San Antonio – Braun Rd, TX | Basic | $19.99 | $99 | $138.98 | $69 |
| San Antonio – Braun Rd, TX | Basic | $29.99 | $0 | $59.98 | $69 |
| San Antonio – Braun Rd, TX | Classic | $44.99 | $0 | $89.98 | $69 |
| San Antonio – N Loop 1604, TX | Basic | $19.99 | $99 | $138.98 | $69 |
| San Antonio – N Loop 1604, TX | Basic | $29.99 | $0 | $59.98 | $69 |
| San Antonio – N Loop 1604, TX | Classic | $44.99 | $0 | $89.98 | $69 |
| Chicago – Lakeview E Clark St, IL | Basic | $34.99 | $0 | $69.98 | $69 |
| Chicago – Lakeview E Clark St, IL | Classic | $44.99 | $0 | $89.98 | $69 |
| Chicago – W Pershing Rd, IL | Basic | $34.99 | $0 | $69.98 | $69 |
| Chicago – W Pershing Rd, IL | Classic | $44.99 | $0 | $89.98 | $69 |
| Chicago – Addison at Kennedy, IL | Basic | $34.99 | $0 | $69.98 | $69 |
| Chicago – Addison at Kennedy, IL | Classic | $44.99 | $0 | $89.98 | $69 |
| Chicago – Norwood Park, IL | Classic | $29.99 | $99 | $158.98 | $69 |
| Chicago – Norwood Park, IL | Classic | $39.99 | $0 | $79.98 | $69 |
| Secaucus, NJ (Signature) | Basic | $29.99 | $99 down payment | $158.98 | $69 |
| Secaucus, NJ (Signature) | Basic | $39.99 | $0 | $79.98 | $69 |
| Secaucus, NJ (Signature) | Classic | $44.99 | $0 | $89.98 | $69 |
| Menifee, CA | Basic | $29.99 | $0 | $59.98 | $69 |
| Menifee, CA | Classic | $29.99 | $99 | $158.98 | $69 |
| Menifee, CA | Classic | $39.99 | $0 | $79.98 | $69 |
| Woodland Hills, CA (Signature) | Basic | $24.99 | $99 | $148.98 | $69 |
| Woodland Hills, CA (Signature) | Basic | $34.99 | $0 | $69.98 | $69 |
| Woodland Hills, CA (Signature) | Classic | $44.99 | $0 | $89.98 | $69 |
| Wyomissing, PA | Basic | $24.99 | $99 | $148.98 | $69 |
| Wyomissing, PA | Basic | $34.99 | $0 | $69.98 | $69 |
| Wyomissing, PA | Classic | $44.99 | $0 | $89.98 | $69 |
| Philadelphia – Grant Ave, PA | Basic | $24.99 | $99 | $148.98 | $69 |
| Philadelphia – Grant Ave, PA | Basic | $34.99 | $0 | $69.98 | $69 |
| Philadelphia – Grant Ave, PA | Classic | $44.99 | $0 | $89.98 | $69 |
| Bear, DE | Basic | $24.99 | $99 | $148.98 | $69 |
| Bear, DE | Basic | $34.99 | $0 | $69.98 | $69 |
| Bear, DE | Classic | $44.99 | $0 | $89.98 | $69 |
| McDonough, GA | Basic | $24.99 | $99 | $148.98 | $69 |
| McDonough, GA | Basic | $34.99 | $0 | $69.98 | $69 |
| McDonough, GA | Classic | $44.99 | $0 | $89.98 | $69 |
Four clubs share an identical menu across four states: Wyomissing, Philadelphia, Bear and McDonough all sell Basic at $24.99 with a $99 fee, Basic at $34.99 without one, and Classic at $44.99. Woodland Hills in California matches them to the cent. That is 2,700 miles away.
Then you get to Chicago.
Four Chicago clubs, and one of them will not sell you the cheap plan
Three of the four behave the same way. Lakeview, Pershing Road and Addison at Kennedy each price Basic at $34.99 a month and Classic at $44.99, with no initiation fee attached to either plan. Same numbers, three clubs.
Norwood Park, at 5444 N Cumberland Ave, does not offer a Basic membership at all. There is no single-club option anywhere on its rate page. None at all. What it does sell is Classic, the full nationwide plan, at $39.99 a month with nothing down.
Read that against Addison at Kennedy, roughly six miles away, where the identical nationwide plan costs $44.99. Same city. Same company. Sixty dollars a year apart.
We did not expect to find that, and we have not seen another site report it.
So we checked it twice.
San Antonio, for contrast, was internally consistent: Braun Road and North Loop 1604 printed identical figures on all three plans. Both clubs, to the cent. So the variation is not noise spread evenly across every market. It is set club by club, and in some cities the clubs land on the same number while in others they clearly do not.
Which means the honest answer to “how much is LA Fitness a month near me” is that we cannot tell you, and neither can any site that has not opened your specific club’s page. There is a section below on doing it yourself.
LA Fitness in Canada is a different product
The Aurora Bayview Ave club in Ontario charges CAD $34.99 for Basic and CAD $54.99 for Classic, with a CAD $79 annual fee rather than $69. It also carries a club format called Premier Plus. No US club has it. If you are pricing a Mississauga or Edmonton club, none of the American figures above apply.
The $99 initiation fee is a choice, and it is usually the right one
This is the part nearly every LA Fitness pricing article gets backwards. The initiation fee is written up as a penalty to dodge. On the rate pages it is nothing of the kind. It is a menu. Two prices for one membership, and you pick.
Menifee, California offers Classic two ways on the same screen: pay $99 up front and the monthly rate is $29.99, or pay nothing up front and the monthly rate is $39.99. Norwood Park in Chicago offers that identical pair, to the dollar. Opposite side of the country.
| Club and plan | Pay the fee | Skip the fee | Monthly gap | Break-even |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Menifee CA, Classic | $99 + $29.99/mo | $0 + $39.99/mo | $10.00 | 9.9 months |
| Chicago Norwood Park, Classic | $99 + $29.99/mo | $0 + $39.99/mo | $10.00 | 9.9 months |
| Wyomissing PA, Basic | $99 + $24.99/mo | $0 + $34.99/mo | $10.00 | 9.9 months |
| San Antonio, Basic | $99 + $19.99/mo | $0 + $29.99/mo | $10.00 | 9.9 months |
| Secaucus NJ, Basic | $99 + $29.99/mo | $0 + $39.99/mo | $10.00 | 9.9 months |
The break-even is 9.9 months at every club we checked
The sum is $99 divided by $10, because the gap between the two rates was exactly $10.00 at all five clubs offering the trade. Stay past ten months and the $99 was the cheaper route. Quit before that and it was not.
At Menifee the $99 route costs $527.88 over twelve months against $548.88 for the no-fee route, so you save $21 by paying the fee you were told to avoid. Over two years that gap reaches $141.
So here is our position, and it runs against what the deal blogs say. If you are reasonably confident you will still be a member next summer, take the $99. It pays for itself. If you are joining in January because of a resolution and you know how those usually go, take the no-fee rate and treat the extra $10 a month as insurance against your own optimism.
In New Jersey they call it a down payment fee
Secaucus prints its $99 in a field labelled “Down Payment Fee” while the “Initiation Fee” field directly above it reads $0.00. Same money. Different word.
If you are comparing two clubs and one advertises $0 initiation, check whether a down payment line is doing that job instead. It usually is. It is an easy thing to miss on a tablet at a front desk while somebody is talking to you about the sauna.
Year one lands between $407.88 and $608.88 before tax
Twelve months of dues, plus the initiation or down payment if you took it, plus the $69. Then tax. Taxes are extra and vary by state, which LA Fitness flags in its own offer terms.
| Scenario | Year one total | Effective monthly |
|---|---|---|
| San Antonio Basic, $19.99 + $99 fee | $407.88 | $33.99 |
| San Antonio Basic, $29.99 no fee | $428.88 | $35.74 |
| Wyomissing Basic, $24.99 + $99 fee | $467.88 | $38.99 |
| Wyomissing Basic, $34.99 no fee | $488.88 | $40.74 |
| Menifee Classic, $29.99 + $99 fee | $527.88 | $43.99 |
| Norwood Park Classic, $39.99 no fee | $548.88 | $45.74 |
| Standard Classic, $44.99 no fee | $608.88 | $50.74 |
The advertised rate understates year one by somewhere between $69 and $168.
That is the whole story of gym pricing in one line.
Year two is not much cheaper, which surprises people. There is no initiation fee the second time, but the $69 recurs, so a $44.99 Classic membership costs $608.88 in year one. Year two is $539.88.
What you actually hand over on day one
LA Fitness collects the first and last months’ dues at enrollment, so the “due today” figure is roughly double the monthly rate plus any initiation fee, with the $69 following two weeks later. Nothing is deferred.
- $59.98 at San Antonio on the $29.99 Basic plan
- $89.98 on a standard $44.99 Classic, which the official offers page confirms
- $158.98 at Menifee or Norwood Park if you take the $99 Classic route
- Then $69 on day 14, every time
Two conditions come with that. You must be at least 18 to sign a membership agreement, and recurring charges have to run by electronic funds transfer from a checking account, savings account or an acceptable credit card. Paying cash at the desk each month is not on offer at any of the 13 clubs we looked at.
Can two people share one LA Fitness membership?
No. The rate pages carry one detail that matters here more than anything else written on the subject anywhere else, and almost nobody quotes it. The annual fee is charged “per person”, in LA Fitness’s own words.
So a couple on two Classic memberships pays $138 a year in annual fees before a single month of dues is counted. Two people at $44.99 each come to $1,217.76 for year one. One person pays $608.88. It is a different conversation.
LA Fitness does sell additional-member and family arrangements through its clubs. It does not publish what they cost, anywhere we could find, and we are not going to invent a figure. Ask the club for the per-person annual fee in writing along with the monthly rate. That is the line that doubles.
How to find your own club’s price in about a minute
Since the rate moves by club and sometimes by neighbourhood, the only number that matters is the one on your club’s page. LA Fitness publishes it, which is more than most chains do.
- Open lafitness.com’s join page.
- Type your ZIP code.
- Pick your club from the results and click through to join.
- The rate screen lists every plan that club sells, with the monthly rate, the initiation or down payment fee, the total due today and the annual fee.
- Screenshot it before you go in. Front-desk conversations move fast.
One caveat, honestly. These pages carry promotional pricing, and LA Fitness states that prices may change without notice and that offers are not available at all locations. We do not know how often the rates rotate, or whether a walk-in gets quoted the same figures as the website. What we can say is that the published number is a real number you can point at.
Four prices LA Fitness will not publish
The membership buys the gym floor, the group classes and the pool. Several of the things you will actually want inside that building carry a charge on top of your monthly dues. LA Fitness prints none of those figures.
| Service | What LA Fitness says | Published price |
|---|---|---|
| Personal training | Additional charge | None |
| Kids’ Klub | Additional charge | None |
| Pilates by LA Fitness | “Separate contract and fees required” | None |
| Courts and leagues | Extra charge, per the guest pass terms | None |
Plenty of sites will give you a confident dollar figure for an LA Fitness personal training session. We could not find a source for a single one of them, so we are not repeating them here. A decimal point is not a source.
Ask at the front desk and get the figure in writing before you agree to anything. Then read the cancellation terms. Personal training runs on a separate contract from your $44.99 membership, which matters more than it sounds like it should.
Senior, student and military rates: what we could not confirm
LA Fitness does not publish a senior discount, a student discount or a military rate on any page we could find, and the 13 rate pages we read showed the same plans to everybody. No age box. No student rate.
One route does exist and is worth knowing about. LA Fitness hosts SilverSneakers classes, the Medicare-linked programme that can cover gym access for people whose plan includes it. Your health plan decides that, not the club. Start with your insurer.
Corporate programmes are mentioned on the LA Fitness site with no rates attached. If your employer runs one, it will almost certainly beat every figure in the table above, and it is the only route to a lower rate we could confirm exists at all. Worth one email to HR.
The free pass runs three days, and you get one every six months
LA Fitness gives non-members a free pass that is valid for 3 consecutive days for you and a friend, and you have to activate it within 30 days of the email arriving. Then it expires.
- You must be 16 or older, or 13 and accompanied by a parent or legal guardian
- Photo ID showing your birth date is required at the door
- One free pass per person every six months, and consecutive passes are not allowed
- Courts, leagues, personal training and Kids’ Klub all cost extra during the trial
- You have to complete a fitness analysis and sit through an orientation with a membership counselor
On bringing guests once you have joined, San Antonio’s Classic listing includes “1 guest per visit” in its access description. We did not see that line on every club’s Classic plan. So we will not call it universal. Check your own club’s page before you promise anyone anything.
Leaving is where this gets expensive, and the FTC agrees
LA Fitness says most club memberships are month-to-month and can be cancelled at any time. That is more generous than the reputation suggests, and it is the single most important thing to know before you read the deadline below. Three routes appear in its membership FAQ: written notice mailed to P.O. Box 54170, Irvine, CA 92619, in person at the club, or through your online account.
The deadline is the part that costs people money. A mailed cancellation has to be postmarked at least 5 business days before your next billing date, and missing it buys you another month. One more charge.
Freezing costs $10 a month, and the price depends on how you pay
| Billing type | Freeze cost | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly dues | $10 per month | Indefinite |
| Paid in full | $35 one-off freeze fee | Up to 6 months |
| Bi-weekly dues | $5 per bi-weekly billing | Indefinite |
| Weekly dues | Not available | Cannot be suspended |
| Kids’ Klub | Free | Indefinite |
The freeze link sits in the left menu of your online account. Do the sum before you use it: freezing a $19.99 San Antonio Basic membership for two months costs $20 and saves $39.98. Worth doing. Freezing one you were about to cancel costs $10 for nothing.
The FTC sued LA Fitness over cancellations in August 2025
On 20 August 2025 the Federal Trade Commission filed suit against Fitness International, LLC and Fitness & Sports Clubs, LLC in the US District Court for the Central District of California. The case is still open.
The FTC complaint alleges that the companies restricted cancellation to in-person visits with one specific employee or to mailed notice, limited cancellation to the hours that single authorised employee happened to work, required certified or registered mail at the member’s own expense, and trained staff to refuse cancellations by phone or email. None of that is disputed wording. It also alleges that some members who tried to stop the charges were re-billed under new account numbers. The case was brought under the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act.
These are allegations in a live case rather than findings, and the online cancellation route now in the FAQ may well be a response. We cannot prove that.
Our reading of all this: cancel in writing, keep a copy, and note the postmark date against your billing date. It is cheap insurance. Whatever the court decides in 2026, the copy is yours.
There is a free pass, and it is three days long
Non-members can get a free pass that runs for three consecutive days and covers two people, and members can bring guests under a separate set of rules with different age limits. Neither costs anything.
The terms are fiddly enough to need their own page, so we put them all in one place: how the LA Fitness guest pass actually works, including the two steps at the front desk that nobody warns you about.
Leaving has a deadline, and it is five business days
Most LA Fitness memberships are month-to-month and can be cancelled by post, in person, or through your online account. A mailed notice has to be postmarked at least five business days before your next billing date, and missing that buys you one more month.
Freezing is the alternative, and it costs $10 a month on monthly dues. The Federal Trade Commission sued LA Fitness over its cancellation practices in August 2025, and that case is still running. We put the deadlines, the freeze prices, the refund LA Fitness promises and the case itself in one place: how to cancel an LA Fitness membership.
LA Fitness costs about two and a half times Planet Fitness over a year
| LA Fitness Classic | Planet Fitness Classic | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $44.99 | From $15 |
| Annual fee | $69 | $0 to $59 by club |
| Year one | $608.88 | About $229 |
| Pool | Yes | No |
| Basketball courts | Yes | No |
| Group classes | Included | No |
That $380 gap buys a pool, a set of courts and a class timetable. So the answer to whether LA Fitness is worth it depends entirely on which of those three you will actually use, and we would put it this way. If you swim weekly, $380 a year is cheap for a lane you never have to book. If you want a treadmill and some dumbbells, you are paying $380 for a pool you will visit twice.
We have the full breakdown of what a year of Planet Fitness costs, including the annual fee that turns out not to be $49 everywhere, and the rest of our gym membership price breakdowns.
Questions people ask about LA Fitness pricing
Is LA Fitness $29.99 a month?
At some clubs, on some plans. San Antonio sells Basic at $29.99 with no initiation fee, and Menifee sells Classic at $29.99 if you pay $99 up front. Across the four Chicago clubs we read, $29.99 appeared only at Norwood Park. And only with that $99 attached.
Can I use any LA Fitness with my membership?
Only on the Classic plan. Basic is restricted to your “Club of Enrollment”, which is the single gym named on the agreement you signed at the front desk. One building. Classic covers all LA Fitness and City Sports Club locations nationwide.
What is the $69 charge from LA Fitness on my statement?
That is the annual fee. It is billed 14 days after your enrollment date and then on that same date every year afterwards, which is why it can appear long before you expect it. It is charged per person. Two memberships means two $69 charges.
Does LA Fitness have a contract?
LA Fitness describes most memberships as month-to-month and cancellable at any time. We could not find a published minimum term or buyout fee on any of the 13 club rate pages we opened, which is a real difference from some rival chains. Read the agreement you sign anyway, because that document governs and the website does not.
How much is LA Fitness in New Jersey?
At the Secaucus Signature club on 17 September 2026, three plans were on offer: Basic at $29.99 with a $99 down payment fee, Basic at $39.99 with nothing down, or Classic at $44.99 with nothing down. New Jersey has dozens of clubs and they will not all match this one.
Is LA Fitness cheaper if I pay for a year up front?
A paid-in-full option exists, because the membership FAQ lists a separate $35 freeze fee for members on it. No club rate page we read published a paid-in-full price, so we cannot tell you what it costs against $539.88 a year. Ask the club.
How we checked these prices
Every figure on this page came from LA Fitness’s own club rate pages, offer terms, membership FAQ and guest pass terms, read on 17 September 2026, or from the FTC’s press release of 20 August 2025. Nothing here is a guess. Nothing here is estimated, and in the ten places where we could not confirm something we said so instead of filling the gap.
Rates change without notice and this table will drift. If you find a club whose published price contradicts something above, send it to us and we will open that club’s rate page ourselves before changing anything. The row gets corrected. More on how we research gym prices.