Last checked: 15 September 2026
If you want to know how to cancel a Planet Fitness membership without paying for another month, the answer is a date, not a form. The club has to receive your notice by the 10th. Cancel on the 14th and you will still be charged on the 17th.
There is a second date, and it costs more. The annual fee has its own deadline, the 25th of the month before it is billed, and five of the seven club pages we read printed the exact day their annual fee lands. Three of them said 1 November, which puts the real deadline at 25 October.
Neither date appears on the screen where you signed up.
Every date and fee below comes from Planet Fitness’s own customer service and policies pages and from seven club offer pages. Clubs are independently owned, so check yours.
The three ways Planet Fitness accepts a cancellation
Planet Fitness says you can “send written notification via mail to your home club requesting to end your membership, visit your home club in person, or log into your account online through the member portal on the website”. That is the full list on its customer service page.
Three methods, and two of them require you to know which club holds your membership.
Can you cancel Planet Fitness online?
The member portal is one of the three accepted methods, so yes in principle. Whether your club advertises it is another matter.
Four of the seven club pages we read printed “Cancel Online, Anytime!” plainly next to the price: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Houston and Oviedo. A fifth, Fort Worth, carried the line against its Classic offer. The remaining two did not print it at all, which does not prove the portal is unavailable there. It only means those clubs are not advertising it.
Even so, we would post a letter. A tracked letter gives you a delivery date you can hold up later. A portal cancellation gives you whatever confirmation screen the portal decides to show, and we have no way to tell you what that looks like at your club. If you are inside a week of the 10th, do both.
How to cancel Planet Fitness by mail, and what to put in the letter
Planet Fitness does not publish a template. What follows is our reading of what the two deadlines require, not a company instruction.
Keep it to five lines: your full name, your membership number, the home club address, one sentence saying you are ending the membership and want the annual fee stopped as well, and the date you are writing.
Send it with tracking. Always. The deadline is written in terms of receipt, not postage, so proof of the delivery date is the only thing that settles an argument about the 10th later.
Keep a copy of the letter as well as the tracking receipt. If a club processes the cancellation but not the annual fee, the sentence asking for both is what you will be pointing at.
Can you cancel at any Planet Fitness, or only your home club?
Home club only. Read the company’s wording again and every method names it: mail to your home club, visit your home club, or the member portal on your own account.
This is a real problem for Black Card members, who can use any of 2,900+ locations and often forget which one they joined at. If you moved states and kept training, the club holding your paperwork may be 400 miles behind you.
Your home club is on your membership agreement and in the app. Check it before you write to anyone.
Can you cancel Planet Fitness by phone or email?
Neither is on the published list. Email is not there. Phone is not there either, which catches out the people who have already called the club twice and think the matter is handled.
A club may well accept a phone cancellation as a courtesy. What it will not give you is a dated record that the notice was received, and the deadline is about receipt.
When does Planet Fitness bill? The 17th
The monthly membership fee is billed on the 17th. That is the date the whole cancellation calendar is built around, and it is the same wherever your club is.
How it is billed varies. Many clubs take payment by electronic funds transfer from a checking account, not a card, and at least one of the seven we read said so outright on its offer page: Houston’s says “Billed monthly to a checking account”. If you closed that account, the charge does not simply vanish.
The 10th is the deadline that stops the next charge
Here is the sentence that matters, in the company’s own words: “To stop the billing of your monthly membership on the 17th, the club must receive notice of your request to end your membership by the 10th of the month, as it may take up to 7 business days for billing changes to take effect.”
Three things are buried in there. The billing date is the 17th. The club must receive the notice by the 10th, so posting it on the 9th is not the same as it arriving on the 9th. And the seven business days explain why the deadline sits a week early instead of the day before.
Seven business days is not seven days.
Across a weekend it is nine or ten calendar days, and if a public holiday falls inside the window it stretches further. The 10th already has that slack built into it, which is why the gap looks generous and is not.
How long does a Planet Fitness cancellation take?
Up to seven business days for the billing change to take effect, by the company’s own wording. The membership ending and the billing stopping are not the same event, and the second one is the one your bank sees.
If you cancel on the 2nd, the window closes well before the 17th and you are clear. If you cancel on the 11th, you are inside the window and you should expect one more charge.
When is the annual fee charged, and what the real deadline is
Planet Fitness says the request to stop the annual fee “must be received by the club by the 25th of the month prior to the annual fee date”. Most articles print that sentence and leave it there, which is useless, because the annual fee date is the missing half of it.
It turns out the clubs publish it. On the offer page for Newark, NJ, the fine print says the $49 annual fee “will be billed on or shortly after November 1st”. Brooklyn said the same for its $59 Classic fee, and Houston and Fort Worth both printed 1 November. Oviedo, FL printed 1 September instead.
| Club | Annual fee | Billed on | Last day to cancel it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brooklyn (East New York), NY | $59 Classic | on or shortly after 1 Nov | 25 October |
| Newark, NJ | $49 | on or shortly after 1 Nov | 25 October |
| Houston (Spring Branch), TX | $49 | on or shortly after 1 Nov | 25 October |
| Fort Worth (Alliance Town Center), TX | $49 | on or shortly after 1 Nov | 25 October |
| Oviedo, FL | $0 | on or shortly after 1 Sept | 25 August |
So if you are at one of those four clubs and you are reading this in October, 25 October is your date. Miss it and you pay another $49, or $59 on a New York Classic membership, on top of whatever monthly charge is still running.
The two deadlines do not line up, and that is the part people get wrong. Cancelling on 12 October stops the 17 October charge and still leaves the annual fee to deal with separately, because the annual fee deadline is 25 October and cancelling the membership does not automatically resolve a fee already inside its notice window. Send one notice that ends the membership and says so plainly, and send it before the 10th if you want both stopped in the same month.
Three worked examples, on a 1 November fee date
Take a club with a $49 annual fee billed on or shortly after 1 November, which is what Newark, Houston and Fort Worth all printed. Here is what the same decision costs on three different days.
Notice received 5 October. Inside both deadlines. The 17 October monthly charge does not run, and the annual fee is stopped with twenty days to spare. You pay nothing further.
Notice received 12 October. Two days past the 10th, so the 17 October charge still runs. The annual fee deadline of 25 October is still ahead of you, so that one is stopped. Cost of being two days late: one month.
Notice received 26 October. Now both deadlines have gone. The 17 October charge already ran, and the annual fee request missed the 25th by a day, so $49 lands on or shortly after 1 November as well. Cost of being sixteen days late on one and one day late on the other: a month plus $49.
The 25th is the one people miss, because it is the only deadline in this process that sits in a different month from the charge it stops.
If you are leaving because of the price
Check what you are actually paying before you go, because the headline rate is not it. At the seven clubs we priced, a Classic year came to between $170 and $288 once the annual fee and the $1 startup fee were counted, and a Black Card year came to between $349.88 and $456.88.
If the annual fee is the charge that pushed you over, moving down a tier may not help and may cost more. At the three New York clubs the Black Card carried no annual fee at all while Classic carried $59.
What is the $49 charge from Planet Fitness?
It is the annual fee, and it arrives once a year on a date that has nothing to do with when you joined.
The amount is not the same everywhere either. Across the seven clubs we read it was $0, $49 or $59. The three New York clubs charged $59 on Classic and waived it entirely on Black Card. Oviedo charged nothing on either tier. Which is why a charge you did not expect may be a different number from the one you read about, and we went through the whole spread in what a Planet Fitness membership costs across a year.
If the charge on your statement is $58 and not $49, that is a different thing entirely. Read the next section.
Is there a cancellation fee? The $58 buyout
Planet Fitness says that “if your membership has a minimum term and is ended prior to end of contract term, a $58 buyout fee is required”. The words to watch are “if your membership has a minimum term”, because plenty do not.
Six of the seven clubs we read sold both tiers with no commitment, under the line “you may cancel at anytime without paying a fee”. The seventh, Fort Worth, sold Classic with no commitment and the Black Card on a 12-month term. Same club, same page, same afternoon.
So before you assume you owe $58, find the commitment line on your own club’s offer page or on the agreement you signed.
Most people reading this owe nothing.
Can you cancel Planet Fitness anytime?
On a no-commitment membership, yes, and the company says so in the same words on every club page we read: you may cancel at any time without paying a fee.
Cancel at any time is not the same as stop paying at any time, though. You can send notice on the 14th; the billing still runs on the 17th. The freedom is from the fee, not from the calendar.
On a membership with a minimum term, leaving early costs the $58 buyout, and that is the whole difference between the two.
Why you were charged after you cancelled
Almost every version of this complaint traces back to one of four things, and the 17th sits in all four. None of them needs anyone to have acted in bad faith.
The notice arrived after the 10th. The billing change ran past its seven business days and into the 17th. The membership was cancelled but the annual fee was already inside its own notice window. Or the notice went to a club that was not the home club.
The fourth one is the quietest of the four. A Black Card member who trains at three locations may not remember which of them holds the membership, and the other two cannot end it.
Work out which of the four applies before you call anyone, because the fix is different in each case and only the first two are arguable.
The club says it never received my letter
Then the delivery receipt is the whole argument. Without one there is no record that the 10th was met, and the club’s position is that the clock never started.
This is the reason we keep saying to use tracking. It costs a few dollars and it is the only document in this entire process that is created by somebody other than you or the club.
What if the club will not let you cancel
Start by using a published method, not the one the front desk prefers. Planet Fitness names three, and a club declining all three is refusing its own company’s stated process, which is a much clearer thing to put in writing than a disagreement about what somebody said at a counter.
Your membership agreement is the governing document, and it is worth reading before the conversation, not after. Beyond that, gym membership cancellation is regulated at state level in a good deal of the US, and your state consumer protection office is the next stop. We are not lawyers and this is not advice about your particular situation.
Disputing the charge with your bank is the other thing people ask about. We are not going to walk you through a chargeback, and Planet Fitness publishes nothing about how it handles one. What we can say is that a dispute argues about a payment and does not end a membership. The notice still has to reach the home club, or the next month runs anyway.
Keep everything in writing from the first message onward.
Can you freeze a Planet Fitness membership instead?
Search for how to freeze a Planet Fitness membership and you will get step-by-step guides with durations, monthly hold fees and screenshots. We went looking for where any of it comes from.
We read the customer service and FAQ page, the policies page, the memberships page and the gym memberships page. None of them mentions freezing or pausing a membership. The FAQ covers cancellation in detail and skips straight past the alternative.
Our honest read is that freezing exists at some clubs and is set by the franchisee, the same way the $10 to $19 monthly rate and the commitment length are. But we cannot source a duration, a fee or a method, so we are not printing any. Ask your home club directly and get the answer in writing.
Every article that gives you a confident freeze fee is telling you something Planet Fitness does not say anywhere.
One practical note while the policy is unpublished. If a club does offer a hold and you take it, the annual fee date does not obviously move with it, and nobody publishes whether it does. Ask about that specifically.
What happens if you just stop paying
We could not find a published answer, and we are not going to invent one.
What we can say is what makes this different from a card subscription. Many clubs bill by electronic funds transfer from a checking account, so closing a card does not stop the debit, and the membership agreement continues to exist whether or not the payment succeeds. Cancelling is a separate act from paying.
Whether a failed payment adds a charge, suspends the membership or ends it is not published on any Planet Fitness page we read. Send the notice.
Cancelling a membership held by a minor
Planet Fitness lets people join at 13 or older with a parent or legal guardian’s permission, and says members aged 13 and 14 must be accompanied whenever they work out. The enrolment rule on its gym memberships page is “at least 18 years old to enroll, or 13-17 with parent/guardian”.
What the company does not publish is who may end that membership, or whether the guardian who signed can cancel it without the member present. Assume the same three methods and the same two deadlines apply, and ask the home club who has to sign.
Every cancellation date and fee on one page
| What | Value | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Accepted methods | mail to the home club, in person at the home club, member portal | PF customer service page |
| Monthly billing date | the 17th | PF customer service page |
| Monthly notice deadline | received by the 10th | PF customer service page |
| Processing time | up to 7 business days | PF customer service page |
| Annual fee notice deadline | 25th of the month prior to the fee date | PF customer service page |
| Annual fee date | 1 November at four clubs, 1 September at Oviedo | club offer pages |
| Annual fee amount | $0, $49 or $59 depending on club | club offer pages |
| Early exit fee | $58 where a minimum term applies | PF customer service page |
| No-commitment memberships | “cancel at anytime without paying a fee” | club offer pages |
| Online cancellation advertised | 4 of 7 clubs plainly, a 5th on Classic only | club offer pages |
| Payment method | many clubs bill a checking account by EFT | Houston club offer page |
| Freeze policy | not published | we could not confirm |
| Refunds | not published | we could not confirm |
Four things we could not confirm
- The freeze policy, as above. No duration, no fee, no method.
- Whether any part of a paid month or a paid annual fee is refundable.
- What a club does after a failed payment, and whether that ends the membership or adds a charge.
- Whether rejoining later means paying the startup fee again.
If you find a Planet Fitness page that answers one of these, tell us and we will update this and credit the source. That is how we check every figure here.
The short version, with dates
Find your home club’s offer page at planetfitness.com/gyms/your-club-slug/offers. Read two lines off it: the commitment length, and the date the annual fee is billed. Then work backwards. Notice received by the 10th stops the 17th. Notice received by the 25th of the previous month stops the annual fee.
One caution about that page. Oviedo’s was still showing an offer that had expired six weeks before we read it, so the fee date printed there may be as stale as the price above it. Call the club and have them confirm the date before you rely on it.
If you are on the Black Card and the annual fee is what is pushing you out, check the number first. At the three New York clubs we priced, the Black Card annual fee was $0 and the Classic fee was $59, which we go through in what the Black Card upgrade actually adds to a year.