No. LA Fitness is owned by Fitness International, LLC, and all 700+ clubs are corporate. The gym franchises you can buy: Planet Fitness, Crunch, Anytime.
Quick answer No. LA Fitness does not franchise. Fitness International, LLC, a privately held company, owns and operates all 700-plus LA Fitness clubs across 27 states and Canada, along with City Sports Club and Club Studio. No FDD exists, so there is no Item 7 investment range and no Item 19 sales data to read.
Planet Fitness, Crunch, and Anytime Fitness sell franchises to private buyers. LA Fitness, Life Time, Equinox, and 24 Hour Fitness do not. That split is the whole answer. Life Time owns and operates every athletic club it runs, so no FDD exists for the brand.
LA Fitness sits on the corporate side. The brand belongs to Fitness International, LLC, a privately held company that owns and operates more than 700 clubs across 27 states and Canada. Every one of them is a company location. The company builds the club, signs the lease, hires the staff, and keeps the revenue.
That has a specific consequence for anyone searching for a cost figure. Selling a franchise in the United States triggers the FTC Franchise Rule, which forces the seller to hand a buyer a Franchise Disclosure Document at least 14 days before any money moves. LA Fitness sells nothing, so no such document exists at any state registration office. There is no Item 5 fee, no Item 7 investment range, no royalty rate, and no Item 19 sales disclosure. Any page quoting an LA Fitness franchise cost made the number up.
Three brands run under the same ownership: LA Fitness, City Sports Club at the value end, and Club Studio in the boutique format. A fourth, Esporta Fitness, was wound down starting in 2024, with those clubs either rebranded back to LA Fitness or closed outright.
The Esporta wind-down is worth sitting with, because it shows what corporate ownership buys. Retiring an entire brand meant a signage order and an internal decision. Had those clubs been franchised, the same move would have required renegotiating or terminating hundreds of franchise agreements, each carrying a 10 or 20 year term and a franchisee who paid for the right to use the name being retired. Operators who want to test formats and kill the ones that miss have a strong reason to keep every location on their own books.
| LA Fitness club | Franchised gym | |
|---|---|---|
| Who funds the build | Fitness International | You |
| Who signs the lease | Fitness International | You |
| Who employs the staff | Fitness International | You |
| Disclosure document | None, none required | FDD delivered 14 days before signing |
| Published unit economics | None | Item 19, when the brand files one |
| What you can buy | A membership | A territory and a franchise agreement |
| Asset at exit | None | A business you can sell or transfer |
The row that decides everything is the disclosure row. A private corporate chain owes the public nothing about how a single club performs. A franchisor that makes any financial performance claim has to put it in Item 19 with a stated sample, a stated period, and a stated definition of revenue. That is the trade you are actually evaluating when you move from the brand you cannot buy to the brands you can.
| Anytime Fitness | Planet Fitness | Crunch Fitness | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Franchisor | Anytime Fitness Franchisor LLC | Planet Fitness Franchising LLC | Crunch Franchising, LLC |
| FDD vintage | 2026 | May 2026 | 2026 |
| Initial franchise fee | $42,500 | $40,000 | $35,000 |
| Item 7 investment | $539,329 to $905,482 | $1,282,500 to $5,386,000 | $2,147,500 to $5,367,000 |
| Typical footprint | 4,000 to 7,000 sq ft | 15,000 to 25,000 sq ft | Strip center or freestanding |
| Royalty | Flat $842 per month | 7% of membership dues | 5.0% of gross sales |
| Marketing | $900 per month | Up to 3% national, 7% local | 2% brand fund plus local minimum |
| Franchised units | 2,271 US at year-end 2025 | 2,432 US at year-end 2025 | 481 at year-end 2025 |
| Item 19 headline | $398,982 median | $1,863,300 middle-third median | $2,848,462 middle-third median |
| Item 19 sample | 1,683 centers | 2,291 franchised clubs | 331 franchised clubs |
Anytime Fitness is the only one of the three a single-unit buyer can realistically finance. Its 2026 FDD puts a 4,000 to 7,000 square foot club at $539,329 to $905,482 on a vanilla shell lease, against a $42,500 fee that actually ranged from $22,500 to $42,500 in 2025 depending on veteran status and multi-unit commitments. Its fee structure is also the odd one out: rather than a percentage royalty, franchisees pay a flat $842 per month, plus $900 per month to the brand fund and $799 per month for the technology package, with the franchisor reserving the right to switch to a royalty of up to 8% of gross revenue. On a club doing $400,000 a year the flat structure beats a percentage. On one doing $1.5 million it is not close. Our Anytime Fitness cost breakdown works through the quartile data behind that.
Planet Fitness sits in the middle on capital and at the top on ongoing load. The 2026 FDD puts the fee at $40,000, currently waived for agreements written under an area development commitment, but the recurring stack is where the money goes: a 7% royalty on EFT dues, a national fund capped at 3%, and a local advertising requirement of the greater of $60,000 or 7% of cumulative monthly EFT in a normal year. Add those and roughly 17% of membership revenue is spoken for before payroll or rent. Item 6 also discloses a re-equipment obligation currently running $333,000 to $995,000 every 5 to 9 years and a remodel obligation of $250,000 to $1,200,000 that can recur as often as every 12 years. Those are capital events, not operating expenses, and they land on the franchisee. The Planet Fitness franchise cost guide covers how that reshapes a ten-year model.
Crunch is the most expensive build and the highest revenue. The Crunch Fitness format runs $2,147,500 to $5,367,000 before real estate, with leasehold improvements alone at $950,000 to $3,000,000 and fitness equipment at $850,000 to $1,500,000. A separate Crunch Select format runs $3,192,500 to $5,277,000. Against that, the 2026 Item 19 reports 331 domestic franchised clubs, 94% of those that qualified, sorted into thirds: a $4,731,483 median in the upper third, $2,848,462 in the middle, and $1,666,443 in the bottom, with the single highest club at $7,614,726 and the lowest at $812,737. The Crunch cost analysis separates the two formats.
Pull the full Crunch Franchising data sheet for the Item 6 fee table and the state-level unit counts behind those numbers.
Three medians sitting in one table look comparable. They are not, because each franchisor defines the top line differently.
Crunch counts Gross Revenue as everything: recurring dues, cash sales, personal training, and retail. Anytime Fitness counts membership revenue, coaching revenue, and pay-per-visit fees, but explicitly excludes enrollment fees and vending income. Planet Fitness counts the narrowest slice of all, reporting Annual EFT Revenue, which is recurring monthly and annual dues drafted from members and nothing else. Paid-in-full memberships, retail, and every other source sit outside the figure. A Planet Fitness club doing $1.8 million in disclosed EFT revenue is taking in more than $1.8 million in total.
The definitions also explain the royalty design. Planet Fitness charges 7% on the same EFT base it reports, which keeps the royalty tied to the recurring line. Crunch charges 5% on everything, including personal training, which is why its clubs carry a higher disclosed top line and a lower stated rate.
Every one of these disclosures publishes a low number, and the low number is the one to underwrite against.
Crunch’s weakest reporting club did $812,737 against a build that started at $2.1 million. Planet Fitness’s weakest franchised club drafted $429,581 in 2025 EFT revenue per the 2026 FDD, in a system where the bottom third averaged $1,260,539. Anytime Fitness’s weakest center did $90,337 against a median of $398,982, and 66 centers closed permanently during the 12 months the Item 19 measures.
That last figure deserves its own line. Anytime Fitness reported 2,318 US franchised centers at the start of 2023 and 2,271 at the end of 2025, a net decline in all three years. Crunch went the other direction, from 415 franchised clubs to 481 during 2025 alone. Neither number tells you whether a specific club in a specific market works, but a system contracting for three straight years is a question to bring to validation calls rather than a detail to skip past.
Most people searching this phrase are not attached to the LA Fitness name. They walked into a busy club, watched the members come through the door, and wondered whether the business behind it is buyable. The honest answer is that this particular one is not, and that the buyable versions of it come with a disclosure document the corporate chains never have to produce. 24 Hour Fitness sits on the same corporate side, and LongRange Capital acquired the chain in January 2026.
That document is the real difference. It gives you a build cost with a stated low and high, a fee schedule you can model, a unit count you can track, and a sales table with a floor in it. LA Fitness offers none of that outside its own finance department. Weigh the two before you decide the bigger brand was the better business.
Compare the fitness franchises that fit a smaller budget, or browse every brand with a filed FDD. We read the document itself, Items 5, 6, 7, and 19, rather than the franchisor’s opportunity page.
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About this analysis The franchise data in this article is drawn from VetMyFranchise's structured analysis of 2,300+ Franchise Disclosure Documents filed with U.S. state regulators. See our data & methodology.
No. LA Fitness sells no franchises anywhere in the United States or Canada. Fitness International, LLC builds, owns, and staffs every club itself, which is why no Franchise Disclosure Document for the brand exists at any state registration office. Any website quoting an LA Fitness franchise fee or investment range is inventing it. The company does not offer the opportunity, so there is no fee to quote.
Fitness International, LLC, a privately held company that also operates City Sports Club and Club Studio. Because it is private, it publishes no 10-K and no unit economics. Esporta Fitness, a fourth brand in the group, was wound down beginning in 2024, with clubs either rebranded back to LA Fitness or closed. Retiring a brand that way is straightforward when you own every location and answer to no franchisees.
Planet Fitness, Crunch, and Anytime Fitness all franchise in the US and all file FDDs with Item 19 sales data. Crunch charges $35,000 against a $2,147,500 to $5,367,000 investment for its Crunch Fitness format. Planet Fitness charges $40,000 against $1,282,500 to $5,386,000 in its 2026 FDD. Anytime Fitness charges $42,500 against $539,329 to $905,482, which is the only entry point under a million dollars among the three.
It depends on the format and on how the franchisor defines revenue. Crunch reports a $2,848,462 median for the middle third of 331 reporting franchised clubs in 2025, with a $7,614,726 high and an $812,737 low. Planet Fitness reports 2025 medians of $1,311,575, $1,863,300, and $2,595,549 across the bottom, middle, and top thirds of 2,291 franchised clubs in its 2026 FDD, but that figure counts recurring membership dues only. Anytime Fitness reports a $398,982 median across 1,683 centers on a much smaller footprint.
Capital and control. A 40,000 square foot club with a pool and courts costs more to build than most individual buyers can fund, and an operator with balance sheet access does not need franchisee money to grow. Staying corporate also lets a company retire a format, reprice memberships, or close a market without renegotiating hundreds of franchise agreements. Franchising solves a growth capital problem that Fitness International, Life Time, and Equinox do not have.
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