What the report is actually telling you

The True Monthly Cost figure is the number that matters most. A lot of people skip the hidden costs section and just enter their membership fee — which gives a technically accurate but financially dishonest result. Transport to the gym, protein powder, and gear are expenses you wouldn’t be making if you weren’t a member. Once those go in, the True Monthly Cost tends to run 40–80% higher than the membership line on its own. That’s the real number you’re deciding whether to keep paying. It’s also why the Money Burn figure below can look larger than the membership fee by itself — Money Burn is calculated from this full True Monthly Cost, not the membership line alone, so if half your possible visits are missed, half of everything you’re spending — hidden costs included — is going toward sessions that never happened.

The Membership Score combines two things: how often you go relative to a realistic three-times-a-week baseline, and whether your per-visit cost is defensible at that frequency. A score above 60 means both factors are working in your favour. Between 30 and 60, one of them isn’t — usually attendance. Below 30, both are off, and the financial case for the membership becomes difficult to make. The two halves are weighted 60% utilization and 40% cost efficiency, which is why adding visits doesn’t always lift the score by itself — if more visits also mean more nutrition or transport spend, cost-per-visit can stay stubbornly high even as attendance improves, since both numbers move together.

The three verdicts, and what drives each one

KEEP appears when the cost-per-visit is low enough and attendance is high enough that no realistic alternative — home setup, outdoor training, class passes — would deliver better value at the same price. The membership is earning what you’re paying.

DOWNGRADE appears when the membership tier is mismatched with actual use. Paying for unlimited peak access when you visit twice a week at 7am is the most common version of this. The fix isn’t to quit — it’s to find a cheaper tier that matches how you actually use the gym rather than how you planned to.

CANCEL appears when neither attendance nor cost-per-visit are in defensible range. At that point the Money Burn figure — what you’re spending on sessions that never happen — is usually larger than what a comparable home setup would cost over several months. The calculator shows the Home Gym Payoff figure alongside the verdict for exactly this comparison, built on a $600 baseline for a functional basic setup — adjustable dumbbells, a pull-up bar, resistance bands, and a mat — which is a real lower bound for equipment that covers most strength and conditioning work; a barbell and rack or cardio machines would push that payoff timeline out considerably. None of this accounts for accountability, the social environment, access to equipment you don’t own, or the motivation that comes from training somewhere dedicated — those factors are real and have value the calculator isn’t measuring. A CANCEL verdict means the numbers alone don’t justify the cost, not that the intangibles don’t; only the person paying for them knows what they’re worth.

What the Loyalty Penalty means in practice

Gyms price month-to-month memberships at a premium over annual commitments — typically 12–18% higher per month. If you’ve been paying monthly for a year on a membership you use consistently, you’ve spent roughly 1.5 extra months of fees compared to signing an annual contract. The Loyalty Penalty figure shows this as a cumulative total. It’s not an argument to commit to a gym you’re uncertain about — it’s information for people who are already certain they’re staying but haven’t switched plans.