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How to open a gym: steps, startup costs, and Texas rules

By the FindTheGym research team · Updated October 1, 2026 · 12 min read

Opening a franchise gym in 2026 costs anywhere from $349,200 for an F45 studio to $5,386,000 for a large Planet Fitness, according to the brands' own franchise disclosure documents. An independent gym of 3,000 to 5,000 square feet often opens for under $250,000. In Texas, any gym that bills members by recurring monthly draft also has to register with the Secretary of State and post a surety bond of up to $50,000 per location, and it can't get a sales tax permit until it has registered.

After the budget, location does the most damage when it's wrong, because most members come from within a few miles of the door.

How to open a gym in 10 steps

  1. Pick the model. Decide between an independent strength gym, a boutique class studio, or a franchise. The model sets your budget, your square footage, and your price point.
  2. Check demand within about 5 miles. Count competing gyms per resident around your target site and look at what they charge.
  3. Write the business plan. Use the SBA's format and build the financial projections from local prices, not national averages.
  4. Line up funding. Franchises publish liquid capital minimums. Independents need equipment, buildout, and at least a few months of rent in hand.
  5. Form the business and get an EIN. Register an LLC or corporation with the Texas Secretary of State and get a federal tax ID from the IRS.
  6. Sign the lease. Confirm with the city that the space is permitted for a gym before you sign anything.
  7. Register as a health spa and post the bond. Texas requires this for each location under Occupations Code chapter 702.
  8. Get a Texas sales tax permit. You'll need your health spa certificate to apply.
  9. Buy equipment and set up software. Booking, billing, and a website that shows your prices.
  10. Presell memberships, then open. Run ads and post on Google before the doors open, so the first month isn't empty.

How much does it cost to open a gym?

The honest range is $50,000 to more than $5 million, and the model you pick explains most of that spread. Franchise numbers below come from each brand's Item 7 (estimated initial investment) in its franchise disclosure document. Independent numbers come from vendor estimates, because nobody publishes an audited figure for independent gyms.

Model Estimated initial investment Upfront fee to brand Source
Independent gym or studio, 3,000 to 5,000 sq ft $50,000 to $250,000 (can top $500,000 in high-rent markets) None PushPress, April 2026
CrossFit affiliate Buildout and equipment not included $1,000 application, then $2,500 to $4,500 a year CrossFit
F45 Training $349,200 to $786,100 $60,000 2025 FDD
Anytime Fitness $539,329 to $905,482 $42,500 Anytime Fitness franchise site
Orangetheory Fitness $821,622 to $1,377,160 $59,950 2025 FDD
Planet Fitness $1,282,500 to $5,386,000 $40,000 2026 FDD

Most of a franchise budget goes into the building. Planet Fitness's 2026 disclosure puts leasehold improvements alone at $1,000,000 to $2,167,000, which tops the high end of Anytime Fitness's entire investment range. That's why big operators hunt for space someone else already built out. Crunch chief development officer John D'Anna told Franchise Times in July 2025, "Second or third generation locations are a real opportunity for us." An independent can play the same game on a small scale by leasing a former gym or studio with flooring and showers already in.

Franchisors also screen on your balance sheet: Anytime Fitness asks for $225,000 in liquid capital and a $380,000 net worth, and Orangetheory asks for $350,000 liquid and a $1 million net worth.

For independents, equipment is the line you control. PushPress puts a full equipment package at $50,000 to $98,000, split roughly into strength ($20,000 to $40,000), cardio ($15,000 to $25,000), specialty gear, and small items. A strength gym that skips the cardio row and buys used racks can come in well under that. A boutique studio with 20 identical bikes or reformers can't, because every station has to match.

If you've never run a gym, a franchise buys you a playbook and a brand, and you pay for both twice, once upfront and again in royalties (Orangetheory's is 8% of gross sales). If you've coached for years and already have 50 people who'd follow you, an independent gym at a fraction of the cost is the better bet. Our best gym franchises guide compares fees and royalties across more brands, and the brands directory shows where each one already operates.

Picking a site: members come from a few miles away

A gym's trade area is the zone most of its members live or work in, and it's small. Placer.ai's foot traffic data shows that in 2025, about 70% of visits to Club Pilates studios came from people traveling less than five miles, and more than 85% came from within ten. For a new gym, the residents within a few miles of the door matter more than the population of the whole metro.

So the question for any site is how many gyms already compete for the residents inside that radius, and what those residents can pay. We track both for Austin.

Inside Austin city limits, we count 736 gyms and studios. Against the 1,038,664 residents of the 37 ZIP codes that lie mostly inside the city, that's 7.1 per 10,000 people. The citywide number hides big differences between neighborhoods:

Area Gyms Per 10k residents Median price
South Austin 200 7.2 $79.50/mo
Central Austin 135 12.2 $59/mo
Northwest Austin 98 3.6 $79/mo
North Austin 93 2.3 $79.50/mo
East Austin 92 7.7 $99.50/mo
West Austin 59 5.3 $120/mo
Southeast Austin 30 2.0 $69.50/mo
Downtown Austin 29 26.1 $50/mo

Central Austin has 5.3 times North Austin's gym density and 6.1 times Southeast Austin's, and the median prices in North and Southeast Austin ($79.50 and $69.50) sit near the citywide $80. Thin competition at middle-of-the-market prices suits a budget or mid-tier gym better than a premium studio, which would be charging well above what the neighborhood already pays. Downtown shows 26.1 gyms per 10,000 residents, but only 11,114 people live there, so downtown gyms depend on people who work nearby and the resident count understates demand.

At the ZIP level, our opportunity index ranks the 35 Austin ZIPs we score from 0 to 100 using residents per gym within three miles, weighted by household income against the median of those ZIPs. 78725 in East Austin tops it at 100: 10,810 residents, a median household income of $102,819, 0 gyms inside the ZIP and 1 within three miles. The second-ranked ZIP, 78744 in Southeast Austin, scores 97 with 51,069 residents, a $78,474 median income, and 9 gyms, or 1.8 per 10,000. A score is a reason to go look, since a ZIP with almost no gyms can also have almost no retail space to lease.

The full ZIP table and map live on the Austin gym market page, and our market reports package the same data for a specific site. The gym site selection guide walks through drawing a trade area by drive time, and the methodology page explains how we count gyms and score ZIPs.

Writing a gym business plan

The SBA describes two formats. A traditional plan runs to dozens of pages with an executive summary, company description, market analysis, organization and management, service line, marketing and sales, funding request, and financial projections. A lean plan fits on one page. Write the traditional one even if no lender asks for it, because the market analysis and projections are where bad sites get caught.

For a gym, the market analysis should answer three things with numbers: how many competitors sit inside your trade area, what they charge, and how many residents they serve. The projection then comes down to one division. At the citywide median price above, every $10,000 of monthly cost (rent, payroll, loan payments, software) needs 125 paying members to cover it. If your rent is $12,000 and payroll is $15,000, you need about 338 members before you make a dollar, and the plan should show how many months that takes.

Use local prices for this. Austin's area medians include $50 downtown and $120 in West Austin, a gap that changes your break-even member count by a factor of 2.4. See Austin gym prices for the current numbers by neighborhood and gym type, and the gym membership cost guide for how pricing tiers compare.

How to open a gym in Texas: health spa registration and sales tax

Texas regulates gyms as "health spas" under Occupations Code chapter 702. The Secretary of State defines a health spa as a business that sells memberships providing "instruction in or the use of facilities for a physical exercise program." That covers nearly every gym, studio, and box that sells memberships.

What the law requires:

  • A health spa certificate of registration for each location. It costs $100, lasts one year, and must be renewed.
  • Security for each location, usually a surety bond. The amount runs from $20,000 to $50,000 and scales with the total prepaid memberships at that location. A location with $20,000 or less in prepaid memberships posts $20,000; one with more than $45,000 posts $50,000. The bonding company sets what you pay for the bond itself.
  • Registration before your sales tax permit. Section 702.107 requires you to give the Comptroller a copy of your health spa certificate when you apply for a sales tax permit, and the Comptroller can't issue the permit without it.

There are two exemptions from the bond. The first applies only if you never require contracts longer than 31 days, initiation fees, prepayment beyond 31 days, notes or installment contracts, or recurring automatic debits. That last condition rules out any gym that bills members by monthly auto-draft. The second exemption is for established operators with more than $50,000 in assets per location, the same ownership for at least five years, and no closure complaints. A new gym won't qualify for that one, so plan on buying a bond.

Sales tax is the other Texas surprise. The Comptroller treats gym initiation and membership fees as a taxable amusement service, at the 6.25% state rate plus up to 2% local, for a maximum combined rate of 8.25%. Some fitness revenue is not taxable: live instructional classes held at set times with a trainer giving instruction and feedback, and one-on-one personal training charged separately. Recorded classes are taxable. If you run a class studio, the line between a taxable membership and a nontaxable instructional class is worth an hour with a Texas CPA before you set up your billing categories, because fixing them later means amending returns.

Software and marketing: where Austin gyms leave room

New gyms worry about competing with established ones on equipment and reputation. In Austin, the easier place to win is online, because most existing gyms barely market at all. We crawled 645 Austin gym websites and checked all 736 Google listings. Website figures below are a share of crawled sites, and the review and Google post figures are a share of all listings.

What we checked Share of Austin gyms
No prices on their website 72.6%
No Meta (Facebook/Instagram) pixel 80.2%
No Google Ads conversion tag 89.5%
No Google Business Profile post in the last 90 days 89.4%
Fewer than 50 Google reviews 56.4%
No online booking on their site 36.9%

Publishing your price puts you among the 27.4% of crawled sites that show prices, and answers the question every prospect asks first. Installing the Meta pixel before launch lets you retarget everyone who visits your presale page, which the 80.2% of crawled competitor sites without a pixel can't do. With a median of 37 reviews per gym, a launch that asks every founding member for a review can pass the typical competitor's count quickly.

On software, the market is fragmented. Mindbody is the most common platform we detect, on 9.3% of crawled sites. Mariana Tek shows up on 4.2%, PushPress on 2.9%, and Arketa on 2.6%. Boutique studios lean toward class-booking tools, and strength gyms toward membership billing. Pick the one that handles your billing model (class packs, monthly auto-draft, or both) and lets members book from your own site. The gym software page shows which platforms Austin gyms use by category, and gym owners can see their own listing's gaps on the for gyms page.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to open a small gym?

PushPress estimates $50,000 to $250,000 for a 3,000 to 5,000 square foot gym or studio, with equipment taking $50,000 to $98,000 of that. A garage-style strength gym with used equipment can come in below the low end.

Do I need a license to open a gym in Texas?

Yes. Texas requires a health spa certificate of registration from the Secretary of State for each location, at $100 a year, plus a surety bond of $20,000 to $50,000 per location unless you qualify for an exemption. You also need a Texas sales tax permit, and you can't get one without the health spa certificate.

Are gym memberships taxed in Texas?

Yes. Membership and initiation fees are taxable as an amusement service at up to 8.25% combined. Live instructional classes at set times and separately charged one-on-one personal training are not taxable.

Is a franchise or an independent gym the better choice?

Depends on what you bring. A franchise costs roughly $350,000 to $5.4 million and gives you a brand, a build plan, and a sales system, in exchange for royalties for as long as you operate. An independent gym costs a fraction of that, keeps all the revenue, and makes sense if you already have coaching experience and a local following. In Austin, franchise brands make up 8.7% of the gyms we track and chains of any kind 13.6%, so most of the market is independent.

How far will members travel to my gym?

Not far. In Placer.ai's 2025 data, about 70% of Club Pilates visits came from within five miles and more than 85% from within ten. Size your market research to a radius of roughly three to five miles around the site.

How many members do I need to break even?

Divide your monthly costs by your average monthly price. At Austin's median recorded price of $80, $27,000 a month in rent and payroll needs about 338 members.

Sources