Home / Questions answered / Cancel a gym membership
Membership cancellationEvery gym chain cancels differently, and one of the big five publishes no rule at all.
Two of the five publish a real procedure with deadlines. Two defer everything to your club. One publishes nothing. All five are quoted below from their own pages.
The five chains, side by side
| Planet Fitness | Mail, in person, or member portal. Notice must be received by the 10th |
|---|---|
| LA Fitness | Mail, in person, or online. Mailed form counts by postmark, 5 business days out |
| Crunch | Varies by club; some clubs offer online cancellation |
| Anytime Fitness | Whatever your club’s membership agreement says |
| 24 Hour Fitness | No published procedure at all; cancel flow sits behind login |
The two chains that publish real rules
Planet Fitness takes cancellations three ways and runs on receipt:
Quoted from Planet Fitness
“Please note, 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.”
A separate, earlier deadline governs its annual fee (the 25th of the month before the fee
date), and a minimum-term membership ended early costs a $58 buyout fee
. The full
breakdown, with all three deadlines, is on our
Planet Fitness page.
LA Fitness runs on postmark, which is more forgiving, and it puts a refund promise in writing:
Quoted from LA Fitness
“A mailed cancellation form postmarked at least 5 business days before your next billing date should result in no further billings. If notice is postmarked within 5 business days, you may be billed once more. If this occurs, we will refund that additional billing.”
LA Fitness is also the one chain that tells you, itself, to make your cancellation provable:
its mail instructions add we recommend registered or certified mail and keeping a record for
your files
. Address, routes and the initial-term fee rule are on our
LA Fitness page.
The two chains that defer to your club
Anytime Fitness publishes no national rule, and says so plainly:
Quoted from Anytime Fitness
“All cancellation policies are outlined in the membership agreement for each location. The agreement covers the cost to cancel, how to cancel and more information on any additional termination fees you may incur.”
Each location is independently owned, so two Anytime Fitness clubs in the same city can hold you to different terms. What to ask your club for, and what the FAQ does commit to, is on our Anytime Fitness page.
Crunch sits in between: a route exists, but the deadline is your club’s:
Quoted from Crunch Fitness
“Some clubs offer online cancellation through your Member Portal under Manage Membership.”
Quoted from Crunch Fitness
“The required cancellation notice prior to your next billing date may vary based on the terms of your Membership Agreement. Please check your membership agreement or speak to your Home Club for more details.”
The chain that publishes nothing
We read 24 Hour Fitness’s public cancel page, its published Membership Policies, and the
cancellation section of its Terms of Use on August 19, 2026. The result is a finding in itself:
no cancellation notice period or procedure for gym memberships appears in any of them.
The policies page publishes a freeze policy (which requires at least ten days
notice);
the Terms of Use cancellation section governs only the 24GO app subscription; and the public
cancel page is a retention offer whose actual cancel flow sits behind a login. Your membership
agreement is the only document that states your notice period, so work from it, not from
anything a front desk tells you from memory.
The three traps that repeat across chains
- Receipt rules and postmark rules fail differently. Planet Fitness counts the day your club receives notice; LA Fitness counts the day you mailed it. If you are near a deadline under a receipt rule, mail is the wrong route: go in person or use the portal.
- The recurring annual fee has its own, earlier deadline. At Planet Fitness, notice that beats the monthly cutoff can still be weeks too late to stop the annual fee. Find your annual fee date before you decide when to cancel.
- An initial term changes everything. Inside a minimum term, Planet Fitness
charges its $58 buyout and LA Fitness applies a termination fee; Anytime Fitness says your
agreement covers
the cost to cancel
. Check which side of the term you are on first.
What about the federal click-to-cancel rule?
Do not count on it. The FTC announced its final Click-to-Cancel
rule in October 2024,
but in February 2026 the Commission revised the Negative Option Rule To Conform These Rules
to Federal Court Decisions
, and in March 2026 it opened a fresh comment period on the rule.
Whatever protection eventually settles, the document protecting you today is the agreement you
signed and your state’s own law, so anchor to those.
Quoted from Federal Trade Commission
“Revision of the Negative Option Rule, Withdrawal of the CARS Rule, Removal of the Non-Compete Rule To Conform These Rules to Federal Court Decisions”
Questions people actually ask
Can I just stop paying?
No. Every chain here bills a stored payment method on a cycle, and an unpaid cycle becomes a collections problem rather than a cancellation. End the agreement by the published route, or by the route in your contract where nothing is published.
Can I cancel by phone?
None of the five publishes a phone route for cancellation. Crunch lists phone as a way to contact your club about it. A call also produces no dated proof, which is what you need most.
What should I keep afterward?
The confirmation page or email if you cancelled online, the countersigned form if you went in person, or the certificate and a copy of the letter if you mailed it. Keep whichever one you have until at least two billing dates have passed cleanly.
My gym is not one of these five. What now?
The same three questions decide it anywhere: does notice count by receipt or postmark, does a separate annual fee run on its own deadline, and are you inside an initial term. Your membership agreement answers all three; the front desk may not.
How to cancel other things
Every one of these is read from the company’s own document and dated. See all 66 questions we have answered.