To price a membership, add up what the benefits would cost a member if they bought them one at a time, then set the fee 10% to 30% below that. Check the price against your heaviest likely users, not the average, so the plan still makes money after cost of goods, GST and card fees. Offer an annual option and cap anything called unlimited.
Key takeaways
- Start from the retail value of the benefits, then discount it. Lavelle Hairdressers' bundle saved members $108 a year, about 12%.
- Model the plan against your top 10% of users. They join first and cost the most.
- Cap generous benefits clearly. Panera dropped the word 'Unlimited' in 2026 and capped drinks at 30 a month.
- Work out your margin after GST and fees, not on the sticker price.
- Price the annual plan well below twelve monthly payments to pull members into a year.
There used to be an Italian restaurant in Toronto called Grano. Its owners worked out they could sell something other than dinner: for $1,200 a year, members got four private speeches from prominent people, held at the restaurant.
Grano collected the fee up front, then sold food and wine to the same people on the night. Nobody paid $1,200 for four dinners. They paid for access they couldn't get anywhere else.
That's the first lesson of membership pricing. You're not pricing a product. You're pricing what it feels like to belong. The second lesson is less romantic: if you get the numbers wrong, your most loyal members can quietly bankrupt you.
Let me show you how to get both right.
What should a membership include before you set a price?
You can't price a membership until you know what's in it. I group membership benefits into four buckets:
- Free stuff they'd buy anyway (a coffee a day, two check-ups a year, free shipping).
- Member prices (20% off food, 10% off services, half-price drinks).
- Access (private events, booking priority, members-only content, a better tier of service).
- Status and peace of mind (recognition, a named tier, "we'll fix it first").
Bucket 1 costs you money every time it's used. Bucket 4 costs you almost nothing.
The strongest memberships mix them. In Australia, Greencross Vets' Healthy Pets Plus costs A$660 a year (A$696 for seniors), payable fortnightly, monthly or annually. It bundles unlimited consultations and free vaccinations (bucket 1) with 10% off services and products (bucket 2). Kogan FIRST is mostly bucket 2 and 3, and Kogan's loyalty subscriptions earned A$61.4 million in fiscal 2026.
If you can't list at least one benefit people would pay for on its own, stop here. In the book I put it this way: ask yourself if the benefit is substantial enough that people will pay for it beyond the main product you're selling them. If not, the member benefits model probably isn't your model.
How do you work out the right membership price?
Here's the five-step method I use. It works for a gym, a salon, a clinic, a car wash or an online community.
Step 1: Add up the retail value of the benefits
Price every benefit at what a member would pay without the membership, based on how often a typical member uses it.
Lavelle Hairdressers, a small Australian salon I wrote about in the book, bundled four treatments (style cut, blow-dry, shampoo and scalp massage) into a plan called Strength and Shine for $64 a month. Members saved $108 a year.
Let's do the maths. $64 × 12 = $768 a year. Add the $108 saving and the retail value is $876. So the member discount was about 12%.
That's a modest saving. It works because Lavelle bundled treatments people already bought. As I said in the book: if they don't like the service when it's sold individually, they will not fall in love with a bundle.
Step 2: Choose your saving
A membership needs a visible reason to commit. As a rule of thumb, aim for a saving of 10% to 30% on what members already buy, plus some access or status that costs you little.
Go lower than 10% and the membership feels like a direct debit with no upside. Go higher than 30% on product benefits and you're usually paying people to join.
Step 3: Model your heaviest members, not the average
This is where most memberships break.
The people who sign up first are the ones who'll use it most. Pret A Manger learned this in the UK. Club Pret offered up to five barista drinks a day for £30 a month. For a daily regular that was a bargain, and for Pret the heaviest users were the most expensive to serve. In July 2024 it switched to a £10-a-month plan for half-price drinks, and loyal heavy users were, in The Guardian's word, fuming.
So test your price against your top 10% of likely users. If the plan still makes money for them, it'll make money for everyone else.
Step 4: Cap anything you call "unlimited"
Unlimited is a beautiful word in marketing. It's a dangerous word in a spreadsheet.
Panera's Unlimited Sip Club always carried fine print (one drink every two hours). From 19 August 2026 Panera dropped the word "Unlimited," capped redemptions at 30 drinks a month and raised the monthly price to $14.99, while keeping the annual plan at $119.99.
Compare that with Mister Car Wash, where unlimited works. Its Unlimited Wash Club made up 79% of wash sales in 2025, with about 2.3 million members. Why? Nobody washes their car twenty times a month, and an automated tunnel's cost per wash is low. Usage is capped by real life.
Ask yourself: is my benefit naturally capped? If not, cap it in the terms and say so up front.
Step 5: Set the annual price, then the monthly price
Annual plans bring cash forward and lock in a year. Price them so the saving is obvious. Amazon Prime is $14.99 a month or $139 a year in the US, about 23% cheaper than paying monthly. Panera's monthly plan costs well over one-twelfth of its annual plan, which nudges members toward the annual commitment.
My rule of thumb: offer the annual plan at roughly two months free (about 17% off) unless your monthly churn is high, in which case you can afford a bigger annual discount. There's more on this in annual vs monthly plans.
Worked example: pricing a "coffee a day" club for a cafe
Let's put the five steps together for an Australian cafe. The numbers are illustrative, so swap in your own.
A coffee-a-day membership at A$69 a month
The offer: one barista coffee a day (capped at 30 a month), plus 10% off food.
Retail value: a flat white is A$5.50. A regular who comes in 16 times a month spends A$88 on coffee. At A$69, the member saves about 22%.
What A$69 is really worth to you:
- GST is one-eleventh of a GST-inclusive price: A$69 ÷ 11 = A$6.27. Revenue ex GST: A$62.73.
- Card and billing fees (assume 2%): A$1.38.
- Net revenue per member: A$61.35.
Cost to serve at A$1.30 per coffee (beans, milk, cup):
| Member type | Coffees a month | Coffee cost | Contribution per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average member | 16 | A$20.80 | A$40.55 |
| Heavy member (top 10%) | 28 | A$36.40 | A$24.95 |
| Uncapped "unlimited" user (two a day) | 60 | A$78.00 | −A$16.65 |
The plan makes money for the average and the heavy member. It only loses money if you let someone take two coffees a day. That's why the 30-a-month cap matters.
The real upside isn't on this table: a member who walks past your counter every morning buys food. Track members' food spend separately so you can see it.
Notice what the GST and fees did. A$69 sounded like A$69. After tax and fees it was A$61.35, an 11% haircut before a single coffee was made. (This is the bit your accountant will ask about first.) You can run your own numbers in the Subscription Price Calculator.
Check your membership price makes money
Enter your price, cost to serve, GST and fees, and see your margin per member in a minute.
What do real memberships charge in 2026?
Here's a snapshot of current membership price points and how each one is built. Use it to sense-check your own structure, not to copy a number.
| Membership | Price | What members get | Pricing lesson |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mister Car Wash Unlimited Wash Club | Monthly fee (varies by plan) | Unlimited washes at any location | Unlimited works when usage is naturally capped |
| Panera Sip Club | $14.99 a month or $119.99 a year | Up to 30 drinks a month | A clear cap beats fine print |
| Club Pret (UK) | £10 a month | Half-price drinks | "Member price" protects margin on every visit |
| Club Pret (US) | $40 a month | Up to five drinks a day plus 20% off food | Same brand, different market, different model |
| Planet Fitness | $15 Classic, Black Card from $24.99 | Gym access; Black Card adds guests and all locations | Two tiers give price-sensitive and value-seeking members a home |
| Greencross Healthy Pets Plus (AU) | A$660 a year | Unlimited consults, vaccinations, 10% off | Fortnightly payments make A$660 feel small |
| Amazon Prime (US) | $14.99 a month or $139 a year | Shipping, video and more | A big annual discount, plus half-price tiers for some groups |
| Uber One (US) | Up to $9.99 a month | $0 delivery fees, ride discounts | One headline benefit sells the plan |
Prices were current at 27 October 2026.
How many tiers should a membership have?
Two or three. Planet Fitness held a single $10 price from 1998 and still kept a higher Black Card tier for people who wanted more. When it raised the Classic price to $15 for new members in 2024, it was after price-testing in several markets.
If you go to three tiers, build them like this:
- Entry: the one benefit that defines you (the wash, the coffee, the check-up).
- Main: entry plus the extras most people ask for. This is the tier you want most people on.
- Premium: access and status. Priority booking, guests, a named level.
The good-better-best guide goes deeper, and the Pricing Table Builder will lay it out for you.
When is a membership the wrong choice?
I'm a big fan of memberships. But they're not always the answer.
- When customers buy rarely. If people visit once a year, a monthly fee feels like a penalty. Sell an annual plan or a prepaid pack instead.
- When your cost per use is high and usage isn't capped. That's Pret's five-drinks-a-day problem.
- When you can't deliver every month. A membership charges every month whether you deliver or not. Members notice.
- When the only benefit is a discount. Pure-discount clubs get compared with every sale your competitors run.
Gyms are the classic warning. In the book I noted that about 80% of people who sign up for a gym cancel within six months, and gyms need far more paying members than they could ever fit inside. It works for plenty of them. But it's not the safest model out there. The gym pricing guide covers how to make it safer.
What Australian rules apply to membership pricing?
As at October 2026, two things matter most. This is general information, so talk to an adviser about your own situation.
GST. If you're registered for GST, your membership fee to consumers should be shown GST-inclusive, and one-eleventh of it goes to the ATO. Price with that in mind. The GST on subscriptions guide covers the details, and the ATO's GST pages are the official source.
Subscription-trap rules from 1 July 2027. Parliament passed the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Unfair Trading Practices) Act 2026. From 1 July 2027 it requires key terms to be disclosed at sign-up, ongoing notices at times set by regulations (reminders before trials end and memberships renew are expected), and no unreasonable barriers to canceling. As at October 2026 the regulations setting reminder timing hadn't been made. If your membership auto-renews, read the subscription trap laws guide now, not in June 2027.
Free Subscription Profit Review
Australian business owners can book a free 30-minute review with a BPAG Accountants adviser. An honest conversation about:
- whether a subscription model could work for your business
- how recurring revenue could cover your fixed costs each month
- how it could lift what your business is worth
No cost, no obligation. General information only until we understand your situation.
What to do next
Here's your homework. It takes about an hour.
- List every benefit and its retail price.
- Estimate how often an average member and a heavy member would use each one.
- Set your saving between 10% and 30%.
- Run the heavy-member numbers after GST and fees. If they lose money, add a cap or move that benefit to "member price."
- Set the annual price at about two months free.
Then ask one question of your own business: what could my best customers get from me that nobody else can sell them? That's what Grano sold for $1,200 a year. Find yours, and the price gets much easier.
Frequently asked questions
Should a membership be cheaper than buying the same things one by one?
Yes, in most cases. Members need a reason to commit, and a visible saving is the simplest one. A 10% to 30% saving on what they already buy is common. The exception is access you can't buy any other way, such as Grano's private speeches, where exclusivity itself carries the price.
Should I charge a joining fee?
Only if joining has a real cost, such as an assessment, a fob or a starter kit. A joining fee adds friction at the exact moment someone is deciding. Many operators waive it as a launch offer, which tells you how much it really matters. If you keep one, make it small and explain what it pays for.
How many membership tiers should I offer?
Two or three. One tier gives members no choice except yes or no. More than three makes people stall. A common shape is an entry tier with the core benefit, a main tier with the extras most people want, and a premium tier with access or status. Planet Fitness runs on two: Classic and Black Card.
Is a membership the same as a subscription?
They overlap. A subscription is a recurring payment for an ongoing product or service. A membership is a subscription where the customer pays for belonging: access, member prices, priority or status. Most memberships are billed as subscriptions, but members expect recognition as well as product.
How often should I review my membership price?
Once a year, on a fixed date, and whenever your cost to serve moves sharply. Small, predictable reviews are easier on members than a big jump after years of no change. When you do raise the price, consider keeping existing members on their current rate for a period.
Can I offer founding-member pricing?
Yes, and it works well for a launch. Offer a lower rate to the first group of members, state how long it lasts or whether it is locked in, and keep the promise. Write the terms down at sign-up so nobody is surprised later, especially under Australia's subscription rules starting 1 July 2027.
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Robert Coorey, MBA
Robert is the author of The Subscription Playbook and Feed a Starving Crowd and a Director at BPAG Accountants in Sydney. More about Robert.
Sources
- Panera Sip Club changes (Restaurant Dive, 14 Jul 2026)
- Pret A Manger customers left fuming over end of 'free drinks' (The Guardian, 18 Jul 2024)
- Mister Car Wash to go private as growth moderates in 2025 (Car Wash Pro, 19 Feb 2026)
- Planet Fitness raises membership fee for first time since 1998 (CBS News, 2024)
- Greencross Vets Healthy Pets Plus (accessed Oct 2026)
- Kogan.com FY26 results announcement (24 Aug 2026)
- Amazon Prime pricing (accessed 27 Oct 2026)
- ATO: GST basics
Facts and prices checked 27 October 2026. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.