How much is a yoga or Pilates studio worth?

Short answer: a studio is worth its autopay members and its instructor bench — not its reformers alone, and not its Instagram. Realized sales for dance, Pilates, and yoga studios sit at 2.16× SDE (BizBuySell, trailing five years), the softest number in fitness, because so many studios are one teacher deep. See Yoga & Pilates Studios and run the valuation calculator.

The number

BizBuySell's realized multiples (closed sales, trailing five years through Q2 2026) report dance, Pilates, and yoga studios at 2.16× SDE and 0.66× revenue, with a $150,000 median sale price.

The size ladder from the IBBA Market Pulse, Q2 2026 is the frame for most small sales: 2.0× SDE under a $500,000 price, 2.8× at $500,000–$1M, 3.1× at $1M–$2M, then 4.8× EBITDA at $2–5M and 5.8× EBITDA at $5–50M. Size buys multiple because size usually means a team, systems, and less key-person risk.

For context only, large listed Recreation companies trade at 10.39× EV/EBITDA (Damodaran Online, January 2026). That is a proxy ceiling, not your price: public buyers get liquidity, audited books, and no owner behind the counter. Your buyer prices risk and opportunity cost at Main Street scale.

Worked example (assumptions labeled):

• Revenue: $320,000.
• SDE margin: 28% — an assumption.
• SDE: $320,000 × 28% = $89,600.
• Multiple: 2.16× SDE (BizBuySell, trailing five years).
• Math: $89,600 × 2.16 = $193,536.

Studios with a manager, several draw instructors, and a long lease can argue above this. A studio where the owner teaches 20 classes a week cannot — the buyer is purchasing your schedule.

How buyers actually value a yoga or Pilates studio

Buyers count active autopay members — people with a draft and a check-in inside 60 days — and then test how full the room actually is. For Pilates, the unit is the reformer: revenue per available reformer hour and class utilization at peak vs. off-peak. For yoga, it is members per class and how much of the schedule survives if the two most popular teachers leave.

• Pack liability — unused class packs are prepaid service you owe. Buyers count outstanding sessions and subtract.
• Intro conversion — intro offers are a funnel, not revenue; buyers want intro-to-member conversion they can verify.
• Instructor bench — who teaches, who subs, and whether students book the studio or follow a teacher's personal account.
• Teacher training — a real training program is high-margin, repeatable revenue buyers respect.
• Lease and equipment — years left, and whether the reformers are owned or financed.

What raises the price — and what kills it

Raises it: autopay as the dominant revenue share; class waitlists at peak hours; instructors under agreement who stay through transition; teacher-training cohorts that sell out; a 60–90 day seller transition plan in writing.

Kills it: owner-teacher dependence; churn nobody tracks ('we have 400 members' with empty rooms); January intro spikes treated as run-rate; a short lease in a hot retail corridor; reformers financed to the hilt.

Move your number

Shift packs to autopay: every member moved from a expiring pack to recurring billing is revenue a buyer can underwrite, and failed-payment recovery protects it — that billing layer is the Finix payments team's work. Run retention like a system: intro follow-up, absence check-ins, and pack-expiry nudges handled automatically are ClaroPro-team operations; in a studio, retention is the product quality. Get the book out of the owner's phone: booking, attendance, and churn reporting that a buyer can read in one dashboard — built by a Nova engineering team if your studio software will not give it to you — turns claims into evidence. Check yours: valuation calculator for studios.

This is an educational framework with shown math, not an appraisal; a real price is set by a real buyer on a specific day. These caveats sit on your side: they stop you overpaying for a member list full of expired packs, underselling a studio with real autopay depth, or closing before anyone counts what the studio still owes its students. Protecting the owner is the point of showing every assumption.