How to cancel a membership

A membership is any agreement that keeps billing you on a schedule until you end it: a contract with a gym, a paid club card at a store, an association you renew every year or an app you pay for every month. These are the kinds of membership people most often need to cancel, each with its own category of guides.

• Gyms and fitness clubs · 141 guides

  Gym, studio and fitness app memberships. Many gym contracts ask for notice in writing, set a notice window before the next billing date and tie the cancellation to your home club.

• Warehouse clubs, associations and clubs · 13 guides

  Paid shopping memberships, motoring and member associations and other clubs. They usually renew on the anniversary of the day you joined.

• Streaming services · 61 guides

  Video, music and audio memberships that renew every month. Check whether an app store, a phone carrier or a TV provider bills you instead of the service itself.

• Apps and software · 78 guides

  Paid app and software memberships. Plans bought inside an app are often billed by the app store, which then has to end them.

• Wine clubs · 11 guides

  Clubs that ship and charge on a schedule. Skipping a shipment keeps the membership running, so the request has to say the membership should end.

• Food, meal kit and delivery clubs · 22 guides

  Meal kits and delivery memberships that charge before each box or each billing period. The request has to arrive before the next order is charged.

• Coffee clubs · 12 guides

  Coffee subscriptions that roast and ship on a schedule, often with a cut-off date for changes before each shipment.

1. 1

   Find how the membership takes cancellations

   Read the cancellation section of your membership agreement or the terms on the account page. Note the method it names, the address for notices and any form it asks for. Our company guides list how each company takes cancellations and the mailing address we hold for it.

2. 2

   Check the renewal date and the notice period

   Find the next billing or renewal date on your latest statement or invoice, and any notice the agreement asks for before it. The cancellation deadline calculator gives you the last safe day to post a letter.

3. 3

   Write and sign the letter

   Put everything the company needs to act in one page, as listed below, then date and sign it. Ask for the membership to end, not to be paused or frozen.

4. 4

   Send it with a delivery record

   Mail the letter to the address for notices in a way that records the mailing date and the delivery, such as Certified Mail. Keep the receipt, the tracking record and a copy of the signed letter. Our guide to Certified Mail for cancellations explains what each record proves.

5. 5

   Watch the next statement

   Check that the charge stops after the end date. If it does not, your letter and delivery record are what you show the company and your card issuer: see what to do when a company keeps charging you.

A cancellation letter works when the company can act on it without writing back to you. Include:

• Your full name and postal address as they appear on the membership.
• Your member number, or the email address on the account when there is no number.
• The home club, location or plan name, if the membership has one.
• One plain sentence saying that you are cancelling the membership.
• The date the cancellation should take effect.
• A request to stop every future charge, including household or family members billed on the same account.
• A request for written confirmation of the end date.
• The date you wrote the letter and your signature.

The cancellation letter template builds this letter from your details, and the membership letter template is set out for clubs and associations. For a contract that insists on notice in writing, read how to cancel a membership that requires a letter.

Many memberships are easy to join and harder to leave. The cancel option can sit several screens deep in an account, a phone call can turn into a retention offer, and a chat or a call leaves you with nothing that shows what you asked for and when.

A signed letter is a written request with a date on it. Sent by Certified Mail, it also comes with a mailing receipt and a delivery record from USPS. If the company says it never heard from you, or the next charge arrives anyway, those records show when your request was sent and when it was delivered.

Keep the signed copy, the mailing receipt and the delivery record together until the last charge has stopped.

Gym contracts are the membership most often tied to written notice, and several states set rules for them. Our guide to gym membership cancellation law covers the 30 states we have checked, with what each statute requires, and how to cancel a gym membership by mail walks through the letter step by step.