Why Equinox works

Equinox arrived in London in 2012 with a single club on Kensington High Street. Fourteen years later it has three: Kensington, Bishopsgate in the City, and E by Equinox on St James's Street. That is the entire London estate. PureGym alone has more branches inside the M25 than Equinox has in the country.

This is not slow expansion. It is the product.

Scarcity is the point

A budget chain's economics reward density — the more branches, the more members within walking distance of one. Equinox inverts that. Three sites, each in a postcode that does the marketing for it: Kensington at the edge of the Royal Parks, St James's in the clubland of Mayfair, Bishopsgate beside Liverpool Street and the money.

Membership runs from roughly £245 to over £470 a month depending on club and access tier, with Kensington around £297 on an annual commitment. On top sits a joining fee that has ranged from £250 to £400, occasionally waived. The company's own line is that it isn't fitness, it's life — which tells you they are not selling gym access, and are not pretending to.

Not one of the three London clubs has a swimming pool.

What the money actually buys

Not water. Every Equinox in London is pool-free, which means a member pays around six times what Nuffield Health charges and gets less wet-side facility than a £42 council leisure centre.

What it buys instead is density of a different kind. Bishopsgate runs to five floors and 32,000 square feet. Kensington puts its strength floor under a domed skylight in an art deco shell. Both carry full-service spas, eucalyptus steam rooms and dry saunas, dedicated yoga, Pilates and cycling studios, and Tier X — a personal training programme extending into sleep and nutrition coaching rather than just sessions on the floor.

E by Equinox at St James's goes further again, dropping the conventional gym model almost entirely in favour of one-to-one training, cryotherapy, compression therapy and a dedicated regeneration room.

The service layer

The details people actually cite are small and relentless: chilled eucalyptus towels, laundry valet, toiletries and razors stocked in the changing rooms, staff-to-member ratios that mean equipment gets re-racked without you doing it. None of this is fitness. All of it is friction removed.

That is the real proposition. At this price the gym is not competing with other gyms — it is competing with the hour you would otherwise spend commuting to one, queueing for a rack, or carrying a kit bag home.

The honest counterweight

Equinox is not universally admired, and the criticism is specific rather than snobbish. Reviewers regularly note that the UK clubs carry a narrower equipment selection than the American ones, which stings at the price. Members of Third Space — a few streets from St James's and roughly £100 a month cheaper — frequently argue they get more club for less money, and given Third Space clubs do have pools, that argument has teeth.

The annual commitment and joining fee also make it an expensive mistake. A budget chain lets you leave next month for nothing. Here, a bad fit costs you the best part of £4,000.

Who it suits

People whose time is worth more than the difference in price, who work or live within a short walk of one of three specific postcodes, and who want a spa and a serious training programme in the same building. If you want to swim, or you live anywhere else in London, the maths falls apart quickly.

Prices change and vary by tier and promotion. Figures here reflect publicly reported rates in 2026 — confirm with the club before joining. We have no commercial relationship with any operator listed on this site.