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A basic Costco membership costs $65 a year. Sam’s Club and BJ’s both cost $60. All three were read from the clubs’ own sign-up pages on 24 October 2026: Costco’s join page, Sam’s Club’s membership page and BJ’s membership page.
A $5 gap is not what decides this. Two things are: which club you can actually get to, and whether the 2%-back upgrade all three sell earns back its fee on your spending. The second is arithmetic, so that is what this page does.
The three clubs side by side
| Costco | Sam’s Club | BJ’s | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base membership | $65/yr (Gold Star) | $60/yr (Club) | $60/yr (Club) |
| Top tier | $130/yr (Executive) | $120/yr (Plus) | $120/yr (Club+) |
| Cost of the upgrade | $65 | $60 | $60 |
| Cash back on the top tier | 2%, up to $1,250/yr | 2%, up to $750/yr | 2%, up to $500/yr |
| Cards included | 2 (you + one household member) | 2 | 2 (you + one household member) |
| Extra people | — | — | Up to 3 more at $35 each |
| Extra on the top tier | Early shopping hours | Walmart+ included | 5¢/gal off BJ’s Gas |
Every figure is from the clubs’ own pages. Each also charges sales tax on the fee where it applies, which none of the headline prices include.
Is the base membership worth paying at all?
A membership fee only pays off if the club’s prices beat where you would otherwise shop by enough to cover it. That gives one division:
membership fee ÷ your annual spend at the club = the discount you need to break even
At Costco’s $65: spend $1,300 a year ($108 a month) and you need to be saving 5% against your supermarket. Spend $650 a year and you need 10%. At Sam’s Club or BJ’s the $60 fee makes those figures $1,200 and $600.
The clubs don’t publish a like-for-like basket, so check it yourself: price your ten most-bought items per unit at your usual store and against a club receipt. Under 5% cheaper, at under about $100 a month, and the fee isn’t paying for itself.
Is the 2% upgrade worth it? The break-even for each
All three top tiers sell the same headline: 2% back. The upgrade has to repay its own cost, so:
Costco: $65 ÷ 0.02 = $3,250 a year (about $271 a month)
Sam’s Club: $60 ÷ 0.02 = $3,000 a year ($250 a month)
BJ’s: $60 ÷ 0.02 = $3,000 a year ($250 a month)
Below those numbers, the cash back alone loses money. Here is what that looks like at three spending levels, counting the 2% and nothing else:
| Annual club spend | 2% back | Costco Executive (net of $65) | Sam’s Plus (net of $60) | BJ’s Club+ (net of $60) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $2,400 ($200/mo) | $48 | −$17 | −$12 | −$12 |
| $4,800 ($400/mo) | $96 | +$31 | +$36 | +$36 |
| $9,600 ($800/mo) | $192 | +$127 | +$132 | +$132 |
Three caveats, one per club. BJ’s membership terms exclude BJ’s Gas, alcohol, tobacco and gift cards from rewards, among other things — our BJ’s breakdown has the full list — so strip those out of your spend before you check it against $3,000. Sam’s Club does not publish on its membership pages what counts as a “qualifying” purchase, so treat its column as a best case. And Costco’s own terms say, in so many words, that the reward is “not guaranteed to be equal to or greater than” the upgrade fee. Do the sum before you upgrade.
Where the caps bite
For a family the caps are small print. For a small business buying through a membership, they decide which club wins:
Costco: $1,250 ÷ 0.02 = $62,500 of spending before the 2% stops
Sam’s Club: $750 ÷ 0.02 = $37,500
BJ’s: $500 ÷ 0.02 = $25,000
A household spending $800 a month is nowhere near any of them. A business stocking an office or a café can pass BJ’s cap, after which every further dollar earns nothing — and Costco’s ceiling, two and a half times higher, is worth the extra $5.
What each top tier adds besides the 2%
Sam’s Club Plus now includes Walmart+. Sam’s Club’s membership page says so directly — “now includes Walmart+” — and lists free delivery from Walmart, gas savings of up to 10¢ a gallon, and a video-streaming choice as part of the $120 tier. This is newer than our Sam’s Club Plus breakdown, which priced Plus without it.
If you already pay for Walmart+, that changes the maths completely: the upgrade could replace a subscription you are paying for separately. We can’t put a number on it, because walmart.com blocks automated requests and we won’t quote a Walmart+ price we couldn’t read from Walmart itself. Check your own statement for what you pay.
BJ’s Club+ adds 5¢ a gallon at BJ’s Gas on top of the base member price. At that rate:
$60 ÷ $0.05 = 1,200 gallons a year
That is about 23 gallons a week — roughly two full tanks of a mid-size car, every week. Most commuters won’t come close; add it to the rewards sum rather than relying on it.
Costco Executive adds early shopping hours — 9 to 10 a.m. on weekdays and Sunday, 9 to 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, per Costco’s page.
Families: the cheapest way to get more people in
All three include a second card for someone in your household. Beyond two people, only BJ’s prices extra members on its join page: up to three more at $35 each. A household of four adults at BJ’s:
$60 + (2 × $35) = $130 a year
Costco’s join page lists no price for a third personal cardholder. Sam’s Club’s sign-up page offers add-on memberships, but the price field showed $0 when we read it — almost certainly a placeholder rather than a real price — so we can’t compare that line either.
The new-member offer at Costco
Costco was running a new-member offer when we checked: a $40 Digital Costco Shop Card with Executive or $20 with Gold Star. The terms matter. You have to set up auto-renewal on a Visa card or a Mastercard debit card at sign-up, and anyone who has been a Costco member “in any capacity” in the last 18 months is excluded.
That auto-renewal is the point of the offer. A $20 card that sets up a $65 renewal you forget about is a bad trade — the same trap we describe in our guide to cancelling forgotten subscriptions. Take the card, and put the renewal date in your calendar the same day.
Costco also states a 100% satisfaction guarantee on the membership itself, with limitations. On payments: Visa is the only credit card brand on Costco’s accepted list. If your everyday credit card is a Mastercard or Amex, that matters at Costco’s checkout.
If what you actually want is delivery
If the attraction is having things turn up at the door, a club is the long way round. Amazon Prime costs about $140 a year — an approximate figure, because Amazon’s own pages return errors to automated requests and we couldn’t confirm it there. Our Prime breakdown does that arithmetic separately.
The verdict
Choose by location first. A club 40 minutes away that you visit four times a year will not repay $60 however good its prices are. Between clubs within reach, the $5 difference in base fees is noise.
Upgrade to the 2% tier only if you spend more than about $250 a month at Sam’s Club or BJ’s, or $271 a month at Costco, on purchases that actually qualify. At Sam’s Club, also upgrade if you were already paying for Walmart+.
Pick Costco if you spend heavily enough to approach the other two clubs’ caps — a small business, or a very large household — since its $1,250 ceiling is by far the hardest to reach. Pick BJ’s if you need more than two cards in one household. Pick Sam’s Club Plus if you want the Walmart+ benefits anyway.
Don’t join any of them if you live alone or shop for two in small quantities, have limited storage, or can’t name ten items you would buy in bulk every month. A discount on 48 rolls of something you use slowly is not a saving; it is a pantry. And don’t take the upgrade in year one on a guess. Join on the base tier, keep three months of receipts, multiply by four, and run the 2% sum on the real number.
Prices verified on 24 October 2026 at costco.com/join-costco.html, samsclub.com/join and bjs.com/membership/club/. All three clubs’ figures are exact and taken from their own pages. BJ’s rewards exclusions are from its membership terms as read on 2 October 2026. Walmart+’s standalone price could not be read from Walmart and is not given. The Amazon Prime figure is an approximation we could not confirm at source.