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Sam’s Club Plus costs $120 a year. The basic Club tier costs $60. Both were read from Sam’s Club’s own membership page on 19 September 2026.
So the upgrade question is narrower than “is Plus good value.” You are deciding whether a specific list of extras is worth $60 a year. Everything below works out how much of that $60 you would actually get back.
The two tiers, side by side
| Club | Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| Annual price | $60 | $120 |
| Instant Savings, member fuel prices, Scan & Go | Included | Included |
| Two membership cards | Included | Included |
| Free curbside pickup | Included | Included |
| 2% Sam’s Cash back in club | — | Up to $750/year |
| Free shipping, orders over $50 | — | Included |
| Free delivery from club, orders over $50 | $12 per delivery | Included |
| Early shopping hours | — | Up to 1 hour |
| Pharmacy, optical, tire savings | — | Included |
Note the top half. Instant Savings, fuel pricing, Scan & Go, the second card and — this one surprises people — free curbside pickup are all on the $60 tier; Sam’s Club’s own benefit text says curbside is “free for all members on eligible orders.” If that was your reason to upgrade, stop here.
The break-even on cash back alone: $3,000 a year
The headline Plus benefit is 2% back in Sam’s Cash. Sam’s Club describes it as: earn Sam’s Cash back on in-club qualifying purchases up to $750 per year.
Two per cent of your spending has to cover a $60 gap. That is one division:
$60 ÷ 0.02 = $3,000 of qualifying in-club spending a year
Which is $250 a month, every month, at Sam’s Club specifically. Below that, the cash back alone does not repay the upgrade. At $150 a month you spend $1,800 a year and earn $36 — you are $24 down. At $400 a month you spend $4,800 and earn $96, and you are $36 up.
Check this rather than estimating it. Your purchase history is in the Sam’s Club app under your account, and almost everyone’s guess is high, because the trips you remember are the big ones.
One caveat you should hold onto: Sam’s Club does not say on its membership pages which purchases are “qualifying.” Warehouse clubs commonly exclude fuel, tobacco, gift cards and pharmacy from cash-back calculations, but we could not confirm any specific exclusion on Sam’s Club’s own pages, so we are not going to assert one. If a large share of your spend is fuel, treat the $3,000 figure as optimistic until you have checked the terms on your own account.
The faster route to break-even: five deliveries
The cash back is the benefit Sam’s Club leads with, but it is rarely the one that pays for the upgrade. Delivery is.
Same-day or next-day delivery from your local club on orders over $50 is free for Plus members. Club members pay $12 per delivery — Sam’s Club’s own benefit description states that fee outright. So:
$60 ÷ $12 = 5 deliveries a year
Five. That is the entire hurdle. Order delivery roughly every other month and the benefit alone repays the upgrade, with every dollar of cash back on top as profit. For anyone buying heavy, awkward items — water, litter, detergent, dog food — this is a far more realistic break-even than $3,000 of spending.
Put them together and fill in your own numbers
The honest test combines both, because most people get part of the way there on each:
(your annual in-club spend × 0.02) + (your deliveries per year × $12) — and if that beats $60, upgrade.
A household spending $1,500 a year in club and taking three deliveries: $30 + $36 = $66. Upgrade, narrowly. A household spending $1,500 and taking none: $30. Don’t.
Add free shipping on online orders over $50 if you want — but add what you actually paid in shipping last year, not what the benefit sounds like it’s worth. A benefit you don’t use is worth zero, not its list price.
The $750 ceiling, and who it affects
The 2% is capped at $750 of Sam’s Cash a year, which works out at $37,500 of qualifying spending. Above that, the cash back stops growing and your effective rate falls.
For a household this is irrelevant — you would need to spend over $3,100 a month in club to reach it. For a small business running purchases through a Plus membership it is a real ceiling, worth knowing before you build a habit around a rate that quietly stops applying.
The promotion is doing a lot of work right now
Through 30 September 2026, Sam’s Club is running a new-member offer: $25 for the first year of Club, $55 for the first year of Plus, both read from the same page on 19 September 2026. Renewals, current members and anyone who was a member in the past six months are excluded.
Look at what that does to the decision. In year one the gap between the tiers is $30, not $60 — which halves both break-evens, to $1,500 of spending or three deliveries. Plus looks like an easy yes.
In year two, both tiers snap back to $60 and $120, and the gap doubles. This is the same trap we wrote about in meal-kit intro offers: the introductory price is a real saving, but it is not the price you will be paying, and the renewal arrives automatically. Sam’s Club’s terms are explicit that your card is charged the full rate annually unless you cancel at least 24 hours beforehand.
Decide on the $60 gap. Take the $30 year as a bonus if the answer is yes anyway.
The benefits that only matter if they matter
Four Plus-only extras are worth nothing to most people and a lot to a few:
- $0 prescriptions on up to 10 select generic medications, plus savings on pet prescriptions. If one of your regular prescriptions is on that list, this can exceed the $60 on its own.
- 50% off tire installation. A single set of four is worth checking against the gap.
- 40% off additional pairs of glasses after a first pair for the same person.
- One hour of early shopping, which is a preference, not a saving.
On both tiers, add-on memberships run $45 a year each. The Sam’s Club Mastercard pays Plus members 3% back in club against 1% for Club members; that card is a credit application rather than a subscription and is outside what this site covers, but the rate changes your arithmetic if you already hold it.
What about Prime?
If delivery is your real motivation, note that these solve different problems. Amazon Prime costs about $140 a year — that figure is approximate and we could not confirm it on Amazon’s own pages, which return errors to automated requests, so treat it as a rounded number rather than a quote.
Prime delivers individual items quickly; a Sam’s Club Plus delivery brings a bulk order from a warehouse five miles away. Want detergent by the drum? Plus. Want one specific thing tomorrow? Prime. Our full breakdown of what Prime costs to run has that arithmetic. Paying for both because each is individually defensible is how subscription bills reach the numbers they do.
Verdict
Upgrade to Plus if you spend more than about $250 a month in club, or you take five or more club deliveries a year, or a regular prescription of yours is on the $0 generics list. Any one of those clears the $60 on its own, and most Plus members clear it on two.
Stay on the $60 Club tier if you are a bulk-staples shopper who goes every six or eight weeks, spends under roughly $2,000 a year, picks everything up yourself and has never ordered a delivery. That is a large share of Sam’s Club members, and for them Plus is $60 a year buying about $40 of cash back. Curbside pickup — the benefit most often assumed to be the reason to upgrade — is already included at $60.
If BJ’s is your nearer club, is a BJ’s membership worth it runs the same upgrade question for BJ’s Club and Club+.
And if you are joining fresh, do not pick Plus on the strength of the $55 first-year price. That offer is for new members only — it will not help you upgrade an existing membership — and if the maths does not work at a $60 gap, it will not work next September. The renewal will not ask you first. If you do upgrade and then find you are not using it, our guide to cancelling subscriptions you’ve forgotten about covers doing it before the auto-renewal rather than after.
Prices verified at samsclub.com on 19 September 2026. Sam’s Club prices are exact and taken from the company’s own pages; the Amazon Prime figure is an approximation we could not confirm at source. Sam’s Club does not publish which purchases qualify for the 2%, and we have not assumed any exclusions.