The formula
Take a gym's Google star rating. Add 25 imaginary reviews at 4.4 stars, which is roughly what a gym in this area scores. Average the lot. That is our number.
score = (rating x reviews + 4.4 x 25) / (reviews + 25)
The effect is simple and it is the whole point. A place with hundreds of reviews keeps nearly all of its rating, because hundreds of people are hard to argue with. A place with nine reviews keeps very little of it until more people turn up. A 5.0 from 12 reviews does not outrank a 4.9 from 880, and it should not.
Worked examples from this register
- The Gym Group, 4.9 from 881 reviews. 881 swamps the 25, so the rating barely moves: 4.89.
- Sorority, a clean 5.0 from 50 reviews: 4.80.
- Heros, 4.8 from 179 reviews: 4.75.
- Maximum Results, 5.0 from nine reviews: 4.56. A perfect rating, sitting below Heros, which has a lower rating and twenty times the evidence.
- Snap Fitness, 4.5 from 46 reviews: 4.46.
- Imagine Fitness at Knights Hill, 3.7 from three reviews: 4.33, because three reviews are not enough to condemn a place any more than nine are enough to crown one.
Check any of them with a calculator. That is why the sum is printed here, and why it is the same sum on every page.
What the score does not do
- It does not read the reviews. A gym can score well and still have a broken shower and a queue for the only rack.
- It does not measure equipment, cleanliness, coaching or crowding. Nothing in this register publishes an equipment list, so nobody can rank that honestly.
- It does not score unrated places. A listing with no Google rating gets no number and sits at the bottom marked unrated. Unrated is missing evidence, not a verdict, and several unrated listings here are perfectly good rooms.
- It does not move for money. No paid placement, no sponsored row, no affiliate link, no commission on a membership, and no arrangement where a gym gets a better line for being friendly to us.
Google ratings and review counts on this site were read on 19 September 2026. They belong to Google and to the people who wrote them. The weighting is ours, and you get the same weighting on every listing, including the ones with the biggest names above the door.
Why 4.4, and what to do if we are wrong
4.4 is used as the baseline because UK gyms cluster high on Google and a brand new listing genuinely deserves to start near the middle of that cluster rather than at 1.0 or at 5.0. Twenty five reviews is the weight given to that baseline: enough to stop a handful of friends and family putting a new room at the top of the table, not enough to hold down a gym that a few hundred people rate highly.
If a rating, a postcode, a phone number or an opening time on this site is wrong, tell us and it gets changed. There is no charge for a correction and you do not have to be listed by us to ask for one.
Common questions
Why weight the ratings at all?
Because an unweighted average rewards a new gym with nine five star reviews over an established one with 881. Weighting against a baseline makes review volume count as evidence.
Why is the baseline 4.4 stars?
UK gym ratings cluster high on Google, so 4.4 is a fair starting assumption for a new listing with nothing else to go on. Every listing on the site gets the same treatment.
Can a gym pay to move up?
No. The only inputs are the Google star rating and the number of reviews. There is no paid placement and no commission arrangement on this site.
How does a gym move up then?
More Google reviews, and keeping the rating up. There is no second lever, and we do not sell one.
Do you visit the gyms?
The scores come from Google ratings, opening hours and categories, plus published prices and local reporting. Where we describe a place, we describe what it is listed as, and we say when a price or an hour is not published rather than guessing.