Recess vs MyStudio
MyStudio is built for martial arts schools first, and unlike most of this category it publishes its prices openly. The real difference is what the plan fee buys. Three plans, unlimited students on all of them, and your own branding sitting on the upper tiers.
Every MyStudio claim on this page was read on MyStudio's own pricing page, and is footnoted below.
Recess has no monthly platform fee, no add-ons and no setup cost. It earns roughly 5% paid by the member at checkout, with card and bank processing covered by Recess out of that fee.
Recess is not built for chains past about a hundred locations. If that is you, neither of these is the answer, and we would say so on the first call.
Who each one suits, plainly. MyStudio charges one flat price however many students you have, which is genuinely good if you run a large school. Recess charges the studio nothing at all. The question is whether a flat plan fee plus card processing beats a single fee paid by the member.
Where the two actually differ.
MyStudio publishes three plan prices and its card rates, which is rarer in this category than it should be. Setup fees, annual pricing, contract length and text message costs are not published.
One flat price however many students you have. A school with six hundred students pays the same as a school with sixty. Against software that charges by active member count, that is a real advantage. It is the honest reason to stay, and we would not pretend otherwise.
The other is rank tracking wired into attendance eligibility. If your testing cycle runs on it and your instructors trust it, that is working machinery and moving it has a cost. Weigh that before anything else on this page.
Your own app, on the App Store, under your own name, included. On MyStudio a member app ships on every plan, but putting your own branding on it is an upper-tier feature, so the cheapest route to an app that looks like yours is not the $79 plan.
And every feature, free, permanently. No plan to choose and nothing waiting on a higher tier. Automation and lead follow-up, the things a growing school reaches for first, sit on the upper tiers at MyStudio and are included from day one on Recess.
What you actually pay.
MyStudio publishes three numbers: $79 a month for Essentials, $159 for Growth and $239 for Scale, with unlimited students on all three. Credit where it is due, most of this category publishes nothing at all.
Do the plan fee and the card fee stack? Yes. The plan is a monthly subscription and processing is charged per sale on top, at 2.9% plus 30 cents on a card or 1% on a bank transfer.
What they do not publish is the rest of the bill. Setup fees, annual pricing and contract length are not stated, and texting is listed as an add-on without a price. Ask for all four in writing before you sign.
Scale that to a $100 sale and processing is $3.20, leaving $96.80, with the monthly plan fee on top. By bank transfer it is $1.00, leaving $99.00. Both rates are their own published figures, not an assumption.
Recess is one thing at one price. No plan to choose, no seat count, no setup fee, nothing behind a paywall inside the product. Recess earns a service fee of approximately 5% paid by the member at checkout, with card and bank processing covered by Recess out of that fee.
That is not automatically cheaper for you, and we would rather say so than have you find out. If you would rather absorb the cost yourself and keep the checkout total clean, a monthly subscription is a different trade. Do the arithmetic on your own volume before believing anyone, including us.
Put your own volume in.
Their side uses the published entry price of $79 a month, plus their own published card rate of 2.9% and 30 cents. Both numbers come from MyStudio's pricing page, so nothing on this calculator is assumed.
Your members pay a service fee of about 5% at checkout on Recess, which is how the software is free for you. That is a real trade rather than a free lunch, and the point of this is that you can see both sides of it.
What owners ask when they are weighing this up.
Actually free, permanently, with every feature included. There is no plan to choose and nothing behind a higher tier. Recess earns a service fee of approximately 5% paid by the member at checkout, and card and bank processing is covered out of that rather than billed to you on top.
Not automatically, and it depends on your price per student. MyStudio at $239 a month is $2,868 a year flat. Recess costs the studio nothing, but your members pay about 5% at checkout. Work out 5% of your annual collections and compare the two numbers honestly. At high volume their flat fee can win, and we would rather you did that sum now.
No. There is one version of Recess and it includes messaging, sequences, campaigns, lead capture, reporting, staff, payroll, multiple locations and your own branded client app published under your own listing.
Belts, stripes, testing days and a ladder you define yourself, plus skills, clubs, milestones and a progress screen in your own app. MyStudio's rank work is more tightly wired to attendance eligibility, and if that specific automation is central to your testing cycle it is worth weighing.
Recess, and it is not a close call. Every feature is included from day one, so a school that has not taken its first payment gets the same software as one with six hundred students, with no plan fee to carry while you fill your first classes.
No. Independent single-location schools are exactly who Recess is built for, and there is no monthly fee to justify at that size. The size we are wrong for is the other end, past about a hundred locations.
Every MyStudio claim on this page was read on MyStudio's own pricing page, not from review sites or summaries, on 3 October 2026.
Sources: the MyStudio pricing page, for the three plan prices, unlimited students on every plan, the 2.9% plus 30 cents card rate, the 1% bank transfer rate, the member app and branding tiers, and the note that processing can be passed to members at checkout.
Where this page says a figure is not published, that means it was not stated on MyStudio's pricing page on the date above. Setup fees, annual pricing, contract length and text message costs all fall into that group.