Two studios advertise $32 and $38 a class and the $38 one turns out cheaper, because you would go twice a week and its ten class pack works out at $29. That is the comparison this tool does. Pick the studios you are actually choosing between, tell it how often you would go, and every column recalculates against the cheapest way that studio will sell you those classes.
Studio prices are a local market, not a national one, so the tool only compares studios you could realistically pick between.
The drop in rate is the price of the class you are least likely to buy. Nearly everybody who sticks with it ends up on a pack or a membership, and those change the ranking completely. A studio with a high drop in and a generous ten class pack beats a cheap drop in studio that only sells singles, from about the third class a month onward.
Divide the unlimited membership by the drop in rate. That is how many classes a month you have to attend before the membership is the cheaper choice. If it comes out at ten and you know you will go six times, the membership is a donation. The table works this out for each studio so you can see how far apart the two answers are.
Intro offers are usually the cheapest classes a studio will ever sell you, and they are the honest way to try three or four places before choosing one. They are also the number every comparison site leaves out, which is why two studios can look $6 apart and be $70 apart for the month you are actually about to buy.
A Reformer studio can only sell as many spots as it owns machines, usually eight to twelve. A mat room can take thirty. That single fact is why Reformer runs $28 to $50 and mat classes run $18 to $32, and it means a cheaper column is not a better deal when the two columns are teaching different things.
Studio prices move every year and schedules move every term. Every figure in the table carries the date we last checked it, and the ones we have never checked say so instead of quietly passing for current. A price with no date on it is not information, it is a rumour with a dollar sign.
It means we have not recorded that detail, not that the studio does not have it. Plenty of studios have parking and never mention it online. We will not print a cross next to a real business on the strength of something we did not find.