Car Wash Memberships Are Up 23% Since 2020, New WashIndex Price Index Finds

The first historical price index for US car wash unlimited memberships shows prices rising faster than the era’s overall inflation — reconstructed back to 2015 and validated against public company filings.

WashIndex today published the WashIndex Membership Price Index (WMPI), the first historical price index for US car wash unlimited “wash club” memberships. The index reconstructs what car wash chains charged for an unlimited monthly membership from 2015 to 2026 and shows that prices have climbed steadily — with express-tunnel memberships up about 23% since 2020 and memberships across all formats up about 16% over the same period.

Measured from a 2020 baseline (2020 = 100), the index also shows car wash membership prices are up roughly 31% since 2015. The average advertised unlimited membership now runs about $34 per month.

“Everyone in the industry felt memberships getting more expensive, but nobody could prove it over time, because the set of chains keeps changing,” said Justin Kuo, founder of WashIndex and its parent company, Sparkle Technologies. “We rebuilt a decade of pricing from archived web pages and measured it the way an economist measures inflation — comparing the same car washes year over year — so the trend is real, not an artifact of new chains entering the market.”

Key findings

• All-format memberships are up about 16% since 2020, and about 31% since 2015.
• Express-tunnel memberships rose faster — about 23% since 2020. They were actually priced below 2020 levels in 2017–2019, during a land-grab era of cheap introductory unlimited plans, before operators raised prices through the 2020s.
• The average advertised unlimited membership is about $34/month in 2026.
• Regional spread is wide: the Midwest (+29%) and Northeast (+21%) saw the steepest increases since 2020, the South was moderate (+9%), and the West was essentially flat.
• Validated against public filings: the index’s express cut rose about 11% from 2021 to 2025, closely matching the roughly 10% rise in Mister Car Wash’s SEC-disclosed revenue per member over the same window.

How it was built

The index is reconstructed from roughly 3,123 archived price points across 195 car wash chains, drawn primarily from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. It uses a matched-model, chain-linked construction — the standard “same-store” method behind official price indices — measuring year-over-year change only across chains priced in both years, so the steadily growing number of chains never distorts the trend. The figures are advertised list prices, which WashIndex notes are an upper bound on what members actually pay after promotions and discounts.

The full index, regional breakdowns, interactive charts, and complete methodology are available on the Car Wash Membership Pricing Index page, with a downloadable research report.

About WashIndex

WashIndex is a nationwide car wash intelligence platform covering every car wash in the United States and Canada. It pairs 13M+ AI-analyzed Google reviews and posted pricing with census demographics and traffic data to score each of 80,000+ locations on operating quality, and publishes research used by operators, private equity firms, lenders, and insurers. WashIndex is built by Sparkle Technologies, a Dallas-based data and technology firm.

Media contact: contact@washindex.com · Press resources, charts, and downloads at washindex.com/press.