The 2026 Med Spa Benchmarks Are In — Utilization Is Flat and Acquisition Costs Lead All of Healthcare

The average U.S. med spa now runs its providers at 38% utilization while paying more to acquire each new patient than any other medical specialty in the country. That is the through-line of the three most recent industry data sets — Zenoti's 2026 benchmark report, AmSpa's 2024 State of the Industry survey, and Patient Prism's 2026 acquisition-cost analysis — and read together they point at one problem: med spas are spending record amounts to bring patients in the door, then leaving providers idle more than half the day.

What do the newest numbers actually say?

Zenoti's 2026 benchmark report, built from aggregated, anonymized platform data across North American businesses for calendar year 2025, puts the median med spa's staff utilization at 38%, against 80% at the 90th percentile. That 42-point gap between the median and the top performers is, per Zenoti, the widest spread of any metric in any vertical it measures. The same report puts the median average ticket at $216, rising to $346 at the 75th percentile and $484 at the top 10%. Median revenue per location is $1.86 million.

These are vendor-reported figures — they describe the businesses that run on Zenoti's platform, not a random national sample — but the sample is large and the direction is consistent with what owners are seeing. New-guest visits fell 11% year over year and existing-guest visits fell 2%, while membership sales grew 13%. Same-location revenue rose just 2%. Growth in the category, in other words, is coming from opening more locations and selling memberships, not from busier chairs.

AmSpa's 2024 State of the Industry survey, which is questionnaire-based rather than platform-based, fills in the demand side. The average med spa sees roughly 250 clients a month at about $527 per visit. Nearly three-quarters of those visits — 73% — come from repeat clients. Almost 90% of clients are women, and more than half of them are between 35 and 55. The repeat-visit figure is the most important number in that survey: it means the economics of a med spa are built on retention, not acquisition, which makes the acquisition-cost data below sting even more.

Why is the acquisition-cost number the one to watch?

Because it is the highest in healthcare. Patient Prism's 2026 analysis — drawing on the First Page Sage "Average Patient Acquisition Cost: 2026 Report" and its own healthcare call-center research — puts the cost to acquire one aesthetics or cosmetic-surgery patient at $610, the most expensive of the 18 specialties it measured, against a cross-specialty average closer to $370. Neurology ($580) and cardiology ($575) are the only categories that come near it.

Put the three data sets next to each other and the picture is stark. You are paying $610 to make a phone ring, converting a patient worth $527 on the first visit and far more if she becomes one of the 73% who return — and then running the providers who deliver that treatment at 38% utilization. Every idle hour is capacity you already paid to acquire demand for.

What does this mean for your practice?

Three moves follow directly from the numbers:

Protect the patients you already paid for. With acquisition at $610 and 73% of revenue coming from repeat visits, the cheapest patient you will ever book is the one already on your schedule. A missed rebooking, an unanswered call, or a lead that never gets a second follow-up is not a small leak — it is $610 walking out the door before it earned back.

Treat utilization as the primary growth metric. The 42-point spread between median and top performers is the single largest improvement opportunity in Zenoti's data. Booked hours per provider, gaps between appointments, and no-show rates move that number far faster than a new campaign does — and they cost nothing to fix.

Convert the demand you are buying. The median online-booking rate is just 13%, versus 32% at the top 10%. If you are paying the highest acquisition cost in healthcare and then routing those leads to a phone that goes unanswered at lunch, you are paying twice for the same patient — once to acquire, once to re-acquire.

FAQ

Is the Zenoti utilization number reliable?
It is vendor-reported platform data from businesses using Zenoti, not an independent census, so treat it as directional rather than definitive. That said, the sample is large, it covers all of calendar year 2025, and the 38%-vs-80% spread is consistent across the report's other verticals.

Why is aesthetics acquisition cost so high?
High patient lifetime value and intensely competitive advertising drive it. Aesthetics is an elective, cash-pay category where practices bid against each other for the same search terms, which pushes per-patient cost to the top of Patient Prism's 18-specialty list.

The pattern across all three reports is the same: the money is in keeping and fully serving the patients you already have, not in buying more of them. If you want the operating playbook behind that — the retention math, the utilization levers, and the front-desk systems that stop paid leads from leaking — the free Aesthetic Mastery course walks through it lesson by lesson.