What Do 10 Years of Costco Gold Star Renewals Cost Kentuckians? The Fee Has Gone Up Four Times

Ten years of Costco renewals cost you $650 at today’s Gold Star fee.

Kentuckians who’ve been members since 2006 have watched that fee climb in $5 steps.

Here’s how Costco’s Gold Star membership fee rose from $45 to $65, and what it adds up to for Kentuckians.

The $45 Fee

Costco kept its Gold Star fee at $45 a year for nearly six years, until May 1, 2006.

Gold Star is Costco’s name for the individual membership, so that’s the card you carry if you joined for yourself.

A $5 increase took effect that day, lifting the fee to $50.

Your next renewal cost $50.

Two More $5 Steps

Costco’s next increase, announced on Oct. 5, 2011, set the Gold Star fee at $55 for U.S. and Canada members starting Nov. 1.

Another increase came on March 2, 2017, when Costco announced a $60 Gold Star fee, effective June 1.

Together, they added $10.

Executive fees rose $10 each time, from $100 to $110 in 2011 and from $110 to $120 in 2017.

If you’ve renewed a Gold Star card every year since 2006, you’ve paid $50, $55 and $60 along the way.

The 2024 Increase

On July 10, 2024, Costco announced that its Gold Star fee would rise $5 to $65 on Sept. 1.

The increase would affect around 52 million memberships.

Executive members pay $130, which is the $65 fee plus a $65 upgrade.

That made four increases in all, starting in 2006.

Costco’s annual report for fiscal 2026 puts the annual fee at $65 in the U.S.

If you joined or renewed a Gold Star card on or after Sept. 1, 2024, you paid $65.

That’s today’s price.

Annual Renewal

The $65 is an annual fee, so you pay it once every 12 months when you renew.

Costco’s locator pages list Kentucky warehouses in Louisville and Lexington.

The U.S. and Canada renewal rate was 92.3% at the end of fiscal 2026.

That’s more than nine in 10 members renewing, with a worldwide rate of 89.8%.

Nine in 10 stay.

What a Decade of Renewals Costs

At $65 a year, you pay $650 over ten renewals.

At the old $45 fee, your ten renewals would have cost $450.

That’s $200 more over a decade, or $20 a year.

That adds up.

From 2006 to 2024, the fee rose $20 over 18 years, or about $1.11 a year.

The $65 fee is about 1.4 times the old $45 fee.

Twenty years of renewals would cost you $1,300 at $65 and $900 at $45, a $400 gap.

Each $5 step works out to about 10 cents a week, since a year has 52 weeks.

At $45, the fee was about 87 cents a week, and at $65 it comes to $1.25 a week, which you pay whether your cart is full or empty.

Membership Fee Revenue

Membership fees brought in $5.907 billion in fiscal 2026, the 52 weeks that ended Aug. 30, 2026.

That's up 11.0% from $5.323 billion in fiscal 2025, or $584 million more.

The 16-week fourth quarter alone brought in $1.850 billion, up 7.3% from $1.724 billion a year earlier.

That works out to about $114 million a week.

That fourth quarter covered 16 of the year's 52 weeks and supplied 31.3% of the year's membership fee revenue.

Operating income for the year was $11.685 billion, so membership fee revenue is just over half that size.

Reporting in 2006 said the first step could add roughly $75 million a year.

The fee increases added about $23 million to membership fee revenue in fiscal 2017.

The company expected $175 million more in fiscal 2018.

The fee increase accounted for about 30% of membership fee revenue growth in 2026 and 40% in 2025.

Paid members reached 84.1 million in fiscal 2026, up from 81.0 million a year earlier, and 42.3 million of them were Executive members, just over half. That's 3.1 million more paid members, a 3.8% rise.