How Much Does All Star Cheer Actually Cost? (A Realistic Season Breakdown)
(If you’re just here for the number, I’ll cut to the chase: for the entire 2025-2026 season, we spent about $11,000 and this is the spreadsheet I used to track everything)
Here’s what most cheer parents don’t realize at the beginning of the season: the true cost of cheer goes way beyond your gym’s expense sheet.
You and I both know, cheer is mind bogglingly expensive. Truly, it is so much more expensive than I ever dreamed.
When you read through the gym’s expense sheet during your child’s first evaluation, you probably scanned the tuition, comp fees, and uniform. You took a deep breath and thought, “Okay… this is a lot, but we can make it work.”
And after 8 years as a cheer mom, I'll tell you that you probably can, because we cheer families always find a way.
But you’ve probably wayyy underestimated your full-season total, because there are so many ‘surprise’ expenses throughout the year. You don’t plan for them because you don’t even know what to ask about when you’re new.
Or maybe you made it to the end of the season and were smacked in the face with all kinds of post-season surprises: new practice wear that makes bid events feel ✨ special ✨. A hotel room for yourself, because even though your kid got a paid bid, you still need to stay somewhere. The flights, or the gas. Ubers to and from the venue. Event merch. Food while traveling.
At minimum, most families are spending $2,000 just for their post-season event (and many are spending $5,000+).
Parents feel all kinds of ways thinking about spending that much money on one weekend: Scared. Angry. Hopeless. Helpless. Defeated. Embarrassed.
But I’m here to tell you: you don’t have to feel that way ever again.
I promise you, there’s another way to navigate your cheer expenses.
Back to my family’s $11,000 spending: with 1 athlete on an elite team, 2 comps requiring flights, and about a dozen hotel nights in total, I’m actually very proud of that number.
I’m not proud because I don’t think it’s a lot of money (it is a crap load of money to spend on one child’s extracurriculars) or because I’m humble bragging about being frugal.
I’m proud because this is almost exactly how much I thought we would spend before the season started.
‘How?!’, you may be asking? How did I make this seemingly impossible prediction?
Well, planning matters. I had a plan that looked at the whole season from the very beginning.
And you can do it too.
Today I’m shining a flashlight on all of those mystery costs lurking in the shadows. I’m going to break down exactly where that $11,000 went to help you plan for the true cost of a season of all star cheer.
You may spend way more, or way less than my family. The final total doesn’t matter–you do you, friend. I make zero judgements.
But what does matter is feeling confident that you can do this. You aren’t held hostage, helpless to the whims of the cheer gods zapping your credit card every 30 seconds. You can make a plan and regain a sense of control over your cheer spending.
Let’s dive in.
Gym fees
This is the easy part: the stuff your gym outlines in their tryout packet or on their expense sheet (if they don’t outline all of this for you before you commit to the team… slowly back away and find another gym). Some gyms include a separate fee for almost everything, such as choreography, music, and coaches’ salaries. Other gyms lump everything together into a single monthly payment.
For 2025-26, my actual spending came pretty close to my estimate. I actually paid the full year of tuition in full, which gave me a bit of a discount (and I feel incredibly fortunate to have been able to swing this).
Gym fees total: $4,415.00
Apparel and accessories
Laurel was on the same team 2 years in a row, so I thought I’d be safe from having to purchase a new uniform. Well, she ended up hitting a major growth spurt over the summer. I couldn’t find a replacement leotard in the next size in our buy/sell/trade group, so we had to purchase a brand new one. Thankfully, I was able to find used practice wear, which saved about $100.
Apparel and accessories total: $606.39
Competition expenses
This is the category that will vary the most from family to family, even within the same gym. I am a huge credit card rewards junkie, which saves us a ton of money on travel every season. This season, I paid for all of our hotel stays using points (the $383 was for parking and mandatory ‘resort fees’ that the points didn’t cover 🙄😡). I was also able to book almost all of the flights in points, with the exception of a return trip over MLK Jr. weekend.
The spending on food took me by surprise when I added all of this up at the end of the season. My estimate was off by so much because the year before, we brought our 2 boys with us to a few comps (including one at Disney). This season, they didn’t attend any events. Only my husband or I went to a competition–shoutout to Mr. My Cheer Budget who is an incredibly supportive and proud cheer dad–to keep our costs down.
Competition expenses total: $3,087.39
Miscellaneous/Extras
In my catch-all category, I’ve included the ‘optional’ things like clinics and classes, privates, and gifts for the athletes and coaches at the end of the season. Laurel doesn’t do private lessons regularly throughout the school year, but she did several over the summer after recovering from a broken bone. Honestly if she wanted to do more privates, I would probably say no, because they are so freaking expensive ($80-100 per hour).
Our gym also tends not to go crazy with send-off gifts anymore. Laurel received so many personalized makeup bags, bow boxes, and trinkets in her first years, most of which are gathering dust in her closet. Now, they usually do just 1 gift for a comp towards the end of the season- last season was a sweet black zip-up hoodie and matching sweatpants, both of which she still wears regularly. I’m also very happy to contribute to a shared gift for the coaches for the holidays and at the end of the season. My daughter spends so many hours a week with them, and they have a huge influence on her development as an athlete and a person.
Miscellaneous total: $2,400.28
Final thoughts
Our end-of-season grand total was $10,509.06.
Now that you’ve seen my full season of spending, you’re ready to hop off the ‘chaotic surprise expenses’ hamster wheel. Drop a comment below which of the expenses in my breakdown was a complete surprise, or something you’d forgotten about entirely.
It’s time to make your own plan. Grab a notebook and a pen and sketch out your own season. Open the Notes app on your phone.
Or if you’re more of a spreadsheet person (hi, we should be friends), grab the original My Cheer Budget template and let Google Sheets do the math for you.
I’m cheering you on- you’ve got this!
♥️ Lexie