Walmart vs Costco: Membership Revenue, Mix, and Growth

Membership. Pexels Images.

This article compares the membership revenue between Walmart and Costco. We will look at several revenue metrics, including the absolute revenue numbers, growth, and membership as a percentage of total revenue.

Let’s look at the numbers!

For the detailed statistics of Walmart and Costco’s membership revenue, you may find more resources in these pages:

Walmart

• Walmart membership revenue: trend, percentage, and growth,

Costco

• Costco revenue by category: net sales and membership fees,

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Definitions

To help readers understand the content better, the following terms and glossaries have been provided.

Walmart vs Costco in Fiscal Schedules: Walmart’s FY2026 financial results are compared against Costco’s FY2025 results due to differences in their fiscal year reporting.

Walmart operates on a fiscal calendar that ends on January 31, meaning its FY2026 includes February 2025 to January 2026. In contrast, Costco follows a fiscal year ending in August, making its FY2025 cover September 2024 to August 2025.

Since Costco’s FY2026 results are not yet available at the time of Walmart’s latest fiscal report, analysts and industry comparisons often use Costco’s FY2025 as the closest match when evaluating the two retailers’ financial performance.

This approach ensures that the most recent annual results for both companies are used while accounting for their differing fiscal schedules.

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Insight & Summary of Walmart vs Costco in Membership Fee Revenue

The following analysis consolidates the trends observed across Walmart vs Costco’s membership revenue for the 2016–2025 period.

• Costco entered the period as the clear membership revenue leader at $2.6B in 2016 versus Walmart’s $1.4B, reflecting Costco’s decades-long establishment of membership as the foundational pillar of its business model. Over the subsequent nine years, both companies grew their membership fee revenue, but through dramatically different growth trajectories.

• Costco expanded from $2.6B to $5.3B — a steady, consistent doubling over the period — while Walmart accelerated from $1.4B to $4.4B, compressing the gap from a 1.9x differential in 2016 to just 1.2x by 2025. At the current trajectory, Walmart’s membership fee revenue is on a path to approach — and potentially reach — parity with Costco’s within the next two to three years, a convergence that would have appeared implausible at the start of the period.

• The growth rate comparison tells the more consequential story. Costco’s membership revenue has grown at a measured and consistent pace — averaging approximately 8% annually, reflecting the compounding of a mature and deeply loyal membership base with periodic fee increases layered on top. Walmart’s membership growth, by contrast, has been significantly faster and more volatile — ranging from flat in 2017 and 2018 to a peak of 29.4% in 2022, with sustained double-digit growth in every year from 2020 onward.

• This acceleration reflects the combined scaling of Walmart+ — launched in 2020 — and the continued momentum of Sam’s Club membership, both of which have contributed to a structural step-change in Walmart’s membership economics. The persistence of 15–22% annual growth from 2022 through 2025 suggests that Walmart’s membership flywheel is still in the relatively early stages of compounding, with meaningful runway remaining before growth rates normalize toward Costco’s more mature cadence.

• As a percentage of total revenue, the contrast between the two companies reflects their fundamentally different revenue architectures. Costco’s membership fees have consistently represented approximately 1.9–2.2% of total revenue throughout the period — a stable and strategically deliberate ratio that management has maintained across fee increases and revenue growth alike. Walmart’s membership revenue share remains far smaller at 0.6% of total revenue in 2025, despite the dramatic growth in absolute dollars — a consequence of the sheer scale of Walmart’s net sales base, which dilutes the proportional weight of membership fees regardless of their absolute trajectory.

• The strategic implication is clear: while Costco’s membership fees are a structurally embedded and proportionally significant component of its revenue and profit model, Walmart’s membership revenue — though growing faster — will remain a relatively modest percentage of total revenue for the foreseeable future. The more relevant measure of Walmart’s membership significance lies not in its revenue share but in its outsized contribution to profitability and its role as the anchor of an expanding ecosystem that includes advertising, financial services, and data monetization.

The table below combines Walmart and Costco membership revenue metrics into a single view for the latest three fiscal years.

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Walmart vs Costco: Membership Revenue

For the definition of the fiscal schedules of Walmart and Costco, you may refer to this section: Walmart vs Costco in fiscal schedules.

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Walmart vs Costco: Membership as % of Total Revenue

For the definition of the fiscal schedules of Walmart and Costco, you may refer to this section: Walmart vs Costco in fiscal schedules.

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Walmart vs Costco: Membership Revenue Growth

For the definition of the fiscal schedules of Walmart and Costco, you may refer to this section: Walmart vs Costco in fiscal schedules.

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References and Credits

1. All financial figures presented were obtained and referenced from Walmart and Costco’s quarterly and annual reports published on the respective investor relations pages: Walmart Investor Relations and Costco Investor Relations.

2. Pexels Images.

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Disclosure

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to assist us in writing some of the text in this article. However, the data is directly obtained from original sources and meticulously cross-checked by our editors multiple times to ensure its accuracy and reliability.

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