The Cheapest Indoor Basketball in Metro Atlanta

The cheapest published indoor basketball in metro Atlanta is free, and it is in Cobb County. The cheapest reliable access is $20 for a year at the Kennesaw Recreation Center, which has three full-size courts and posts open-play basketball hours daily. After that it is $2 a visit at Custer Park in Marietta and the E Center in Sugar Hill. Nothing else published in the metro is cheaper.

If you want the short version of this, we have it: how much does open gym basketball cost in Atlanta?. This is the long version — the pass math, the break-even points, and why the same twice-a-week habit costs $20 a year in one county and $234 in the next one over.

Every figure below comes from the operator''s own website or published fee schedule. The Kennesaw, Sugar Hill, Hall County, Forsyth County and Cobb County figures were read on 27 October 2026. The Marietta, Gwinnett, Decatur, Roswell, Peachtree City, Brookhaven, Acworth and Atlanta figures carry their earlier read dates, noted where it matters. Gyms move schedules for leagues, rentals and holidays. Call before you drive.

Why this post exists

Search "cheap basketball court near me" in Atlanta and you get court-finder directories. Four of them now out-cover us on raw Atlanta court counts. Not one of them publishes a price.

That is strange, because price is the thing that actually decides where you play. A court you cannot afford to use twice a week is not a court you play on. So here is every published price we can source in the metro, sorted by what it costs, with the arithmetic that tells you when a pass beats paying at the door.

Free, and published as free

Four operators publish genuinely free indoor drop-in basketball.

• Acworth Community Center, 4361 Cherokee St. Free drop-in on two high-school-regulation courts. You create an account and check in at the front desk. Acworth publishes a monthly basketball open-gym calendar, but it posts it as an image rather than as text, so the only way to read October''s hours is to open the calendar on the city''s open-play page or call (770) 917-1234. Building hours are Monday–Friday 7am–8pm and Saturday 8am–2pm.
• Briarwood Park & Community Center, 2235 Briarwood Way NE, and Lynwood Park & Community Center, 3360 Osborne Rd NE. Brookhaven runs free supervised drop-in at both — Youth Basketball Drop-In, Adult Basketball Drop-In and Adult Basketball Open Runs. Times live on a monthly calendar, not fixed weekly hours, and the city warns that weekend reservations eat into open gym. Saturday is the day to call.
• Dunbar Recreation Center, 477 Windsor St SW. The City of Atlanta publishes a session called "Hoops at Dunbar," described as "Free Play Basketball for Adults," Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday 10am–2pm, ages 18 and over, at a cost of $0. The city''s activity listing shows it running to the end of October 2026 and again from 3 November 2026 to 28 January 2027. The listing''s header and description give slightly different dates, so confirm with the center. This is the only free adult basketball session the City of Atlanta publishes anywhere in its 29 rec centers — we went looking for more and wrote up what the city actually publishes.
• Fullers Recreation Center, 3499 Robinson Rd, Marietta, (770) 509-2737. Cobb County publishes an "Open Gym - Basketball" program here on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:00–5:00pm, and lists no drop-in admission fee at all. It prices the gym for rental — $50 an hour for residents, $75 for non-residents, two-hour minimum — but nothing for walking in to the open gym. We read that page for the first time tonight. An absent price is not a promise of free entry, so call before you count on it.

$2 to $5 a visit

This is where most of the metro sits.

$2 — Custer Park Sports & Fitness Center, 545 Kenneth E Marcus Way, Marietta. The city runs an open-play gymnasium during building hours: Monday–Friday 5:30am–9pm, Saturday 8am–8pm, Sunday 1–7pm. That is the longest weekday window in the metro. $2 per visit for ages 19 and up, $1 for 18 and under, per the Marietta Fit Pass price list effective 1 November 2024. Everyone entering needs a Fit Pass, a day pass, or to be signed in as a guest. There is no published adult men''s or co-ed drop-in schedule — court time moves with programming — but the city does run a women''s 5v5 drop-in for ages 21 and up on Tuesdays and Thursdays 7–9pm, $2 a day, capped at 30 players first-come first-served. Call (770) 794-5630, or 770-794-5637 for the women''s run.

$2 — E Center, 5009 West Broad St, Sugar Hill. The city''s own parks page says it plainly: "The cost for use of the gym during open play is $2 per person," with hours of "Monday – Saturday, 7 a.m. – 9 p.m. & Sunday, noon – 6 p.m." Re-read tonight, unchanged. Those are the widest published open-play hours we have found anywhere in Georgia — 14 hours a day, six days a week, plus Sunday afternoons — and it is the only venue on this list that publishes both a price and a full weekly schedule without a phone call. Hours shift with programming; the city asks you to call (770) 831-7413.

$2.25 — Gwinnett County, six gyms. $2.25 for adults 18–49, $1.25 for under-18s and anyone 50 or older, plus $2 if you do not live in Gwinnett. Open gym runs during regular operating hours and the county does not publish a basketball-only schedule, so you call the individual gym: Best Friend Park in Norcross, Lucky Shoals Park in Norcross, Rhodes Jordan Park in Lawrenceville, Lenora Park in Snellville, George Pierce Park in Suwanee and Bogan Park in Buford. Balls at the desk if you need one.

$3 — Kedron Fieldhouse, 202 Kedron Dr, Peachtree City. Two full courts behind a mesh curtain. $3 for Peachtree City residents, $2 for under-12s with an adult, $10 for non-residents. Open gym runs inside building hours — Monday–Friday 9am–9pm, Saturday 9am–6pm, Sunday 1–5pm — but court availability follows a posted weekly calendar. You need a CivicRec account and a physical photo ID; the city will not accept a picture of one.

$4 — Bill Johnson Community Activity Building, 10495 Woodstock Rd, Roswell. Open play Tuesday and Thursday 6–7:30pm and Saturday 10am–4:30pm. $4 for Roswell residents, $6 for non-residents, cash only. The city says in writing that open play is not guaranteed. (770) 817-6670. Roswell also publishes basketball open play Mondays and Wednesdays 10am–8pm at Hembree Park, and a separate PDF schedule at East Roswell.

$5 — Decatur, two gyms. $5 for City of Decatur residents, $10 for everyone else. Ebster Recreation Center runs adult basketball Tuesdays and Thursdays 10am–2pm, Saturdays 10am–1pm and Sundays 3–5:45pm. Oakhurst Recreation Center runs Thursdays 7–9pm, Saturdays noon–2pm and Sundays 3–6pm — the only published weeknight evening slot in Decatur. Worth being precise about the third one: the Decatur Recreation Center does publish an open-gym schedule, and its adult sessions are table tennis and volleyball, not basketball.

$5 — Forsyth County, three gyms. The county''s own basketball-courts page, re-read tonight, says each of its three recreation centers "is home to two indoor basketball courts" and that "courts can be used for pickup basketball games with the purchase of a membership or daily visit pass." The page itself does not carry a price; the county''s fee pages, read 14 October 2026, put the daily visit pass at $5 per person, bought in person. Anyone 14 or over needs a pass or a membership. The gyms are Central Park and Fowler Park in Cumming and Old Atlanta Park in Suwanee. None publishes an open-gym timetable, so call first.

The pass math, which is where the real money is

Nearly every operator above also sells a pass, and the break-even points are not where you would guess.

| Pass | Price | Breaks even at | Covers | |---|---|---|---| | Kennesaw Rec Center, Cobb resident | $20 / year | 10 visits at $2 | 3 full courts, one building | | Kennesaw Rec Center, non-resident | $30 / year | 15 visits at $2 | same | | Kennesaw Rec Center, student with ID | $10 / year | 5 visits at $2 | same | | Custer Park Fit Pass, Cobb resident | $50 / year | 25 visits at $2 | one building | | Hall County Open Gym membership | $12 / month + $5 card | — | all 3 Hall centers | | Hall County three-visit pass | $10 | — | all 3 Hall centers | | Decatur unlimited, resident | $25 / month | 5 visits at $5 | all 3 Decatur centers | | Decatur unlimited, non-resident | $50 / month | 5 visits at $10 | all 3 Decatur centers | | Berean Christian Church, adults 18–54 | $15 / month + $10 reg. | — | one gym, 6 goals | | Forsyth FitRec / FitPlus | $0–$100 / $40–$200 | — | all 3 Forsyth centers |

Three things fall out of that table.

1. The Kennesaw Recreation Center is the cheapest indoor basketball in metro Atlanta by a wide margin, and it is not close. $20 a year for a Cobb County resident, $30 for everyone else, $10 for a student with valid ID, for a 42,000 square foot building at Adams Park with three full-size courts. If you play once a month for a year, you have paid $20. The same twelve visits cost $24 at Custer Park, $27 at Gwinnett as a county resident, $51 at Gwinnett as an outsider, and $60 in Decatur as a resident.

Play twice a week and the gap becomes absurd. A hundred-odd visits a year costs you $20 at Kennesaw and $234 in Gwinnett at the $2.25 resident rate — $442 if you live outside Gwinnett. Same metro, two counties, eleven years of Kennesaw membership for one year of Gwinnett drop-in.

2. Gwinnett, Sugar Hill and Peachtree City sell no pass at all. They are the cheapest places to play occasionally and the most expensive places to play constantly, because every single visit costs full price. If you hoop twice a week in Gwinnett, you are spending more per year than almost anyone in the metro.

3. Forsyth County''s FitRec membership is published with a floor of $0. The county lists FitRec at $0–$100 and FitPlus at $40–$200 across 1, 3, 6 and 12-month terms, and basketball is included only in those two tiers. We do not know which term or resident category the $0 applies to — the county publishes the range, not a per-term table. If it is real for any category, it is the cheapest indoor basketball in Georgia. Worth a phone call: (678) 455-8540.

One more that is not a pass but is worth knowing: Hall County gives K-12 students who live in Hall County a free membership at East Hall, Mulberry Creek and North Hall. Parents and guardians do not qualify and get only the indoor walking track. The county''s page does not say in so many words whether open gym and basketball are included in the student membership, so confirm it on 770-535-8280 before you promise your kid anything.

The one gym that actually tells you when

Price is half the problem. The other half is that most of these operators publish a price and then refuse to publish hours — "times vary by facility," "call the gym," "open play is not guaranteed."

The Kennesaw Recreation Center, 2737 Watts Dr, is the exception, and we only noticed tonight. Its venue page carries a dated daily open-play calendar, not a vague weekly pattern. For the four days we read it, 27–30 October 2026, it listed basketball open play at 7:00–8:45am every morning, plus 2:30–8:45pm on the 27th, 29th and 30th. Participants under 15 need a guardian present. The city still says hours vary with scheduled programs and asks you to call 678-385-0165 to confirm the day you want.

The building is open Monday to Saturday, 7:00am to 9:00pm. That combination — a published daily schedule, three full-size courts, and a $20 annual membership — is not matched anywhere else we have found in the metro. We had this venue in the directory with "monthly open play" and no schedule. That was wrong, and it is fixed.

Before you go

1. Work out your break-even before you pay at the door. If you play five times a month in Decatur, the $25 monthly pass costs the same as paying per visit and covers three gyms instead of one. If you play twice a month anywhere in Cobb, $20 a year at Kennesaw beats everything.
2. Residency is real money, and it usually means the county. Marietta''s "resident" rate means Cobb County, not the city. Gwinnett adds $2 for outsiders. Roswell charges 50% more. Decatur doubles it. Ask the desk what counts as proof.
3. Bring cash and ID. Roswell''s Bill Johnson building is cash only. Peachtree City will not accept a photo of your driver''s licence.
4. Call. Every operator on this list reserves the right to move the gym. Thirty seconds on the phone beats a forty-minute drive to a volleyball tournament.

For the schedules rather than the prices, we keep a venue-by-venue list of every published open-gym time and price in metro Atlanta. You can also filter the court directory to gyms that publish open-gym times.

If your gym publishes a price or a schedule and we have it wrong, email support@playpickup.app with the link. And if there is no run near you at a price you like, start one — that is what the Pickup app is for.