Infrared sauna running costs: the arithmetic, and why your state matters more than your sauna

This is an easier question than the cold plunge version

It is worth starting with the contrast, because the two devices behave in opposite ways. A self-chilling cold plunge is a refrigerator: it runs whether or not you use it, cycling all day to hold the water cold, which is why its bill is hard to predict and why we wrote a whole separate guide about it. A sauna is the opposite. It draws power only when you switch it on. No session, no cost. That single difference is why the sauna number is knowable and the plunge number is an estimate.

The arithmetic, in one line

Take the sauna's rated power in watts, divide by 1,000 to get kilowatts, multiply by the hours you run it, and multiply by what you pay per kilowatt-hour. That is it. To make it concrete with a round illustration rather than any particular product: a 1,600 watt cabin is 1.6 kW, so a 45 minute session with a 15 minute preheat is one hour of running time, which is 1.6 kilowatt-hours. At the current US average residential price that lands under forty cents.

Note what that example is and is not. The 1,600 watts is a round number chosen to show the method, not a spec for any sauna we score, and the true figure varies a great deal between a blanket, a one-person tent and a two-person cabin. Put your own sauna's rated wattage into that line and you have your own answer.

Your state matters more than your sauna

This is the part that surprises people, and it is the reason no honest guide can print a single national cost per session. According to the US Energy Information Administration's Electric Power Monthly, the average residential price of electricity in June 2026 was 18.34 cents per kilowatt-hour. But that average hides an enormous spread: Hawaii sat at 52.72 cents and Nebraska at 13.25 cents in the same month.

Run the same sauna for the same hour in both places and one session costs roughly four times as much in Hawaii as in Nebraska. So if you see a brand or a review quote a flat cost per session with no electricity rate attached to it, that figure is describing somebody else's utility bill. In our view the rate is the first thing to substitute, not the last.

Most of the draw is the warm-up, not the sit

A sauna does not pull its rated wattage evenly across a session. The heaters run hard while the cabin comes up to temperature, then cycle on and off to hold it, the same way a thermostat does. So the first stretch of a session costs more than the last, and the practical consequence is not obvious: a longer sit is cheaper per minute than a short one, because you have already paid for the warm-up either way.

This is also why preheating a cabin and then not using it is the most expensive thing you can do with a sauna, and why the cost gap between a blanket and a walk-in cabin is wider than the wattage gap alone suggests. A blanket has almost nothing to heat but you. A cabin has to bring its whole air volume and its wood up to temperature first.

The cost that is not on the electricity bill

There is a second running-cost question that catches buyers late, and it is a one-time number rather than a monthly one. Smaller units are designed to run from an ordinary household outlet. Larger cabins often are not, and may call for a dedicated circuit that an electrician has to install. That is real money, it is quoted separately from the sauna, and it is easy to discover after you have already bought.

The requirement is stated in the manufacturer's specifications for each model, so it is worth reading before you order rather than after delivery. Ask what circuit the unit needs and whether your intended spot already has one.

What we do and do not score here

We want to be direct about a limit in our own data. Our sauna rubric scores Verified EMF, Spectrum Honesty, Heat and Coverage, Value, and Safety and Build. Running cost is not one of those dimensions, because we do not hold a traceable rated-wattage figure for every unit in the catalogue, and our rule on this site is that a number we cannot trace to a source does not get published or scored. We would rather tell you the method and the question to ask than print a cost-per-session table we cannot stand behind.

So the ask is simple. Get the rated wattage in watts from the specification sheet, not from a marketing page. Then run the one-line calculation above against your own electricity rate.

What to actually look for

Three questions do most of the work. What is the rated power in watts? What circuit does it need, and do you already have one where the sauna is going? And what do you actually pay per kilowatt-hour, which is on your own utility bill rather than in any review. With those three you can price a session more accurately than any published estimate can, because the third one is yours alone.

Browse the scored saunas, or read the infrared sauna buying guide for the specs that do move our scores. If you are weighing a cabin against a traditional room, the comparison guide covers how differently the two heat. This is general information, not medical advice.

Electricity prices: US Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A, average price of electricity to ultimate customers by end-use sector, by state, June 2026.