A sauna club is a place built around a big shared sauna and a few cold plunges, where you book a session or pay a monthly membership and spend an hour or two going between hot and cold with other people. They're a fairly new kind of place in the US, and most of them are in a handful of cities: New York, Denver, Austin, Nashville and a few others.
They go by many names. Some call themselves a social sauna, a bathhouse, a contrast therapy studio or a wellness club. What they have in common is that the sauna is the main event, not an extra in a gym locker room, and that you share it.
This guide explains what to expect and where to find one, using the places in the AllSaunas directory as of November 2026. We only list places where we found a sauna or steam room, so the numbers below count those places.
You can already sit in a sauna at a gym, a hotel or a Korean spa. A sauna club differs in four ways.
The sauna is large and hot. Othership in Manhattan's Flatiron district describes a cedar sauna for 50 to 100 people that runs from 60°C to 100°C (140°F to 212°F) (Othership). Teddy's Hot House in Venice, Los Angeles, runs its Finnish sauna at 195°F (Teddy's Hot House). Every club in this guide has a traditional sauna with heated rocks.
The cold is part of the plan. There are cold plunge tubs or pools next to the sauna, kept anywhere from just above freezing to the 50s °F, and the whole visit is built around going back and forth.
It's social. You share the room with strangers or friends, and many clubs have a lounge, tea or coffee, and events. Lolu in East Nashville has a 40-person sauna and a 20-person cold tub room, plus a lounge and a coffee shop (Lolu). In Salt Lake City, Cold Plunge Coffee is exactly what it sounds like: a coffee shop with a Finnish cedar sauna and cold plunges.
You pay by the session or by the month. A single session is usually 60 to 120 minutes, and regulars buy a membership.
If you want the sauna to yourself, that's a different kind of place. We cover booked rooms for one to four people in our private sauna guide.
Many clubs sell two kinds of sessions: free flow, where you move at your own pace, and guided, where a host leads the group through heat, cold and breathing. Sauna House in Austin describes its standard visit as two hours rotating between saunas and plunges "in a communal setting" (Sauna House). Othership's sessions are 75 minutes, and it also runs a two-hour evening social for groups of friends.
A typical round looks like this:
Some bathhouse-style clubs add guided sauna rituals with towel waving and scents, called Aufguss. Bathhouse in Flatiron and Williamsburg runs these in its dry sauna at up to 185°F (Bathhouse). For the hot and cold routine itself, and who should check with a doctor first, see our sauna and cold plunge guide.
The word "club" doesn't always mean members only. Sauna Public in Salt Lake City says walk-ins are welcome (Sauna Public), and most clubs sell a single session to anyone.
Others lean on the word "wellness". BASK in Detroit calls itself a cold plunge and sauna wellness club (BASK), Eastend in Chicago's Fulton Market calls itself a modern wellness club (Eastend), and Sauna Strong in Minneapolis calls itself a social wellness club with a gym attached (Sauna Strong). If you search for a "wellness sauna", these are often the places you mean. Some add extras like infrared rooms, red light or massage, but the shared sauna and cold plunge are the core.
Across the US, about 400 sauna studios, bathhouses, recovery studios and mobile saunas in our directory pair a traditional sauna with a cold plunge. That group is wider than sauna clubs: it also includes Korean spas, Russian banyas, physical therapy clinics and mobile saunas you rent for your backyard.
So for the biggest sauna cities, we went through those places one by one. We counted only places inside the city limits, using each listing's map location, and we called a place a modern sauna club only if its own website shows a shared hot sauna and cold plunge sold by session or membership.
| City | Places with a traditional sauna and cold plunge | Modern sauna clubs we confirmed | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York | 18 | 5 | Othership, Bathhouse, Brooklyn Bathhouse |
| Denver | 10 | 5 | Therma Haus, NAOSU, PORTAL°, Garden Sauna, RÖK Spas |
| Austin | 7 | 3 | Sauna House North Loop, Mantle Thermal Haus, Bathe |
| Nashville | 7 | 3 | Framework (2 locations), Lolu |
| Minneapolis | 9 | 2 | PORTAL°, Sauna Strong |
| Los Angeles | 10 | 2 | Teddy's Hot House, IcePass |
| Boston | 3 | 2 | Moki Sauna, Remedy Place |
| Salt Lake City | 3 | 2 | Sauna Public, Cold Plunge Coffee |
| Chicago | 6 | 1 | Eastend |
| Detroit | 3 | 1 | BASK |
| Portland, OR | 8 | 1 | Ebb & Ember |
| Seattle | 6 | 1 | Wild Haus |
| San Francisco | 5 | 1 | Dogpatch Paddle |
Places in the AllSaunas directory as of November 2026, inside each city's limits. Othership has two New York locations and Bathhouse has three; we list two of Bathhouse's. Nashville means the city of Nashville-Davidson.
New York and Denver tie with five modern clubs each. New York's 18 places also include old-school spots like the Russian & Turkish Baths in the East Village and Korean spas in Queens such as Spa Castle. Therma Haus in RiNo has two Finnish saunas and four cold plunges and charges $40 for a drop-in (Therma Haus), and NAOSU nearby keeps sessions to eight guests (NAOSU).
City limits matter. Many well-known clubs sit just outside a big city. PLUNJ's Salt Lake location is at 51 W Utopia Ave in South Salt Lake, a separate city (PLUNJ), so it isn't in the Salt Lake City row. PLUNJ is a chain with about half of its locations in Utah, and we list 11 of them. Sauna House also has locations in Charlotte, Durham and Greenville, South Carolina.
Seattle, Portland and San Francisco look small in the table because their sauna scene happens on the water. Wild Haus in Seattle runs wood-fired sauna boats on Lake Union, with a 90-minute communal trip where you're matched with other guests (Wild Haus). Ebb & Ember is a floating sauna on the river in Portland with two-hour social sessions for up to eight people (Ebb & Ember). Dogpatch Paddle on the San Francisco waterfront sells a shared one-hour sauna and plunge session for $35, for ages 16 and over (Dogpatch Paddle). These cities also have mobile and pop-up community saunas that set up by lakes and beaches, which aren't counted here.
You can search places with a traditional sauna and a cold plunge in any city, or start from a city page like saunas in Denver.
Prices vary a lot by city. A few examples from the clubs' own sites in October 2026:
Many clubs have a first-visit deal: Framework, Therma Haus and NAOSU all do. Prices change, so check the club's site before you book.
Bring a swimsuit. All 29 clubs in our table have a shared co-ed area, and 23 of them list swimwear as required there. The other 6 don't state a rule in our listing. Many provide towels, but check.
Leave your phone in the locker. Several clubs are phone-free, including Sauna House and Framework.
Check the age rule. Sauna House allows guests 18 and over, or 14 and over with a legal guardian. Dogpatch Paddle's sauna is for ages 16 and up.
Keep your voice down in the sauna, even at a social club. Some clubs, like Othership, run quieter sessions for people who want calm. Our sauna etiquette guide covers the rest, like sitting on a towel and asking before you pour water on the rocks.
The roughly 400 places are listings filed as sauna studios, bathhouses, recovery and wellness centers, or mobile saunas that list both a traditional sauna (or a sauna with no type given) and a cold plunge. For the city rows, we matched each listing's map coordinates to the U.S. Census Bureau's city boundaries, then checked each candidate's own website. We left out Korean spas, banyas and older bathhouses, gyms and clinics where the sauna is an extra, private-room-only studios, mobile rentals, and places that are temporarily closed or whose sauna is shut for repairs. Our directory surely misses some new clubs.
A sauna club is a place built around a shared hot sauna and cold plunges, where you book a session or pay a membership. Visits usually last 60 to 120 minutes, and you go back and forth between hot and cold with other guests.
A single session at the clubs we checked costs about $35 to $60 as of October 2026, and the monthly memberships we found ran from $89 to $180. Most clubs offer a cheaper first visit or intro pack.
Usually not. Most sauna clubs sell single sessions or day passes to anyone, and memberships are for regulars who come every week.
A swimsuit. The shared areas at sauna clubs are co-ed, and most clubs we list require swimwear there. Bring a towel too unless the club says it provides one.
In our directory, New York and Denver have the most, with five modern sauna clubs each inside the city limits as of November 2026. Austin and Nashville follow with three each.
They overlap. Many new sauna clubs call themselves bathhouses, but older bathhouses, Korean spas and Russian banyas often have more heat rooms, separate men's and women's areas, and all-day entry, while sauna clubs focus on timed, shared sauna and cold plunge sessions.
© 2025 Allsaunas, Inc. All rights reserved.