Saunasto is a hand-curated index of the world's best saunas, onsen, hot springs, and thermal baths. Every Curator's Pick on this site is gold-tier: hand-checked, photographed, and sourced. The full catalogue of 19000 venues lives in the iOS app. The 157 below are the ones we'd send a friend to first.
Each country page lists every gold-tier sauna we've selected there, plus an editorial note on the local bathing tradition. Click through to a venue for full detail.
Sauna is not a feature in Finland. It is the architecture of the week. Public neighborhood saunas, lakeshore smoke saunas, container saunas anchored to ferry-de
American sauna culture is unevenly distributed. Russian banya in Brooklyn, Finnish-style cabins on the upper Midwest lakes, Korean jjimjilbang in Los Angeles an
Onsen is not sauna, but onsen culture and sauna culture meet at the same temperature, with the same reverence for water and stone. Our 9 Japanese Curator's Pick
Germany has the thermal-spa town. The Bäder, the Therme, the Aufguss ritual, the firm rule that the sauna is naked and the towel is for sitting, not covering. O
Britain is in the middle of a sauna revival. Cold-water swimmers built wood-fired saunas next to the sea, Russian and Eastern European banyas opened in London,
The banya is a Russian sauna only in the sense that the onsen is a Japanese sauna. It is its own institution. Birch venik, parilka heat, plunge pool, repeat. Ou
Korean bathing culture is the jjimjilbang. Twenty-four-hour public bathhouses with multiple temperature rooms, salt rooms, hwangto (yellow-clay) saunas, ice roo
Budapest is the thermal capital of Europe. Five hundred years of Ottoman influence, a hundred and twenty thermal springs under the city, and a baths culture pre
Austrian thermae sit at altitude. The country's gold-tier saunas are mostly Alpine: lakeside thermal villages in Steiermark, ski-resort thermal centers in Tirol
6 hand-picked saunas across Canada.
5 hand-picked saunas across Estonia.
Iceland is a thermal country. Geothermal water heats the houses and fills the swimming pools and pours into geothermal lagoons designed by some of Europe's best
5 hand-picked saunas across Latvia.
5 hand-picked saunas across Switzerland.
4 hand-picked saunas across Lithuania.
3 hand-picked saunas across Italy.
3 hand-picked saunas across Norway.
Greek thermal bathing predates Greek philosophy. Hot springs run from Edipsos on Evia to Loutraki on the Corinthian coast and to Thermopylae on the road to Athe
2 hand-picked saunas across Mexico.
2 hand-picked saunas across Thailand.
2 hand-picked saunas across Turkey.
1 hand-picked saunas across Argentina.
1 hand-picked saunas across Chile.
1 hand-picked saunas across Colombia.
1 hand-picked saunas across Costa Rica.
1 hand-picked saunas across Indonesia.
1 hand-picked saunas across Peru.
"The world has 19,000 saunas. 120 of them are worth crossing a border for."
Saunasto means "the saunas, gathered" in Finnish. We chose the name because the project is what the word describes: a working index of the world's bathing-culture venues, sorted by type, country, and quality. The base catalogue inside our iOS app holds 19000 active venues across 35 countries. The Curator's Picks above are the 157 we think every sauna lover should know about.
Selection is editorial, not algorithmic. The criteria: real saunas (not tanning salons or hotel-spa add-ons), real cultural lineage (banya, onsen, jjimjilbang, Finnish, German, Hungarian, hammam), real water (no chlorine baths labelled "thermal"), and a hard preference for venues you can actually visit. Hotel-only saunas score lower than public ones. Membership-only clubs are excluded unless the membership is realistically obtainable.
The Saunasto 100 refreshes every quarter. Drop your email if you want the next ranking, the new venue admissions, and the field-journal essay sent to your inbox the day it ships. No marketing, no resale, one mail per edition.
Search "sauna" on a global map and you get gym lockers, tanning beds, and pool-supply shops mixed in with real venues. We separate them at the data layer.
Saunasto is a working index of 19000 verified saunas across 35 countries, with 157 hand-picked Curator's Picks and editorial coverage of the bathing tradition in every country we list. The iOS app is the primary product; this website is the open reference index. Built by a solo developer plus a curator panel. Updated continuously.