How this site works
Sauna Critic is a reference table for home saunas: 45 models across 24 brands and 6 categories, from $125 sweat blankets to $26,890 cedar rooms. It exists because sauna shopping is unusually hard to do well. Half the category is sold with wellness language that no spec sheet backs up, the numbers that decide whether you will enjoy the thing — heater kilowatts, wall thickness, the temperature it actually reaches — are scattered or missing, and the cost that surprises people is never on the product page at all.
Where the specs come from
Heater output, dimensions, wood species, capacity, warranty terms, and install requirements come from manufacturer documentation and dealer listings. Prices are typical list prices in US dollars; saunas go on sale constantly and freight is quoted separately, so read a price here as a tier rather than a quote. Where a manufacturer does not publish a maximum temperature — common for cabin kits, where the answer depends on your room — the field is left empty instead of estimated.
How EMF claims are handled
Nearly every infrared brand prints "low EMF" somewhere. Some publish third-party measurements; most do not. The EMF field repeats what the manufacturer states and says plainly when that claim is unverified, and it reads "not applicable" on anything without infrared emitters. We do not own a gaussmeter and do not pretend to have measured anything.
Where the opinions come from
There is no test lab here, no staff sauna, and no hands-on testing to claim. The pros and cons on each page are distilled from public owner discussion — r/Sauna threads, brand forums, long-term owner write-ups, and dealer Q&A — plus the specs themselves. When enough owners report that a barrel bleeds heat below freezing, that a small cabin tops out cooler than advertised, or that freight arrived with a cracked glass panel, it goes in the complaints. Summarizing is editorial work; the wording stays as blunt as the owners wrote it.
Ratings and review counts
Star ratings and review counts are aggregated from major retail and dealer listings. They are not collected by this site, which is why they are labeled as retail aggregates on each page and are kept out of the structured data we publish. Sauna review counts are small compared to mass-market products — a few dozen reviews is normal here — so treat them as a weak signal next to the specs.
How the lists are ordered
Category and brand pages sort by owner rating, then by spec. Nobody can pay for a position, there are no sponsored placements, and no manufacturer sees a page before it is published.
Keeping it current
The catalog was last refreshed on August 8, 2026. Models get added, prices get corrected, and discontinued saunas get pulled as we notice them. Product photography is still missing for most of the catalog, which is why cards show the manufacturer name instead of a picture — a gap being filled, not a design choice. If something looks wrong, it is a data bug rather than an advertisement.