Best Cheap Saunas in 2025: What Actually Works on a Budget

A lot of people ask me about affordable sauna options. If you’re working with a budget of $500 to $2000, here’s what you should know before buying. In this video, I break down DIY sauna builds, portable Amazon tents, and the best wooden saunas under $2000. I’ll share my own experience, what actually delivers a good sweat, and what’s just clever marketing.

If you’re looking for a sauna to help with detox protocols or just want the best bang for your buck, this will save you a lot of time and money.

Read the transcript >

---

---

Transcript

This week’s question of the week for the Q&A is, Hi Matt, what are the best cheap saunas for, well I’ll just read you the long version so you get the context of this. This is probably really important for a lot of people. All of us have kind of like been in this position, depends on what you’re trying to do.

But it starts off with, Hi Matt, thanks for the videos. I don’t have a lot of money to spend. I’m working with a holistic doctor to reduce mold and heavy metals burden and want to sauna at home to do the detox program. Been there, if you’ve watched any of my videos, that’s how I got into saunas in the first place.

My functional medicine doctor, she was basically screaming at me, not literally, but over and over and over, you need to be in a sauna like yesterday. Here, see your labs, da da da da. This is what you need to do. I was resistant and stubborn, of course, like usual.

Anyway, the question goes on to say, I saw in a video where you rented saunas, tried that and like it, but it’s just like you said, driving home after no point. Yeah, so if you rent sauna sessions, if anybody’s interested in like, you probably only use the sauna at your gym and then maybe one other one.

If you’re interested in sauna, but you don’t want to spend thousands of dollars without being sure if it’s right for you, I always, always, always recommend that you find a massage place, a float tank place, any of these places where you can rent a sauna session for 30 or $40.

Try it a couple of times, see if it’s for you. And just like this, I was in the same boat, right? It’s like, well, I don’t want to buy one of these things and set it up in my house if I’m not convinced that I’m going to get benefit.

So I thought, well, I’ll just rent one for a year. But after you do it a few times and you’re driving back and forth and you want to do a detox protocol like this for a holistic doctor or functional medicine labs and a program that treats that or addresses that, it’s difficult to drive across town in traffic and stick to the schedule that you’re supposed to be on.

So I have about $500 budget in the short term and a $2,000 budget in the long term. If it helps me first, I can justify it. There’s so many options. What should I do for now to get going?

Thanks for sharing your story. Okay.

Here’s what I’d recommend. I would do what I did, right? I wouldn’t go out and spend, you know, your max budget right away. I would start with something like the DIY sauna.

You can build that for around 300, $350. It’s not the prettiest thing. It’s not gonna have, you know, beautiful wood finish. It doesn’t have a glass door on the front.

It doesn’t have, you know, like lights and speakers and, you know, all the niceties. However, for the price, you could essentially use it, get all the benefit, throw it out, and you haven’t really lost much, right? It’s portable. You can take it apart.

You could take it to a new place if you move to a new apartment. If you don’t wanna do something like that, you could do like an Amazon tent sauna, like a little sauna tent. I don’t have one here to show you, but I’ve got a whole bunch of them in the office.

And there’s pros and cons to that, right? The cheaper tents that are gonna be $500 and less, they’re gonna be small. So if you’re a bigger person, you know, it’s not the most comfortable thing to sit in there, have your head out and everything else. Some people love it because you can have a little tray table and, you know, read a book or do stuff on an iPad or things like that.

But really, the DIY sauna, I think, performs better, is less money, and you have the flexibility to add supplemental heat to it. So yes, it’s heat lamp powered. We do that so that you don’t need some type of a controller or power supply or wire anything up to like some far infrared panels.

That would be too complicated for a lot of people. You can’t just buy a fixture and hook those up and then have like a, you know, a timer or a shutoff switch or anything like that. With the DIY sauna, if you just put a timer, a countdown timer on the extension cord, if you want it to shut off after a certain amount of time, you can do that, you know, with a different type of DIY, build your own solution, but you need to know how to wire stuff up.

You need to have a little bit more electrical experience. So, the benefits of it.

are your whole body’s inside. If you choose to, you can get a tent that’s tall enough that you can stand up in or do yoga or stretches or anything like that. And finally, you can get it as hot as you want it, right? So if you put four heat lamp bulbs in there and that’s not enough for you, well, add two more as long as you have the power to support it.

Or add one of the patio heaters or, you know, these guys have done all kinds of modifications from version 2 to 3 to 4. You can look in there and see what people have done. It’s a great setup. You could buy a $200 Amazon, you know, portable sauna tent, a little zippy tent where your head sticks out the top.

If you go to my Amazon profile, I think it’s amazon.com forward slash, I don’t know, there’s links to it in the Facebook group somewhere. It’s the Amazon Influencer store or whatever. There’s a few portable saunas in there that might be a good fit for you. And then if you’re talking about a $2,000 budget, you’re probably into the Costco range, Amazon, Wayfair.

The best thing that I’ve found in that price range that works really well is this guy right behind me. They just had a Black Friday sale for that. If you go in the Facebook group and find the link for Black Friday sales that I posted, there’s links to that.

Reviews haven’t been posted on this. Aaron is still gonna be chopping up the footage soon. We just got it. I’ve used it a few times.

It’s not perfect for those people out there that are expecting $5,000 build quality and, you know, like perfect this and perfect that. It’s not that. It’s not a low EMF sauna. I know a lot of people get hung up on the low EMF thing because, you know, all the listings say low EMF, but then if you actually test it with a meter, it’s not.

The thing is, for me, I have a brand new 2024 sub 2k or in the $2,000 price range Costco sauna at the office, and my feet are cold in that. My legs are chilly, right? It doesn’t have heaters that go all the way down.

down to the side, you know, the sidewall heaters in the front. It doesn’t go all the way down to the floor. There’s a big gap. There’s also no heaters in the floor at all.

There’s little calf heaters, but they’re very underpowered. So I’m sitting in there, sitting in there. It does work. It is nice.

The fit and finish is better. The build quality is better on the, on the Costco one. However, this is cheaper and it works better. And I think it’s made by the same manufacturer.

I mean, I’ve done other videos about this. Aaron should have been posted here shortly. Um, I don’t know why that is. It looks like to me that the same people are making them.

There’s some similarities under the hood with components and hinges and hardware and you know, things that I see that were, if you look at enough of these, you can kind of tell they’re made by the same folks. Um, but sub two K sub $2,000 price point and under, there’s no wooden sauna that I know of that’s absolutely perfect.

Like everything in that price category and kind of rightfully so because the manufacturers are between a rock and a hard place. They can’t deliver something that’s perfect in that price point. So as much as you want to believe that the listing says that it’s this and it’s that, and it works like this and it gets to this temperature and it’s built like this and yada, yada, yada, something in there is a miss.

It’s just how it is in this. I’ve tried everything in this price category. Um, and it’s, you know, I’m biased obviously because I’ve been using higher end saunas for years. So if you get me used to that and then you put me in something that’s a little lesser quality, obviously I’m not going to like, you know, certain quirks about it.

That doesn’t mean that it’s a bad fit though for everyone’s situation. If you’re looking for $2,000 sauna and under, um, I think these are probably the best that you’re going to get. And here’s the deal. Some people will say, well Matt, uh, the Amazon model or the Costco model or the Wayfair, this or the, you know, whatever, throw whatever one you want into the mix.

Um, there’s a bunch of smaller companies.

that also have, you know, did they just sell these off their website? Guys, I’m not convinced that you’re really going to get, you know, like reputable service from those people. I don’t know if those companies are going to be around for very long. It’s kind of like, if you can’t get an English speaking person on the phone with relative ease, you know, there’s a lot of burden and responsibility that comes with being the guy that’s plastered all over YouTube saying, hey, this is good, this is good, this is good.

And then the company either goes belly up, or they don’t have great customer service, or you can’t get things when you need it, or they’re just like not available with great communication or info or whatever. That does not instill confidence. If you have an issue with the shipping, your order, if there’s damages, if you want to get something warrantied, if something breaks and you want to order parts, you know what I mean?

So I kind of take that into account. I don’t think everyone has the same access to a lot of these components as somebody like me. And yes, I’m willing to help you, but I can only, you know, help so many people at one time. So what I’m saying is, I think based on using these things, that it’s better to sacrifice a little bit on like the VOC or the EMF side, and get something that is a couple hundred dollars cheaper, like the ones that I’ve been using, because they work better.

And a lot of people will say, oh, Matt, you know, you don’t, you know, you hate, you know, high EMF saunas and stuff. I do. But the thing that I hate about it is that usually you’re buying into a piece of advertising that says, oh, it is truly low EMF.

Well, EMF is a plural term. Nine times out of 10, it’s not low EMF. And they’re just using that as a marketing gimmick to suck you in. So you’re spending more money when you could have gotten a cheaper product that doesn’t even deliver what it says that it’s going to deliver.

Do you see the issue with that? So knowing that, your Costco sauna, your Amazon sauna, they’re all still going to have higher electric fields. Your Wayfair stuff is going to be off the charts, magnetic and electric. Something that’s not a low EMF sauna.

has medium to high, you know, magnetic and electric. But if it works better, delivers you a better sweat in less time, if you’re trying to do this detox protocol for your levels, for your labs, from the holistic doctor, you’re going to get better results from one of the models that I’m talking about, like in the Black Friday sale the other day.

Versus like your Costco, because my Costco, like I’m sitting in there, I get a great torso sweat, but it’s kind of like, it’s a little weak, right? And my legs from the knee down is not sweating. My feet are chilly. My feet are cold.

It doesn’t have the right heater layout in order to deliver exactly what I would recommend for your situation, right? Now, if you’re just somebody who just wants a cheap sauna, and you’re not trying to do, you know, a health detox protocol, and you don’t care actually how much sweat you get, or if your whole body is sweating, right?

It’s important that your whole body is sweating if possible, so that you can remove a lot of this stuff from your adipose tissue. I don’t want to get like too deep into it and scare you off, but really what we want to achieve is that your body can detox itself naturally.

Yes, I’m sure your holistic doctor is going to give you supplements and compounds that aid in this, especially if you’re doing a program or a protocol. But if you look at, you know, some of the science of how this works, a sauna by itself, without taking a bunch of stuff, can reduce burden in the adipose tissue, the body burden in the adipose tissue, in about six months.

That’s not saying that’s going to eliminate everything, or cure, or treat, or do anything. I’m not a doctor. We’re not making medical claims for this equipment. But I’m telling you that the effectiveness of the sauna session, as it accumulates and out over an extended period of time, you’re going to get a much better result by sacrificing something within this budget, by picking the sauna that delivers the best sweat, if that makes sense.

And so that’s the number one thing that I’ve noticed for a lot of these cheap saunas.

is the heater layout is lacking. It’s false advertising anyway in the product listing, so maybe you get one that’s a little bit lower EMF or lower VOC than the other. Now I’ll tell you right away, any of these saunas, if they have formaldehyde glues, any type of resin that heats up and is off-gassing that I think would damage your lungs, I personally would not use that and I would never tell you to buy it.

So when I’m talking about build quality, VOC, EMF, it’s not something that I wouldn’t personally use for a little bit, right? Now maybe I don’t use a high EMF sauna for five, 10, 15, 20 years, I just would rather have something that’s a little bit cleaner, but I mean, I don’t see why you couldn’t use it for a year or two if it’s this or nothing, right?

You’re gonna get more benefit from this than you would from doing nothing and you’ll never get that time back. I’ve been in this situation, I should’ve listened to the functional medicine doctor sooner, I shouldn’t have been so resistant, I shouldn’t have been so stubborn, yada, yada, yada, because I ended up getting benefit.

Did it work the first time and right away? No, it took some time, took some trial and error, but health recovery is possible, right? Making lifestyle changes and incorporating some of this equipment can give you your life back, so to speak, right? It can make you have great strides in recovering your health.

So we kind of have to be objective when we look at this and for your specific situation, based on what you’re telling me, now somebody else could come along and say, well, you know, I could actually spend $5,300 and if I buy this once and I’ll never have to get it again, different situation, right?

I’m gonna tell you, well, spend a little bit more money because you won’t have to replace it, you won’t have to worry about anything, there’s no stress, and select one of these brands because I know that the company is tried and true, it’s got a whatever warranty, the things don’t break anyway but that’s not the right thing for every single person, if that makes sense.

So to recap, the best cheap, affordable options for you in this price range, number one would probably be the DIY.

If you don’t want to build that, it’s going to be one of the portable zippy tents. If you don’t want to build that, it’s going to be one of the saunas that I’ve tested recently on the Black Friday sale thing. It’s got a weird name. Well there’s two of them.

One of them I cannot pronounce at all. It’s like a mini sauna. It’s out of the video frame, but it’s right over there in the corner. Not low EMF, you know.

I know. You guys have asked for it. It’s been a couple of years, but I get it. You know, we’ve got to kind of adapt to the options that are available.

I don’t see anything else on the market that works as good as this for that price point. I think it’s like $1,600-ish with the Black Friday sale. Maybe even $15-something direct from the website. They sell it everywhere, Walmart, Amazon.

I think they gave us a discount code to buy it directly from the LifePro website, but it’s hard to find. I go to the homepage and I don’t see anything. I don’t know how you pronounce it, but the Rejuva whatever is, but you can see all that stuff in the Black Friday link thing.

I think, I don’t know when that sale ends, but forget about all that. Even if you see this way after the sale. I think the regular price is like $1,700 or $1,800 or $1,900. I don’t know.

Somewhere in there. Sub 2K. It’s the best sweat that I’ve gotten out of any of those because, and this is very specific. In the review video, you’ll see on a FLIR gun exactly what I’m talking about because a lot of people are like, oh yeah, but it says it has six heaters or seven heaters or eight heaters or the Costco one says this and da, da, da, da.

Guys, it has to do with what is the far infrared coverage and absorption look like in the seated body position from the body. With a FLIR gun, you can see all the cold spots as we pan around with the camera. It takes me 15 minutes to convey this to you like this.

If I showed you a 30 second clip in the review of.

Oh, wow, here’s a Costco sauna. Here’s the Wayfair sauna. Here’s the mini sauna Here’s the Amazon one and like, you know, we just go on down the list Immediately you’re gonna understand exactly what I’m talking about because the heaters on the sidewalls in the front in front of the body Go all the way to the floor.

Not only that there’s heaters underneath your feet There’s floor heaters in it and there’s calf heaters, right? and so when you look at this on a flare gun The only cold spot is on the bench and the only sauna on the market That’s gonna fix that is a radiant health sauna because it has concealed heaters built into the bench That’s one of the reasons why we love it so much, right?

It’s one of the best performers in the industry even at a lower temperature because the body is absorbing so much infrared Radiant heat like you can’t even see what’s happening, but you can sweat at a lower temperature in something like that Obviously that’s not within your budget here.

If you had an unlimited budget That’s the thing I would tell you to get immediately and don’t look at anything else But for this You can spend less money than those other ones that I just mentioned and when you see it on the flare gun You’re gonna be like, oh my god I totally understand, you know how my legs could feel cold in this one or how in this Amazon model There’s no side heaters.

There’s only heaters on the back and it feels Ridiculously hot behind me and it’s cold in the front and there’s like condensation building up on the glass What is that all about? Well when you look at that on a flare gun, you’re like, oh So I don’t actually don’t have any heat penetration on the sides or the front of my body So if I get one of these, you know cheaper saunas that has a better heater layout that’s better designed Yeah, maybe the bit the fit and finish isn’t as great, you know, maybe whatever I complained about I whined about something There was like the mesh that they put in front of the heater guards It was like trimmed with a dull razor blade off the top and there’s no like There’s no trim piece up there so it’s not capped off on the top, right We could pick things apart all day, but everything in the sub 2k category is going to be have some type of

flaw. It’s either not going to be built perfect, it’s not going to have perfect heat, it’s not going to be perfectly low emf, it’s not going to be this material, it’s not going to look like this, it’s not going to have a controller on the outside and the inside, it’s not going to open, the stupid door is not going to open the right way.

Some people want a left swing, some people want a right hand swing, right? Like there’s always something. But given trying all these things in this price range, can’t go wrong with that. Hope that helps you.

This is more exhaustive than I was expecting it to be. But as I’m thinking about your particular situation, I’m thinking about the hundreds of other people in the last few weeks who have also said, hey Matt, you know, this is my price range, can’t figure this out, don’t know what to get.

Looked at some of the reviews, some of them seem shady, some of them seem great, can’t make heads or tails out of it. This is my take. Hopefully it helps you. If you have questions, put them in the comments and I’ll post this video in the certified sauna community on Facebook.

And if you’re a member there, if you’re not, you should join, it’s free. But if you’re a member there, go ahead and post your question in addition to this, because I’m going to give you this as a response in some of the other threads. So have a great day.

We’ll see you in next week’s Q&A.