Infrared Sauna Electricity Cost: What It Really Costs to Run
The running cost of an infrared sauna is small and easy to calculate exactly. The formula is kilowatts times hours times your electricity rate. A typical 1-2 person unit draws 1.6 to 2.0 kW, so a 40-minute session costs roughly the price of a cup of coffee's worth of electricity, about 19 cents at the US average rate. This guide does the full math: cost per session, per month, and per year by unit size and how often you use it, plus an honest comparison against a traditional electric sauna.
- 01The formula is simple: cost = power in kW x time in hours x your rate per kWh. Everything else is plugging in numbers.
- 02A 1.7 kW unit for a 40-minute session uses about 1.1 kWh, or roughly $0.19 at the US average rate of about $0.17 per kWh (EIA, 2026).
- 03Used four times a week, that same unit costs about $3 per month and $37 per year to run. A 3-4 person unit roughly doubles that.
- 04Infrared is far cheaper to run than a traditional electric sauna, which draws 6-8 kW and adds a long pre-heat, often 5-7 kWh per session.
The Math: How to Cost a Session Exactly
You do not need to guess at running cost. Every electric appliance follows the same equation, and an infrared sauna is no exception:
The only three inputs are your sauna's power draw, how long you run it, and what your utility charges per kilowatt-hour. The power rating is on the unit's label or spec sheet. The time is your session length plus any heat-up. The rate is on your electricity bill. For the worked examples below I use the US average residential rate of about $0.17 per kWh, the EIA figure for 2026, and also show a low and high case because real rates run from roughly $0.10 in cheaper states to $0.35 or more in places like California, Massachusetts, and Hawaii.
A Worked Example, Step by Step
Take a common 1-2 person cabin rated at 1.7 kW. You run a 40-minute session. Forty minutes is 0.67 hours. So the energy used is 1.7 kW × 0.67 h = about 1.1 kWh. At $0.17 per kWh, that is 1.1 × $0.17 = about $0.19 for the session. At a cheap $0.11 rate it is closer to $0.12, and at an expensive $0.30 rate it is about $0.34. That is the entire calculation.
One honest caveat: heat-up adds time. Infrared cabins reach a usable temperature in about 10-15 minutes, much faster than a traditional sauna, but those minutes still draw power. If you pre-heat for 12 minutes and then sit for 40, your total run is about 52 minutes, which nudges a 1.7 kW unit to roughly 1.5 kWh, or about $0.25. Units also do not pull full rated power the whole time. Once the cabin is warm, the heaters cycle on and off to hold temperature, so the figures here are a slight overestimate, which is the safe direction for budgeting. If you want the rest of the ownership picture beyond electricity, see our full infrared sauna cost breakdown.
Cost by Unit Size and Usage
Power draw scales with cabin size because larger units have more heating panels. A 1-2 person unit typically draws 1.6 to 2.0 kW, and a 3-4 person unit draws 2.4 to 3.0 kW. The table below uses representative mid-range draws, a standard 40-minute session with a short pre-heat included (so the per-session energy is slightly above the run-time-only figure), and the US average rate of $0.17 per kWh.
How Usage Frequency Changes the Monthly Bill
Frequency matters more than size for most people. The table below holds a 1.7 kW unit fixed (the most common home size) at about 1.1 kWh per session and shows the monthly cost at different routines. Even daily use lands under six dollars a month at the US average rate. If you are still deciding how often to sit, our guide on how often to use an infrared sauna covers the practical side.
To convert any figure here to your own bill, multiply by the ratio of your rate to $0.17. If you pay $0.30 per kWh, multiply by 1.8. If you pay $0.11, multiply by 0.65. So a "typical" 4x-weekly routine that costs about $3.20 a month at the average rate is roughly $5.70 in an expensive state and about $2.10 in a cheap one. Either way it is a rounding error on a household electricity bill.
Infrared vs Traditional Electric Sauna
The running-cost gap between infrared and a traditional Finnish-style electric sauna is large, and it comes from three things. First, the heater power: a traditional sauna heater is rated at 6-8 kW, roughly four times an infrared cabin's draw, because it has to heat a stack of rocks and a large volume of air to 170-195 F. Second, the pre-heat: a traditional sauna needs 30-45 minutes of full-power heating before it is ready, while infrared is usable in 10-15 minutes. Third, there is no water heating to boil for steam in either case, but the rock-and-air thermal mass of a traditional sauna stores and loses far more energy.
The headline: at the US average rate, an infrared session costs roughly a fifth to a third of what a traditional electric sauna session costs to run, and over a year of regular use the difference is well over $150. That gap is one reason infrared is the practical choice for a home that runs sessions often. The trade-off is the heat experience itself, since traditional saunas run hotter with steam, but on pure electricity cost infrared wins clearly. Lower-temperature operation is also why a well-built unit can be efficient and gentle at once, which our roundup of low-EMF infrared saunas gets into.
What Drives Your Real Number Up or Down
- 01Your local rate. The single biggest factor. The same session costs three times more in Hawaii than in Washington or Louisiana. Check the per-kWh figure on your bill before trusting any generic estimate.
- 02Cabin insulation and door seals. A well-insulated cabin holds heat, so the heaters cycle off more and the unit pulls less than its rated draw. Cheap cabins with loose glass doors run closer to full power throughout.
- 03Session length and pre-heat habits. Longer sessions and longer pre-heats add kWh linearly. Pre-heating for 20 minutes when 10 would do roughly doubles the heat-up energy.
- 04Ambient room temperature. A sauna in a cold garage works harder to reach temperature than one in a heated room. Colder surroundings mean more energy per session.
- 05Full-spectrum vs far-infrared only. Full-spectrum units with near and mid emitters can draw slightly more peak power than far-infrared-only cabins of the same size, though the per-session difference is usually small.
Electricity should not factor into whether you buy an infrared sauna. At typical home usage it costs less per month than a single streaming subscription. The numbers that actually move are the purchase price and, for larger units, any electrical install. If budget is the constraint, focus there, starting with our picks for the best budget infrared saunas.
