Best Saunas in Helsinki: Public, Private, and Famous

Helsinki has the densest concentration of good public saunas of any capital city, and the best one costs nothing. Sompasauna is free, open 24 hours a day, has no staff, and runs on visitors chopping their own firewood. The most photographed one is named after löyly (the burst of steam that rises when water hits the hot stones), charges €29 ($33) for two hours, and was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Greatest Places. Both are worth your time, for completely different reasons.

What follows is the working list: what each place costs, when to book, and which one to pick if you only have one evening. Prices are 2025 rates from the venues’ own sites, in euros, since that’s what you’ll actually pay at the door.

The quick comparison

Five public saunas cover almost every reason a visitor comes to Helsinki. The differences that matter are price, whether you need to book, and whether the place is built for tourists or for the neighborhood.

If you have one evening and want the postcard, go to Löyly. If you have one evening and want to understand what a Finnish public sauna actually is, go to Kotiharjun.

Löyly: the famous one

Löyly opened in 2016 on the Hernesaari waterfront, designed by Avanto Architects in FSC-certified timber, and it has been on every Helsinki listicle since. The sloping wooden shell you’ve seen in photos is a public terrace you can climb without paying. Inside are two saunas: a smoke sauna of about 18 m² and a wood-burning sauna of about 22 m², each taking roughly 20 bathers.

Two hours costs €29 ($33), with each extra hour at €12 ($14). That includes a towel, a seat liner, shampoo, and shower gel, which softens the price a little. Swimwear rental is €8 ($9) for two hours with a deposit. It’s mixed-gender and swimsuits are required at all times, so this is the low-anxiety option if the idea of a naked room worries you. Children under 10 are free when sharing a locker with a parent.

Sea access is direct – steps down into the Baltic, year-round, including winter. There’s a full restaurant, which is unusual for a Finnish public sauna and tells you exactly who the place is designed for. Book online well ahead in summer; walk-in slots are rare, and cancellation is 24 hours.

Kotiharjun Sauna: the oldest and the most honest

Kotiharjun opened in 1928 in Kallio and is the only remaining public wood-fired sauna in Helsinki. The structure hasn’t changed. Men bathe on the ground floor, women on the second, and the upper benches take 20 to 30 people. Entry is €16 ($18), or €13 ($15) for students, pensioners, the unemployed, and disabled visitors, and €9 ($10) for children aged 12 to 16. Towel rental is €4 ($5). A birch whisk – the bundle of leafy branches Finns use to slap circulation into the skin, called a vasta in eastern Finland and a vihta in the west – costs €8 ($9).

It’s open Tuesday to Sunday, 14:00 to 20:00, with bathing until 21:30, and closed Mondays. It sometimes closes on Tuesdays during peak tourist season, so check the site the morning you plan to go. On Thursdays and Saturdays you can book a complete body wash for €15 ($17), performed by a washer, which is a service that has essentially disappeared everywhere else.

The saunas are gender-separated and people bathe naked. Swimsuits may be prohibited outright – synthetic fabric in a hot wood-fired room isn’t pleasant for anyone downwind of you. The bench regulars are neighborhood people who have been coming for decades, and tourists sit among them without ceremony. Nobody will look at you twice unless you do something loud.

Kulttuurisauna: architecture and quiet

Kulttuurisauna opened in 2013 on the Hakaniemi shoreline, built by architects Tuomas Toivonen and Nene Tsuboi as an ecological, minimal building in the shadow of the Merihaka towers. It runs on a wood pellet-heated mass stove, fired once and then left to hold its heat. Saunas are separate for men and women. Entry is €17 ($19), or €13 ($15) concession, and it’s cashless – bring a card and nothing else.

Sessions last 90 minutes. Morning shifts run Friday to Sunday, 08:00 to 11:30 with last entry at 10:30, and are walk-in. Evening shifts run Wednesday to Sunday, 16:00 to 20:00 with last entry at 18:45, and pre-booking online is mandatory. Friday evenings are silent shifts. There is sea access and ice swimming in winter.

Bring your own towel, a sitting towel, a water bottle, and a swimsuit if you plan to swim; seat covers are included. No glass bottles, no personal alcohol. The house policy discourages groups – more than two people counts as a group – and first-time visitors are advised to come alone. This is the least accommodating sauna on the list and the one with the strongest opinions about what a sauna is for.

Allas Pool: the one with swimming

Allas Pool sits at Katajanokanlaituri, right next to the Market Square, which makes it the easiest sauna to reach on foot from anywhere central. It has five saunas – three on the pool level, two in the main building – plus a seawater pool, a heated freshwater pool at 27°C, and a children’s pool in summer.

An adult ticket is €19 ($22) on weekdays and €24 ($27) on weekends, valid for three hours. Weekday pricing runs Monday to Thursday all day and Friday until 14:00; weekend pricing starts Friday at 14:00. Students and concessions pay €14 ($16) weekday and €17 ($19) weekend. Ages 3 to 12 pay €11 ($13) and €14 ($16); under 3 is free. A 10-visit card is €158 ($180) for adults, €115 ($130) concession, and a monthly pass is €99 ($115).

Opening hours are 06:30 to 21:00 Monday to Thursday, 06:30 to 22:00 Friday, 08:00 to 22:00 Saturday, and 08:00 to 21:00 Sunday, with ticket sales ending an hour before closing. There are three places to eat and drink on site, including a rooftop bar that opens when the weather cooperates, which in Helsinki is a meaningful qualifier.

This is the pick if you’re traveling with kids or want the sauna as one part of an afternoon rather than the whole point of it.

Sompasauna: free, 24/7, run by whoever shows up

Sompasauna is a volunteer-run sauna with no staff, no entry fee, and no closing time. It moved to Mustikkamaa island in summer 2025 from its old Sörnäinen site. There are multiple cabins running at different temperatures, all wood-fired and self-service, with sea access. Facilities are basic: changing areas, lockers where you bring your own padlock, and a dry toilet. No running water, no showers. Bring drinking water and a towel.

It’s mixed-gender with no separate turns, and you can be naked or wear a swimsuit – nobody minds either way. Donations are welcome via MobilePay, PayPal, or bank transfer, and you can join the association if you want to support it properly.

The rules are short and taken seriously: help out by chopping wood, carrying water, and keeping the place clean; no photography; no loudspeakers, though acoustic music and singing are fine and there’s a piano; zero tolerance for sexual harassment, reportable through the association’s own form. That’s the whole social contract. It works because everyone there knows the place stops existing the moment people stop maintaining it.

Hotel saunas

Most Helsinki hotels have a sauna, and most of them are small electric boxes in the basement that are fine and unremarkable. Two are worth naming.

The St. George Care Spa at Hotel St. George on Yrjönkatu occupies an 1840s heritage building and includes a sauna, pool, and gym. It’s complimentary for hotel guests aged 16 and up, and for anyone booking a spa treatment. Non-guests can buy memberships: €580 ($660) for three months, €1,105 ($1,250) for six, €1,840 ($2,100) for twelve, which covers 24/7 gym access plus sauna and pool during opening hours. Spa hours are 09:00 to 21:00 Monday to Saturday, until 21:30 on Saturdays and 18:00 on Sundays, with early access for hotel guests from 07:00.

The Waldorf Astoria Helsinki opened in December 2023 with a Finnish sauna, cold plunge, steam room, jacuzzi pools, treatment rooms, and a fitness center, for hotel guests.

One correction worth making: Klaus K appears in a lot of Helsinki sauna listicles, and it does not have an on-site sauna. The hotel’s own FAQ sends guests to Löyly or Allas instead. If a hotel sauna matters to your booking, confirm it with the property rather than with a list.

Etiquette: what tourists get wrong

Finnish sauna behavior is simple and nobody will explain it to you, because to a Finn it isn’t a set of rules, it’s just how you behave in a room. The Finnish Sauna Society and Visit Helsinki both publish the basics; here’s the compressed version that covers Helsinki specifically.

• Shower first, with soap. Not optional, and not a formality. Showers at every venue on this list are warm.
• Read the swimsuit situation. Mixed-gender venues mean swimwear: required at Löyly, standard at Allas. Gender-separated venues like Kotiharjun mean naked. Sompasauna is your choice.
• Ask before throwing water. Löyly is a shared decision, not an individual one.
• Sit on a seat cover. Most venues supply disposable ones, or you bring a reusable linen square. Kulttuurisauna includes them; Löyly includes a seat liner in the ticket.
• No phones. No food. There is no Wi-Fi in the sauna. There has never been Wi-Fi in the sauna. There will never be Wi-Fi in the sauna. This is the design, not an oversight.
• Cool off between rounds. Ten to twenty minutes on the bench, then a cold shower, sea dip, or a few minutes outside. Two or three rounds is normal.
• Drink water. Several glasses across a session. Beer belongs to the cooling break or the after, not the bench.
• Don’t stand in the doorway. In or out. Every second the door is open is heat the whole room loses.
• Keep it calm. Finns call it saunarauha, sauna peace – quiet conversation is fine, performance is not. Kulttuurisauna formalizes this with silent Friday evenings.

The equality principle underneath all of this is the part visitors most often miss: nobody has a title on the bench. Former President Tarja Halonen is a known regular at Helsinki public saunas, and the only correct reaction to noticing that is no reaction at all. If you want the full treatment, Finnish sauna etiquette goes deeper into the cultural logic.

Booking and timing

Kotiharjun also rents private saunas. Tuesday to Thursday it’s €16 ($18) per person for two hours, €18 ($21) for three, €20 ($23) for four. Friday and Saturday, with a five-person minimum, and Sunday with a two-person minimum, it’s €20 ($23), €22 ($25), and €24 ($27) for the same durations. Discount cards are worth it if you’re staying a while: ten public entries for €140 ($160) or €120 ($135) concession, five for €75 ($85) or €60 ($68) concession.

On season: May and September give you decent weather and thinner crowds than July. Winter is arguably better – the whole point of a sea-access sauna is the contrast, and a January dip through a hole in the ice is a different experience from a July one. Kulttuurisauna and Sompasauna both do ice swimming.

Which one to pick

Two nights in Helsinki, one sauna each: Kotiharjun first, Löyly second. That order matters. Kotiharjun gives you the baseline – a hot wood-fired room, silence, and strangers who aren’t performing anything – and Löyly afterward reads as the beautifully executed modern interpretation it is. Reverse the order and Kotiharjun looks shabby instead of unchanged.

One night only: Kotiharjun if you want the sauna itself, Löyly if you want an evening with dinner and a view attached. Traveling with children: Allas. Arriving at 2 a.m. with no plan: Sompasauna, which will be running, because it always is.

Helsinki is the concentrated version of something that exists across the whole country. If you’re heading north or out to the lakes, the best saunas in Finland spread far beyond this one city, and Helsinki itself is only one entry on the map of sauna destinations worldwide.

Common questions