- Owner and publisher
- SaunaShare, Inc.
- Also runs
- SaunaShare.com, SaunaMarketplace.com, SaunaDesignPro
- Ownership line
- Under every byline
More mobile saunas than Domino's
We started SaunaShare with one goal: make affordable sauna easier to get to. It began as a place to rent a mobile sauna and to find public saunas and sauna events near you. You don't have to own a sauna to use one. You need one close by, at a price that makes sense on a Tuesday.
There should be more mobile saunas than Domino's.
There should be more public saunas than bars.
We mean both. Domino's had 7,257 stores in the US on September 6, 2026, according to its quarterly filing. The Census Bureau counted 40,835 bars, taverns and nightclubs with paid staff in the US in its 2023 County Business Patterns. Nobody counts mobile or public saunas in the US yet. We'd like there to be enough that somebody has to.
Pizza got that big by being cheap, close and willing to come to you. A mobile sauna can do all three. A bar is where a lot of towns go to be around each other. A public sauna does that job too, and nobody needs a ride home.
It isn't a fantasy. Finland has 3.3 million saunas for 5.5 million people, according to UNESCO. The British Sauna Society's UK Sauna Map lists more than 800 saunas across the UK. Kate Butchart found sauna in Oslo, then built a floating sauna on Saratoga Lake in upstate New York.
Where SaunaNews fits
Every mobile sauna on a trailer and every bathhouse on a city block is a small business. Somebody built the heater, cut the wood, got the permit and found the money. The more those people know about what's working, the faster sauna spreads. That's the job SaunaNews does in the family.
Sauna has wellness blogs, brand newsletters and pool-and-spa magazines that cover it as one category among many. What it didn't have in English was a trade paper: one that follows the heater makers, the bathhouse openings, the building codes and the tariffs week to week, with names, numbers and sources.
The people inside the business feel that gap too. “Bathhouses are opening at a remarkable pace, yet there is still very little reliable data available about the business and operational models behind them,” Cassandra Cavanah, vice chair of the Global Wellness Institute's Hydrothermal Initiative, said in August, when she and Lisa Starr launched a bathhouse benchmarking survey through two of the institute's initiatives.
More than 220 stories since April 2026
SaunaNews published its first stories in April 2026. By the end of that month it had a hub for Harvia's results and filings and a worldwide calendar of sauna events, from Aufguss competitions to trade shows. Company profiles, with each fact linked to its source, arrived in July, along with a Finnish-language section of translated stories and sauna jobs in Finland. Since October 1 the whole site has been in Finnish and Estonian, and a Japanese edition started in October.
The coverage follows the business where it happens. SaunaNews explained why the new UL sauna heater standard arrived before the building codes were ready, reported Saunum's research partnership with Tallinn University, traced how a Canadian sauna kit and its cladding land on opposite sides of a 50% tariff list, and covered the launch of a charter for public saunas on the eve of the International Sauna Congress in Oslo.
Two Bens from the concert business
Sauna Marketplace is run by its two founders, Ben Burger and Ben Frizzell, who spent most of their working lives managing concerts, events and tours before sauna. Both run saunas at home.
SaunaShare came first. When public saunas started shutting down during COVID, we didn't know what to do. We did know it was nice to have a sauna at home, and through SaunaShare we knew what makes a good one and who builds them right. So we started Sauna Marketplace.
We also go to the source. In late August and early September 2026, Burger and Frizzell spent two weeks in Finland and Estonia, on the floors where saunas, heaters and sauna wood get made.
One company, four sites
SaunaShare.com is a free directory of saunas to visit and the stays built around them. Nobody pays to be listed, and it never takes a cut of a session or a stay. SaunaMarketplace.com sells saunas, heaters and thermally modified wood, with help sizing the heater to the room. SaunaDesignPro is a free planner for laying out a sauna room in 3D before anything is built. SaunaNews reports the news, and SaunaShare's calendar of public sauna events runs on SaunaNews's event listings.
The business we cover
A few numbers for scale, each with its source.
- 01$6.8 trillion: the global wellness economy in 2024, up 7.9% in a year, per the Global Wellness Institute
- 02$157 billion: global spa revenue in 2024, up 14.6%, per GWI's 2025 Global Wellness Economy Monitor
- 03Close to EUR 4 billion: Harvia's estimate of the global sauna market, about $4.5 billion, in its third-quarter report
- 04More than 18 million: saunas installed worldwide, and just over 1 million in North America, per Harvia's 2025 annual report
- 0518.1%: Harvia's North American revenue growth in the third quarter of 2026, after 38.6% in the second. North America is now 36% of Harvia's revenue
We'd like a lot more of those 18 million saunas to be ones anyone can walk into.
Five changes we're watching
This part is analysis: our read on where the business is going, from what SaunaNews has reported this year.
- 01
Sauna is becoming a night out
Diplo headlined a sold-out sauna rave at Othership in Brooklyn in October. Therme Group hired a Chief Entertainment Officer, which says sauna is an entertainment business about as plainly as a job title can.
- 02
Public sauna wants to be infrastructure
Idaho put a sauna concession in a state park out to bid. In Oslo, Sauna for All's charter asked governments and investors to treat public sauna as social infrastructure. Expect that phrase in more city budgets.
- 03
The rulebook is catching up
The US got a modern sauna heater standard in June 2025, before the building codes caught up. Europe approved EN 18164 for public sauna and steam rooms in January 2026. Cold plunges are next, state by state.
- 04
The supply chain sets the price
Lumber, steel and freight are squeezing US sauna makers from three sides, and one tariff classification can split a single kit in two.
- 05
Proof is part of the product
Harvia expects the sauna market to grow faster than its historical 5% a year, “fueled by the increasing awareness of sauna and its health benefits.” A 588-person Swedish study found women and men report different benefits from sauna bathing. The companies that pay for real studies will be the ones that can back up a claim.
We're not neutral, and we say so
SaunaShare, Inc. sells many of the products SaunaNews writes about, through SaunaMarketplace.com. Every story says so, right under the byline. That experience may change what we write about and what we don't.
It's also where most of what we know comes from. Sizing heaters to real rooms, sorting out freight, and hearing from owners years after the install teach things a press release never will.
Our other bias is out in the open too: we want more people in more saunas.
The standards don't bend for either one. Stories start with what changed and who did it. Figures, quotes and research findings carry their source, linked where a public link exists, and a company's claims are reported as that company's claims. Temperatures are in °F and sizes in feet and inches. Paid placements are labeled Sponsor. When we get something wrong, we fix it.
Tell us what's happening
Putting a sauna on a trailer? Opening a public sauna in your town? The quickest way to shape what SaunaNews covers is to tell us. Send news, launches, openings, research and corrections to , and add your event to the SaunaNews calendar.
