Inside America's Sauna Boom: Searches Up 71% Since 2022

New analysis of four years of DataForSEO search data reveals that US searches for "sauna" have grown 71% since 2022, peaking at 550,000 in a single month.

 Per-capita demand is highest in a Mountain-West/Northeast "Sauna Belt" that most market forecasts miss entirely - and Wyoming is the fastest-growing sauna state in the country.

Study Highlights

• US searches for "sauna" peaked at 550,000 in January 2025 - an all-time single-month high.
• "Sauna near me" hit 301,000 US searches in a single month (January 2025), up from a 2022 peak of around 110,000 - nearly a threefold increase.
• "Home sauna" grew 79% from 2022 to 2025, with "sauna kit" hitting an all-time high in January 2026 - Americans are increasingly building saunas at home.
• "Traditional sauna" grew 306% (from roughly 4,500 monthly searches in 2022 to 18,100 at its November 2025 peak)  - the single biggest keyword shift in the dataset, and a clear sign that demand has moved from entry-level products to real hardware.
• "Outdoor sauna" grew 86% and "barrel sauna" is still setting new highs as of late 2025.
• Entry-level sauna products have already peaked: "sauna blanket" peaked in December 2023 and has fallen by two-thirds since; "infrared sauna" peaked in January 2024.
• The top per-capita sauna state is Wyoming - 1,807 searches per 1M residents over the last 12 months - nearly double California's per-capita rate of 985.
• Wyoming is also the fastest-growing “sauna state”, with 888% growth from early 2022 to early 2026 - nine times California's rate.
• The top 10 per-capita sauna states form a clear geographic arc: DC, Wyoming, Colorado, Illinois, Vermont, Washington, New York, Maine, Oregon, Minnesota - the Mountain West, the Pacific Northwest, and New England.

The Scale: 550,000 Searches in a Single Month

The single most striking number in the US dataset is the peak itself. In January 2025, Americans searched the word "sauna" 550,000 times on Google. That is the highest monthly reading in the 48-month window and the highest recorded for any sauna-related query in the dataset.

The growth curve underneath that peak is unusually clean. In every year of the window, average monthly US search volume for "sauna" has been higher than the year before, with the sole exception of 2025 (which still averaged 303,500 – a modest 5% dip – before climbing again to a 373,000 average across the first four months of 2026).

Core US sauna demand (average monthly search volume)

Two things are worth noting. First, "sauna near me" has grown even faster than "sauna" itself (+109% vs +71%). That's the query most closely associated with people actively looking to visit a sauna today, rather than research one - and it is the only keyword in the dataset that has grown every single year of the window without a pause. Second, "sauna blanket" now diverges from every other category line. It grew through 2022 and 2023, peaked at 40,500 in December 2023, and has since declined continuously. The same pattern - but less severe - applies to "infrared sauna," which peaked at 201,000 in January 2024.

From Research to Action: Americans Are Looking for Saunas to Visit and Build

The growth in "sauna near me" - from a monthly average of 90,611 in 2022 to 234,333 in early 2026 - is one of the most significant signals in the dataset. This is not a research query. It is an intent query: people looking for a sauna they can walk into today.

At the same time, the home-build cluster is accelerating. "Home sauna" grew 79%. "Outdoor sauna" grew 86%. "Sauna kit" reached an all-time high in January 2026, with 14,800 monthly searches. "Barrel sauna" peaked in December 2025 at 40,500.

Peak month by keyword - US sauna, 2022-2026

Every "real-hardware" keyword - the ones associated with building a meaningful sauna setup in a home or backyard - has either hit its peak in the last six months or is still setting new highs in 2026. Every "entry-level" keyword peaked in 2023 or 2024 and is now in decline. The American sauna audience is graduating from $200 blankets to $5,000 barrels to $10,000 outdoor cabins - and the search language is following the money.

The Sauna Map of America: Absolute Demand

The national picture only tells part of the story. Once the state-level dataset is loaded in, the sauna boom resolves into a geographic pattern with clear winners - and just as clear losers - that would be invisible in a country-level average.

In absolute terms, the top of the list looks roughly like every other search data state ranking: population matters, and the biggest states are on top.

US states ranked by absolute "sauna" search volume (last 12 months avg)

California, New York, and Texas lead on absolute volume because they're the three most populous states. But Illinois is already the outlier - ranked #4 despite being the sixth-largest state by population, with a search rate for the term “sauna” that is nearly double that of Texas and Florida per resident. And Washington at #6 (with 7.8M residents) and Colorado at #8 (with 5.9M) are the other two structural surprises. Both punch several weight classes above their weight class.

The real story lives in the per-capita ranking.

The Real Sauna Belt: Per Capita Rankings

When you normalize for population, the US sauna map changes shape entirely. The biggest states fall down the ranking, and a tight cluster of northern, mountain, and New England states rise to the top.

US states ranked by "sauna" searches per 1 million residents (last 12 months avg)

Three patterns jump out of this ranking.

First, the Sauna Belt is real, and it's geographically tight. The top 12 per-capita states draw a single continuous arc from the Mountain West (Wyoming, Colorado, Utah) through the Pacific Northwest (Washington, Oregon) to the Upper Midwest (Minnesota, Illinois) and across to New England (Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts). These are the same parts of the US that have the strongest Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish ancestral populations, overlaid with the modern wellness economy. Minnesota and Maine are the heritage states; Colorado and Washington are the wellness states; Wyoming is both.

Second, Wyoming is the single biggest surprise in the dataset. A state of 590,000 people ranks #2 nationally on per-capita sauna search volume, and - as shown in the growth section below - also ranks #1 on growth rate over the four-year window. The combination suggests that something genuine is happening specifically in Wyoming, not just a small-base artifact.

Third, California - despite leading on absolute searches - is only the 13th-highest state per capita. That is a specific, measurable version of the broader story: the US sauna boom isn't concentrated in the most populous coastal states. It is concentrated in the states that historically had the culture, as well as in those that have adopted the wellness stack.

The bottom of the per-capita ranking is equally telling. The ten lowest-ranking states - Mississippi (313), Louisiana (381), West Virginia (382), Arkansas (401), Alabama (401), Oklahoma (434), Kentucky (475), New Mexico (498), Missouri (550), and South Carolina (551) - form a geographically coherent Deep South / Appalachia bloc where sauna search demand is roughly one-quarter the rate of the Sauna Belt states. Climate is the obvious variable, but it isn't the only one: Arizona (615) and Nevada (770) sit in the middle of the pack despite similarly hot climates, suggesting that the Sauna Belt pattern reflects cultural adoption at least as much as it does winter temperatures.

Growth Leaders: Where the Curve Is Steepest

The per-capita ranking tells you where sauna culture is strongest today. The growth ranking tells you where it is changing fastest. These are not the same states.

US states ranked by "sauna" search growth, early-six-months vs latest-six-months

Wyoming's 888% growth is the largest in the dataset, and it is not a small-base artifact: 1,808 monthly searches for "sauna" in a state with 590,000 residents is meaningful. The runner-up, Illinois, grew 331% from a much larger 2022 base of 5,600 - a four-fold increase on real volume. New England dominates the middle of the growth list (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts), which matches the per-capita rankings and supports the "Sauna Belt is real" reading.

Several states show up as growth leaders that do NOT appear high in the per-capita ranking: Kansas, Ohio, Iowa, and Tennessee. In each case, the current absolute volume is still modest, but the pace of change is among the highest in the country. If those growth rates continue, the per-capita ranking will look different in two years than it does today.

Seattle, Minneapolis, and the City-Level Story

The national data includes city-level queries for the ten largest US metros plus a handful of smaller wellness-heavy cities. Two patterns are worth pulling out.

The Pacific Northwest is booming faster than any other US region. "Sauna Seattle" searches grew 204% from 2022 to 2026 - one of the largest city-level moves in the dataset. "Sauna Portland" grew 63%. "Sauna Denver," geographically adjacent, grew by 85%. The entire mountain/PNW corridor - which also includes the Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah state-level surges - appears to be experiencing a coordinated regional surge.

The Finnish heartland is holding steady. "Sauna Minneapolis" grew 123% over the window - strong, but slower than the PNW numbers. Minnesota's per-capita rank (#10) is high but not in the top five. The interpretation: the traditional sauna culture in the Upper Midwest is neither new nor rapidly expanding - it's the baseline against which the new, wellness-driven boom is layering on top.

US city-level sauna search growth

Los Angeles is the one big metro where the sauna story essentially hasn't started - despite California's #1 absolute ranking overall. That reflects how uneven the state actually is: Northern California and the wellness crescent through San Francisco and Marin carry almost all the volume, while LA remains flat.

What This Means for the US Sauna Industry

The US sauna industry has spent the last four years chasing national averages. The state-level data make a stronger case: the market is not uniform and is not expanding evenly. There is a clearly defined geographic core - running from Wyoming and Colorado north through Washington, east through Minnesota and Illinois, and terminating in Maine and Vermont - where sauna demand is structurally higher per resident than anywhere else in the country and still growing.

The implications for product, marketing, and inventory decisions are straightforward once the pattern is named. The top 10 per-capita states account for a disproportionate share of the real, buy-ready audience - DTC marketing spend that allocates on a population-weighted basis is systematically underweighting these states. The product mix is shifting from entry-level (blankets, infrared panels) toward real hardware (traditional, barrel, outdoor cabins), and growth in "sauna near me" suggests that commercial sauna facilities are an equally large opportunity. Americans are searching for saunas to visit at record rates - and to build at home at record rates. Both sides of the market are expanding simultaneously.

Methodology

Data was collected via the DataForSEO API. Two separate datasets were assembled.

National dataset. 52 sauna-related keywords across a 48-month window (April 2022 - April 2026), pulled with location_code = 2840 (United States, English). Keywords cover seven intent categories: core awareness, discovery and location, ownership and purchase intent, types and formats, benefits and education, comparisons, and related wellness queries.

State-level dataset. 8 high-volume sauna keywords pulled separately for each of the 50 states plus Washington, D.C., producing a state x keyword x month long-format dataset (408 state-keyword series, 19,584 keyword-month observations). The state pull uses the narrower keyword list because search volumes below the national level cause long-tail queries to round to zero in smaller states; the eight headline terms (sauna, sauna near me, home sauna, outdoor sauna, infrared sauna, sauna benefits, sauna blanket, sauna kit) retain meaningful signal across all 51 locations. State location codes were fetched live from the DataForSEO locations endpoint and filtered to location_type = 'State', producing the canonical geo-target IDs for each state.

Per-capita calculation. State search volumes were divided by the 2024 US Census Bureau population estimates (in millions) to produce a "searches per 1 million residents" rate. This metric is reported over the most recent 12 months of the dataset (May 2025 - April 2026) to minimize the effect of earlier, lower baselines.

Growth calculations. Year-over-year comparisons use full-year averages where available (2022, 2023, 2024, 2025) and partial-year figures for 2026. For state-level keywords where single-year averages are sensitive to month-to-month noise, comparisons use the first six months of the window versus the most recent six months, and this is explicitly flagged in the relevant tables. Peaks refer to single-month maxima across the full 48-month window.

No data normalization, weighting, or composite indexing was applied. The figures in this analysis are absolute monthly US search volumes as reported by DataForSEO. All figures are independently reproducible by running the same keyword list through DataForSEO using the parameters listed above.

Data source: DataForSEO search data Locations: United States (national, location code 2840); all 50 states + DC at the state level Window: April 2022 - April 2026 (48 months) Keywords analyzed: 52 national, 8 state-level Data points: 2,496 national keyword-month observations + 19,584 state-keyword-month observations = 22,080 total