The best outdoor saunas under £5,000

This is the sauna we'd buy under £5,000: four seats and an 8kW Harvia stove for £4,200, with Wi-Fi app control, Bluetooth speakers and an LCD panel. The cabin is Canadian hemlock on a 1.8m square footprint and 2m tall, under an asphalt shingle roof, and delivery is free to most areas, kerbside on a pallet.

At £1,050 a seat it's within £50 of the two five-seaters. The hemlock is thinner than 45mm thermowood, so it gives heat back to a cold night faster, and the 8kW stove wants a 40A supply rather than the usual 32A. The warranty is 2 years on the wooden structure and 1 year on the heater and electronics. What puts it first is the money it leaves for the circuit and the base, the two costs that decide the real bill.

The Sauna Cube is the only cabin under £5,000 we found with both 45mm thermowood walls and five seats. It's £4,999.99 with a wooden front, and that includes a 6kW Harvia Vega, L-shaped alder benches, two headrests and a bucket, ladle and thermometer. The room is 200 × 196 × 140cm inside, about 5.5m³, which sits within the Vega's rated 5 to 8m³.

Delivery is free, which not every seller at this price offers. The kit is made to order in 3 to 4 weeks and arrives flat-packed off a tail-lift, 600kg in all. Polar's fitters quote £1,200 to £2,000 to build it, which takes it well over £5,000, so this is the one to choose if you can build it over a weekend with a helper.

The Vega needs a dedicated 32A supply, hard-wired through an isolator or on a 32A commando socket, so an electrician is part of the cost whichever cabin you choose. The warranty is 2 years with professional fitting and 1 year self-built.

The Outdoor Living Cube is a big glass-fronted spruce cabin with two 73cm-deep benches in an L, one of them 1.99m long, so one person can lie flat while others sit. With a 6.8kW Harvia Cilindro it's £4,999, 99p under the Sauna Cube, and it's rated for up to 5 people.

The differences are the walls and the warranty. The walls are 36 to 38mm spruce against 45mm thermowood, the front is three tall glass panels, and the sauna has a 1-year Outdoor Living warranty against Polar's 2 years fitted. Kerbside delivery is £149, which takes the real price to £5,148, and Outdoor Living says the build is a job for four people.

The Cilindro needs a 35A hard-wired supply. Outdoor Living's £899 build service puts the cabin up on your base, but you'll still need your own electrician to connect the heater.

The Eir is a compact 44mm spruce log cabin with a 6kW Narvi heater, stones, aspen benches and roofing felt in the £3,890 price, and delivery is free to mainland UK. It stands on a 1.8m by 1.6m footprint, is 2.25m tall and fits 2 to 3 people.

It's a true kit: you build the log walls, lay the felt and treat the untreated spruce yourself. A foundation frame, an EPDM roof upgrade and an assembly service are optional extras, and Palmako puts a 5-year warranty on its wooden buildings. If two or three seats is enough, it's £1,110 under the Sauna Cube.

The Mini is the Sauna Cube cut down for two: the same 45mm thermowood and black Katepal roof on a 1.67m by 1.2m footprint, with a 3.5kW Harvia Vega included. It's £4,699.99 with a wooden front, £300 less than the five-seat Cube.

Inside it's 200 × 149 × 96cm, which is two adults sitting up, not lying down. The smaller heater still needs a dedicated 32A supply, so the electrician's visit costs the same as for the bigger Cube. At about £2,350 a seat it's the most expensive cabin here per person, and that's the honest case against it: if two might become three, the five-seat Cube is £300 more.

Delivery is free and the kit weighs 450kg. Polar's fitting quote is the same £1,200 to £2,000, and the warranty terms match the bigger Cube.

£2,190 buys Palmako's smallest barrel with a 3.6kW Narvi Minex heater, heat guard, stones, black roof shingles and aspen benches, delivered free to mainland UK. It's the cheapest complete sauna on this page, £849 off its £3,039 list price, and the barrel is 2m across, 1.6m deep and 2.06m tall.

Palmako rates it for 2 to 3 people, and the inside is 0.9m², so three is a tight fit and two is comfortable. The walls are 42mm timber with an 8mm glass door, the heater must be connected by a qualified electrician, and Palmako's 5-year warranty on wooden buildings applies. It's the right buy when the budget is the first constraint and the sauna is for one or two.

The CenturaHeat 2 Person costs £3,060, and its maker specifies a 16A hard-wired supply, smaller than the 32A to 40A circuits most cabins here need. The 3kW stove sits in a hemlock cabin 1.2m wide and 1.05m deep, with app control and an onboard panel.

Small heater, thinner walls: it takes longer to get hot on a cold evening than the thermowood cabins, and at 2.3m it's the tallest two-seater here, though still under 2.5m. It works out at about £1,530 a seat. Buy it when the electrical work is the expensive part of your project, because a smaller circuit can mean a much smaller electrician's bill.