Which is the best bath in Budapest?

Welcome to 2025 and let’s leap straight in with one of my favourite subjects: hot water! Budapest abounds in hot water and I’ve talked about some of the thermal baths but I think it’s time to compare and contrast and decide which is best. I had some of these recommended by a colleague who was born and bred in Budapest and some of these were resolutely not recommended by him.

I think there are three things we need to look at. We need to look at price, at facilities and then something more nebulous, which is my own opinion.

Széchenyi

This is the big one, the one that every hot water-loving tourist is going to rush straight to, and it’s the one that Boti, incomprehensibly, did not put on my to-do list. It’s the one with the yellow palace around it, the one you’ll see all over the place. It’s in Városliget, the City Park, at the far end of Andrássy út and it has its own metro station (Széchenyi fürdő) on line 1.

Price:
Fast track ticket, locker €34
Fast track ticket, private cabin €37
Daily ticket with locker €29
Daily ticket with private cabin €32

Facilities:
Outdoor lane pool (26-28°)
Outdoor thermal pool (36-38°)
Outdoor leisure pool (30-24°)
Indoor medical pool (28-40°)
Hot plunge pool (40°)
Cold plunge pool (18°)
3 saunas
2 steam rooms
Hot air chamber
Dayspalm relax area (extra cost)
Private spa (extra cost)

My opinion
You know, I hate to say it but I can see why it wasn’t on my to-do list. It’s a huge place, it has the option to skip the queue with a more expensive ticket and a separate entrance and it has three spectacular outdoor pools.

But… the indoor stuff feels a bit dated and tired. There are large rooms, tiled to the ceiling, with slightly worn-looking pools in them. It feels somewhere between clinical and old-fashioned. The outdoor area is great, can’t fault it, but the indoor areas sort of feel like a coach party hotel that hasn’t been renovated for a few decades. It’s not actually dirty or coming apart but it just feels old. I hate to say it, but I feel like Széchenyi is, if not at the bottom of this particular list, somewhere near the bottom.

Gellért

This is the second of the biggest pools. Gellért is a hotel with a fairly extensive Art Nouveau spa area lurking inside. It has the most beautiful swimming pool I think I’ve ever seen but it’s a bit of a labyrinth – not the worst labyrinth I saw but enough that I saw more of the changing rooms than I intended to.

Price:
Ticket with cabin €32
Ticket with locker €29

Facilities:
2 double indoor thermal pools (35-40°)
1 single indoor thermal pool
Indoor swimming pool (27°)
Wave pool (no waves, summer only) 26°
Outdoor thermal pool (36°)
5 hot air chambers
2 steam rooms

My opinion
I liked Gellért. Now, the outdoor leisure/wave pool was closed for the winter (and full of leaves and discoloured water, so not very decorative) but the small outdoor thermal pool was very nice, the indoor thermal pools were gorgeous – there are two rooms with two pools in each, one in green and one in blue, both with glass roofs – and of course, the swimming pool is maybe the most beautiful in the world. Gellért is supposed to be the busiest pool in Budapest but that honour absolutely goes to Széchenyi and I thought Gellért was actually quite quiet. I think of the big famous pools, this one was my favourite.

Rudas

Rudas is supposed to date back to about the 16th century, or at least its Turkish bath and sauna complex does. On the other side of the restaurant – which you have to patter across in your swimwear – is a Victorian-looking swimming pool and beyond that is the more modern thermal complex and rooftop pool.

Price: 9,800ft (€23.83)

Facilities:
Turkish thermal pool
3 hot plunge pool
1 cool plunge pool
Swimming pool (29°)
3 saunas
Salt room
2 indoor thermal pools
2 contrast baths
1 rooftop hot tub

My opinion
I was here for a night bath starting at 10pm and I think I’ve more or less covered all the details in its own blog post – but in short, although the rooftop pool is amazing, it needs to be at least four times the size and the swimming pool needs to be a couple of degrees warmer. The sauna & Turkish bath area is delightfully atmospheric, the thermal complex is nice enough and Rudas’ main problems are that it’s a little expensive for what it is, it needs a lot more internal signage to find your way around, and it’s a bit tricky to get to. OK, it has a tram stop immediately outside but I came by bus and had to walk up and down and around and consult Google Maps to find the entrance and frankly, made it a bit difficult for myself. I like it perhaps more than Széchenyi and less than Gellért.

Lukács

This is another of the famous, big, old thermal baths but it definitely felt like it had more locals than tourists in it. It’s a little to the north of the city centre and across Margaret Bridge, with a tram stop right outside, or it’s a couple of minutes’ walk back to the 4/6 tram line. It’s another big yellow complex, maybe less ornate inside than either Széchenyi or Gellért.

Price:
Ticket with locker 5,100ft (€12.40)
Ticket with cabin, 6,100ft (€14.83)

Facilities:
2 outdoor swimming pools (22° and 26°)
Outdoor leisure pool (33-35°)
2 indoor thermal pools
4 saunas
Steam room
Tepidarium
Cool plunge pool
Foot massage pool

My opinion
This is the labyrinth I was talking about. I think there’s quite a lot lurking within Lukács but I found it very difficult to get around. There are two outdoor swimming pools on a middle floor, with something of a terrace feel to them, despite being in a courtyard surrounded by the yellow building. Downstairs you’ll eventually find a kind of cafe and outside is the big thermal pool – it has two entrances so you might find your way into it from the other large indoor area. Further away, down some more corridors and past some inexplicable changing cubicles nowhere near the changing rooms, is the thermal suite, which is nowhere near big enough for how popular it is. Again, it feels very old and, like Rudas, I suspect if it’s not actually medieval, it’s certainly older than the rest of the building that’s sprung up around it. I liked the feeling of being somewhere local rather than somewhere touristy. Where’s it going to go in my ranking? Above Rudas but below Gellért, I think.

Palatinus

I knew Palatinus existed but it wasn’t actually on my to-do list (nor Boti’s) until I stumbled across it by accident while out exploring Margaret Island. It’s quite a big outdoor complex, more lido than thermal bath and definitely feels like it comes to life in summer.

Price: 3,400ft (€8.27)

Facilities:
Indoor thermal pool (36°)
Hot & cold plunge pools (18-20° and 40-42°)
Kids’ paddling pool (32-24°)
Outdoor swimming pool (26°)
Outdoor sitting pool (32-38° depending on time of year)
2 saunas
Steam room
Seasonal wave pool (28°)
Seasonal round pool with fountain (36°)
Seasonal kids’ pool (30°)
Seasonal open air bath pool (32°)
Seasonal leisure pool (30°)
Seasonal thermal pools (30-36°)
Seasonal water slide park

My opinion
Because Palatinus is heavily seasonal and there wasn’t much open, it felt quite quiet, although I can imagine it absolutely heaving in July and August. It was odd to go down two flights of stairs from the changing rooms to the indoor thermal area although I don’t know why – certainly easier than the labyrinth that some of the pools have been so far. Were they maybe carpeted? No, I don’t think so, but something felt weird. You can bypass the thermal pool to walk the mile down the hallway to the door out to the outdoor pool but the steps down to it go straight up the other side as well, so you can paddle through it to get to the halls. Yes, it’s a long way down that hallway to the door but given how much of the outdoor area is closed in early November, it might be that there are half a dozen doors closer to the centre of the building that you’d use to access the other pools that line the entire length of the complex. But in winter, there’s a smallish square pool where you can go and sit in the warm water and a swimming pool next to it. It’s nice. I think, even with 60% of it closed, that I liked it quite a lot. You know, I think I liked it more than Lukács, so that puts it second in my ranking.

Pesterzsébet

The last of the six pools I tried out! This was on my recommended list but it’s one that nine out of ten tourists just aren’t going to come across. It’s about a 15-minute bus journey out of the city centre although now I look at the map, it’s about the same distance from Parliament to Boráros tér where you get the bus as it is from Boráros tér to the bus stop for the bath. Then you have to cross a fairly busy road and a railway line, walk alongside a viaduct and find the bath down the back of a residential area. This is definitely a lot more modern than the others and definitely more low-key, as Boti phrased it.

Price:
With sauna 5,200ft (€12.64)
Without sauna 4,200ft (€10.21)

Facilities:
Outdoor swimming pool (26-28°)
Indoor kids’ pool (30-32°)
Outdoor sitting pool (36°)
Salt-iodine therapeutic pool (36-38°)
Thermal pool (38-40°)
Indoor sauna
Indoor steam room
Indoor salt cabin
Outdoor sauna
Outdoor hot & cold immersion pools (40-42° and 17-19°)
Seasonal outdoor wave pool (26-28°)
Outdoor kids’ pool (30-32°)

My opinion
This one was a little more difficult to get to than any of the others, with a bus ride out of the city and then a 10-minute walk to the bath and it doesn’t have the architectural glory of some of the others. It has a thermal area with the traditional octagonal sunken bath, a hot plunge pool of (slightly radioactive) iodine-salt water, which is currently not radioactive water but ordinary mineral water because of a problem with the well. This area is a little more dimly lit than the rest of the complex, which has a large shallow indoor warm pool with various bubble bars and fountains and “boxes” around the edges of the pool where you can lounge while overlooking the water. The outdoor sitting pool is accessed either by a curtain from the indoor pool or by a door on the opposite side and there are actually two of them – a long thin one and one with steps and benches to sit on opposite. You can just about see the Danube canal from here, and the iron bridge over it. I liked this one a lot – as Boti said, it’s low-key, there’s barely a tourist in there, it’s pretty quiet, it’s got a nice outdoor pool to sit in, a nice indoor pool to laze in and an interesting thermal area. I’m just going to say it. I think this was my favourite. I liked Gellért as a big tourist pool but I liked Pesterzsébet as a small quiet pool. I’m almost a little reluctant to say that it’s great in case I accidentally fill it with tourists but I don’t think many tourists will make the effort to get out there when there are so many great and popular baths in the city centre but if you’re looking for something a little more authentic, a little more local, I think this bath is the one for you. It’s certainly the one for me.

Final ranking:

Pesterzsébet
Gellért
Palatinus
Lukács
Rudas
Széchenyi

Wow, it feels so wrong to have Széchenyi at the bottom, especially with that massive outdoor lane pool and the best outdoor thermal pool of the lot but ultimately, I didn’t like the indoor area and I don’t have a particular dislike at any of the others. I liked Rudas’ atmosphere, Lukács’ big outdoor courtyard pool, Palatinus’ chilled vibe, everything about Gellért and the local authenticity of Pesterzsébet. No, I never thought they’d end up in this order when I started writing it but here we are. Get yourself to Pesterzsébet for a real Budapest bath, Gellért for a big touristy city centre bath or Palatinus for something a bit different. But of course, I can’t keep you away from Széchenyi any more than Boti could by refusing to put it on my list, so I’m not going to be able to stop you either – and nor would I want to, because it’s spectacular and the outside area is amazing.