About Hot Springs Brief

Hot Springs Brief covers 814 hot springs, thermal pools, bathhouses and onsen in 12 countries, from undeveloped pools on Forest Service land in Idaho to century-old spa towns in Hungary, Italy and Japan. 214 of them are wild or primitive springs with no staff, and the rest are resorts, public baths and municipal pools.

Each listing answers the questions people ask before they get in the car: how hot is the water, what does it cost, how far is the walk, is the road open this season, can I bring the kids, are tattoos allowed, do I need a swimsuit, and where can I sleep nearby.

Why this site exists

Most hot spring directories copy the same short descriptions from each other, and their errors travel with them: springs that closed years ago, fees from a decade back, and map pins dropped in the nearest town instead of on the water. Getting that wrong is not a small thing when the "spring" is a two-hour drive down a dirt road, or a 6-mile hike with a river crossing.

We wanted a guide that is honest about what it knows and what it does not. When a temperature or a price is not published anywhere reliable, the field stays empty. When a spring is closed, the listing says so at the top, with the reason and the source.

How we research a listing

• Primary sources first. Operators' own pages, national forest and park service pages, BLM and state agency notices, municipal sites in Japan and Europe, and recent local reporting. Every listing cites its sources at the bottom of the page.
• A visible check date. Every listing shows the date we last verified it, so you can judge how fresh it is.
• Checked map pins. Coordinates are taken from OpenStreetMap, USGS records, Wikipedia or the operator, and cross-checked against public datasets. Pins point at the pools, or at the trailhead for springs you have to hike to, never at the nearest town.
• Local rules. Clothing rules, camping limits, fire closures, road closures, tattoo policies at Japanese baths and volcano alert levels are part of the listing, because they decide whether a trip works.
• Plain language. No "hidden gems" or "magical oases". If the water is 72°F, we tell you it is a cool spring and not a hot soak.

The full method, including how we handle disputed facts, is on our How we verify page.

Photos

408 listings have photos so far. Every photo shows the real place: we use free-license images from Wikimedia Commons and similar archives, reviewed one by one, with the photographer credited on the page. We never use AI-generated images of real hot springs, and we leave a listing without a photo rather than show the wrong place. If you have a photo you took yourself, you cansend it to us.

What we do not do

• We do not accept payment for listings, rankings or reviews.
• We do not publish springs on private land without the owner's permission, or give directions through closed areas.
• We do not invent details. Missing information is marked as missing.
• We do not copy other directories. Facts are checked against original sources.

Who it is for

Road-trippers looking for a soak along the way, backpackers planning a hike to a backcountry pool, families who need to know if a resort is kid-friendly, travellers in Japan working out onsen etiquette, and anyone comparing thermal baths in Budapest or Tuscany. The site works on a phone with weak signal, and every page loads fast, because many of these places are a long way from a cell tower.

How the site is funded

Hot Springs Brief is free to read. It is paid for by advertising, shown through Google AdSense, and possibly by commissions on some lodging links, which are labelled. Advertising never affects which springs we list or what we say about them, and no operator can pay for a listing or a better write-up. Our Privacy policy explains how ads use cookies and how to opt out.

Corrections and contact

Conditions at hot springs change all the time. If you visited recently and something is different, or you know a spring we are missing, please contact us. Reader reports are how a guide like this stays accurate, and we check corrections against an official source before we change a listing.