Ice bath cost UK: what one really costs over a year

Prices change often, so check on the day you buy.

Delivery is part of the cost too. On our site, orders over £100 have free tracked delivery, and orders under £100 carry a flat £4.95 fee shown at checkout. So the Plunge 80 on its own is £73.95 delivered, and the Plunge 320 is £109 delivered.

The ongoing cost: ice or a chiller

Kaldera tubs don't have built-in cooling. You make the water cold with ice, with a separate chiller, or in winter with just the tap. That choice decides most of your running cost.

What ice costs

Two textbook figures do the sums. Water needs about 4.18 kJ per kilogram to change by one degree (Wikipedia, specific heat capacity), and ice absorbs 333.55 kJ per kilogram as it melts (Wikipedia, enthalpy of fusion), plus a little more as that melt-water warms. Call it 375 kJ per kilogram all in.

So to take 300 litres down by 5°C: 300 × 4.18 × 5 is about 6,270 kJ, divided by 375 is about 17kg of ice.

For price, Parts4tubs' listing puts bagged ice at typically £3 to £5 per 10kg bag. That makes a 17kg cool-down roughly £5 to £9. Supermarket prices vary, and freezing your own in old tubs and bottles is close to free if you have the freezer space.

The key point is that you don't need that much ice every session, all year. In a UK winter the tap may be cold enough on its own. In summer you might need a full cool-down. A lid and insulated walls help because the water warms more slowly between sessions, so each top-up is smaller.

A worked year on ice

Here's an illustrative year, not a promise. Say you plunge twice a week, use no ice from October to April because the tap is cold enough, and need about 10kg per session for the other five months, roughly 22 weeks.

• 2 sessions × 22 weeks × 10kg = 440kg of ice.
• At £3 to £5 per 10kg, that's about £132 to £220 for the year.

Plunge four times a week and it roughly doubles. Plunge every day in a hot summer with no lid and it can go well past that. That's the point where people start pricing up chillers.

What a chiller costs

Chillers cost more up front and less per session. Ours are the Chill Core 300 at £599 (rated by its supplier for up to 300 litres and about 15°C), the Chill Core 500 at £799 (up to 500 litres, about 4 to 9°C) and the Chill Core Pro at £999 (up to 900 litres). The bundles pair a tub, a chiller and a thermometer for less than buying separately: £649 for the Starter Bundle (saving £48) and £899 for the Performance Bundle (saving £38).

Then there's electricity. Ofgem's price cap for 1 October to 31 December 2026 puts electricity at 26.32p per kWh by Direct Debit. The part nobody can tell you in advance is how many kWh a day your chiller will use, because it depends on how long the compressor runs, and that depends on insulation, whether the lid is on, where the tub sits and how cold you set it. The supplier publishes cooling capacity for our chillers, not the electrical draw, so we won't invent a figure.

What we can show is the method. If a chiller drew 1kW and ran for 3 hours a day in total, that's 3 kWh × 26.32p, about 79p a day, or roughly £24 a month. Halve the running hours with a lid and shade, and you halve the bill. Our chiller running cost guide goes through the calculation step by step, and the best way to get your own figure is a plug-in energy meter for a week.

For advice on which chiller goes with which tub, see our ice bath chillers guide.

Water

If your water isn't metered, filling and refilling the tub doesn't change your bill. If it is, think in cubic metres, because that's how you're charged. A full Plunge 320 is a little over 380 litres, about 0.38 cubic metres. Change it weekly for a year and that's roughly 20 cubic metres. Multiply by the water and sewerage rates per cubic metre on your bill and you have the figure. How often you actually need to change it depends on how you look after it, which our water care guide covers.

Replacement parts and small costs

These are small, but they add up and nobody mentions them.

• Thermometer. Our Wireless Floating Thermometer is £29. The sensor takes 2 × AA batteries and the display 2 × AAA, not included.
• Sanitiser and test strips, if you keep water for more than a few days. Optional if you drain often.
• Filters, only if your setup has one. As an example, Castle Hot Tubs tells owners of its Chill Tub to clean the filter monthly and replace it every three months.
• An RCD, if you're running a chiller and your consumer unit doesn't have one. Screwfix lists a Masterplug 30mA plug-through RCD adaptor at £10.99.
• A lid, if your tub didn't come with one. The Plunge 320 includes one; the Plunge 80 doesn't.
• A changing poncho or a good towel. Our Dorsal poncho is £39. Nice, not essential.

Ways to bring the cost down

Most of the running cost of an ice bath is fighting heat, whether you fight it with bags of ice or with a compressor. So nearly every saving comes from letting less heat in.

• Keep the lid on. Between sessions, every session. It cuts warming from the sun and the air, and keeps leaves out so you change the water less often. This is why we'd rather you spent £109 on a lidded tub than £69 on one without, if you plan to plunge through the summer.
• Put it in the shade. A tub in full afternoon sun warms up far faster than one against a north-facing wall.
• Use the season. From autumn to spring, a UK cold tap does most of the work for free. Plenty of people only plunge in the colder months and never buy ice at all.
• Make your own ice. Freeze water in old tubs and bottles through the week. Big blocks melt more slowly than cubes, so the cold lasts longer in the water.
• Don't chase extreme cold. Every degree lower costs more ice or more compressor time. There's no strong reason to go below the 11 to 15°C range the soreness research pointed to.
• Buy the bundle if you're buying a chiller anyway. The Starter Bundle saves £48 and the Performance Bundle £38 against buying the same three items separately.
• Keep the water clean. Rinse off before you get in, and you'll change the water less often, which saves on water bills if you're metered and on the ice or electricity needed to cool each fresh fill.

Ice bath cost in year one: three worked examples

Using our prices and the worked figures above. The ice and electricity numbers are estimates, and yours will differ.

1. Plunge 80, ice, twice a week. Tub £69, thermometer £29, delivery £4.95 (order under £100). Ice about £132 to £220 for the year in the example above. Roughly £235 to £323 in year one.

2. Plunge 320, ice, twice a week. Tub £109, thermometer £29, free delivery. Ice about £132 to £220 in the same example, likely a bit less thanks to the lid and insulated walls. Roughly £270 to £358 in year one, often less.

3. Performance Bundle, chiller, most days. Bundle £899 (Plunge 320, Chill Core 500, thermometer). Electricity: at the illustrative 3 kWh a day, about £24 a month, so around £290 a year; much less with a lid on and the tub in shade. Roughly £1,190 in year one on those assumptions, with no ice.

Year two is where the gap shows. The ice setups cost only ice from then on. The chiller setup costs only electricity. If you plunge twice a week, ice stays cheaper for a long time. If you plunge every day through a hot summer, a chiller catches up.

How much is an ice bath worth paying for?

Our honest view: most people should spend £109 to £140 first, not £900. Buy a tub with a lid, a thermometer, and use ice. You'll learn within a couple of months whether this is a twice-a-week thing or an every-day thing. If it's the second, a chiller is a sensible next purchase, and every tub we sell can pair with one. If it's neither, you've spent the price of a few takeaways finding out.

For the lowest possible outlay, our cheap ice bath guide goes into what £69 gets you and what it doesn't.

Who shouldn't spend money on an ice bath yet

If you've never been in cold water, try your own bath and the cold tap first. It's free. If you have a heart condition, high blood pressure or Raynaud's, or you're pregnant, talk to your GP or midwife before buying anything. If you have no outdoor space and no floor that can take a few hundred kilos of water, a tub may not be practical where you live. And if you're buying a chiller because you think colder is better, it isn't necessarily: Machado and colleagues' 2016 review of the muscle soreness research found the best results at 11 to 15°C, which a UK cold tap and some ice reach for much of the year.

The short version

An ice bath costs the tub plus the cold. The tub is £47.95 to about £2,000 across the listings we checked, £69 or £109 with us. The cold is either ice at a few pounds a session in summer and next to nothing in winter, or a chiller from £599 plus electricity. For most people, the Plunge 320 and ice is the sensible first year, and the chiller can wait until you know you need it.

This article is for general information and isn't medical advice. Cold water immersion puts real strain on the heart in the first minute. Talk to your GP first if you have a heart condition, high blood pressure or any other health concern, never plunge alone, and get out if you feel unwell.