Dandár Bath Budapest: 3,500 Ft Gets You In, Not Into the Sauna

Dandár is the cheapest thermal bath Budapest Spas operates: 3,500 Ft on a weekday, 4,000 Ft at weekends and on holidays. That ticket buys the indoor thermal pools and nothing else, so if you came for the sauna or the courtyard pools you want the komplex ticket instead, at 4,000 Ft and 4,500 Ft.

It sits on a side street in District IX, next door to the Unicum distillery, and it does not admit anyone under 14. Those two facts decide most of the visit before you get to the water.

Photo: Misibacsi, Hungarian Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Dandár utca facade, unchanged in its plainness since the 1930s.

The Ticket Most People Buy Wrong

Budapest Spas prices Dandár in zones, and the entry-level ticket is narrower than the headline number suggests. The thermal ticket gets you the indoor medicinal pools. The komplex ticket adds the sauna world and the outdoor pools for 500 Ft more. There is also a standalone 500 Ft add-on if you decide, once you are inside, that the courtyard looks better than the tiled room.

Ticket	Weekday	Weekend and holidays
Thermal, adult	3 500 Ft (about 10 EUR)	4 000 Ft (about 11 EUR)
Komplex: thermal, sauna, outdoor	4 000 Ft (about 11 EUR)	4 500 Ft (about 12 EUR)
Senior or full-time student	2 400 Ft (about 7 EUR)	2 700 Ft (about 7.50 EUR)
Thermal, 2 hours	2 500 Ft (about 7 EUR)	not sold
Afternoon, last 2 hours before closing	2 500 Ft (about 7 EUR)	not sold
Outdoor pools add-on	500 Ft (about 1.50 EUR)	500 Ft (about 1.50 EUR)
Cabin instead of a locker	800 Ft (about 2 EUR)	800 Ft (about 2 EUR)
Safe	1 100 Ft (about 3 EUR)	1 100 Ft (about 3 EUR)
Replacing a lost wristband or key	3 000 Ft (about 8 EUR)	3 000 Ft (about 8 EUR)

Passes only pay off if you are here for a while, but the math is unusually kind.

Pass	Full price	Loyalty price	Works out at
15 visits, thermal	43 300 Ft	not offered	about 2 890 Ft a visit
15 visits, komplex	53 500 Ft	not offered	about 3 570 Ft a visit
Budapest Spas Silver, 100 visits	232 000 Ft	198 000 Ft	about 2 320 Ft a visit
Budapest Spas Bronze, 100 visits	150 000 Ft	134 000 Ft	about 1 500 Ft a visit

Silver covers Dandár along with Paskál, Palatinus, Pesterzsébet and Csillaghegy. Bronze is the cheaper card and it covers Dandár’s basic zone only, which is the same trap as the day ticket in annual form.

Prices are in HUF, which is what you pay at the counter. Converted at 1 EUR = 364 HUF, the ECB rate on 31 July 2026. Rates move, so treat the converted figures as indicative.

Two practical notes on payment. SZÉP Card is accepted at the ticket desk, which is why so many Hungarians treat a bath habit as free money. The buffet and the shops inside the bath take bank cards and top-up cards only, and refuse cash outright, so a pocket of coins buys you nothing past the turnstile.

Right now the sauna is the part to check before you pay for it. Dandár’s mini sauna world has been out of order for maintenance since 13 July. If the sauna or the Thursday late session is your reason for going, look at dandarfurdo.hu before you set out and buy the plain thermal ticket if it is still off.

Hours, and the Two Deadlines Nobody Reads

Dandár opens at nine every day of the week. Thursday is the long day. The two deadlines below the closing time are the ones that ruin visits, because the cash desk stops selling a full hour before the doors shut.

Day	Bath open	Last ticket sold	Out of the water
Monday to Wednesday	09:00 to 19:00	18:00	18:40
Thursday	09:00 to 22:00	21:00	21:40
Friday to Sunday	09:00 to 19:00	18:00	18:40

On Thursdays the jet elements in the pools run until 19:00 only, so the late session is a quiet soak rather than a hydromassage.

What Is Actually In There

The thermal department is the reason the place exists: a 35°C pool and a 38°C pool, with a Finnish sauna and a cold-water plunge alongside them. The water is a calcium, magnesium, hydrogen-carbonate and sulfate-chloride spring with sodium and a substantial fluoride content, classed as medicinal and recommended by the operator for degenerative joint disease, chronic and sub-acute arthritis, disc herniation and neuralgia. It is prescribed water, not spa marketing.

Photo: FORTEPAN / Ferencvárosi Helytörténeti Gyűjtemény, CC BY-SA 3.0. Taken in 1975, before the later renovations.

Outside, in the courtyard, the leisure pools sit at 36°C and 38°C with waist and back massage jets and neck showers. From spring to autumn there is a lawn with sun loungers next to them, which in July is where half the building goes. Winter is when the courtyard earns its keep: steam off the surface, cold air on your shoulders, nobody photographing it.

The mini sauna world is compact and does not pretend otherwise: one classic Finnish sauna for twelve people, an aroma steam cabin, a cold-water plunge and a relaxation area with loungers. No ice room, no salt chamber, no fourteen varieties of infusion. If a big sauna circuit is the point of your day, Lukács sells a sauna-world add-on onto a bigger complex and is the better buy.

The buffet is open every day and does the usual bath-side range of snacks, coffee and cold drinks. Card only, as above.

Who Gets Turned Away

Under-14s do not get in. The operator’s only stated exception is a physician’s prescription for the water, which is not a form you improvise at the door. This is enforced, it is the reason the noise level is what it is, and it is the reason a family arriving with a nine-year-old ends up walking back to the tram.

If you are traveling with children, Palatinus on Margaret Island has its own child ticket and family tickets, and is built for exactly that trip.

First time in a Hungarian bath at all? The bath etiquette rundown covers the flip-flops, the wristband lockers and the things that get you a look from a regular.

Dandár Against the Baths That Are Open

Gellért has been shut since October 2025 for a full reconstruction and is not due back until 2028. Király is closed for restoration with no announced reopening. That leaves a smaller field than most guidebooks describe, and Dandár sits at the bottom of it on price by a distance.

Bath	Weekday adult	Weekend adult	What the ticket covers
Dandár	3 500 Ft	4 000 Ft	Indoor thermal only; komplex at 4 000 / 4 500 Ft adds sauna and outdoor
Palatinus	6 000 Ft	6 500 Ft	Summer lido on Margaret Island, under-14s admitted
Lukács	7 000 Ft	8 000 Ft	Pools; sauna world is a 1 300 Ft add-on, also 14 and over only
Rudas	12 000 Ft	15 000 Ft	All zones, rooftop pool, Ottoman hall; 14 and over only
Széchenyi	13 200 Ft	14 800 Ft	Locker ticket, all eighteen pools; 14 and over only

One line of small print worth the money: Széchenyi, Rudas and Lukács all charge the weekend rate from Friday. Dandár’s list splits weekdays from weekends and holidays, so check which side of the week your Friday falls on before you assume you are paying the low number.

Széchenyi is not a bad ticket, it is a different product. You are buying a building, a scene and eighteen pools. Dandár sells you water and quiet, and if you have already done the palace on a previous trip, the second one is what you actually want. For the full cheap-end ranking, see the budget bath guide; for the wider field, the thermal baths hub.

Getting There

Dandár Thermal Bath, Dandár utca 5-7, 1095 Budapest, District IX. Phone +36 1 215 7084.

Trams 2 and 24 both serve the area, and tram 2 along the Pest embankment is the good-looking way in. Buses 23 and 54 stop within walking distance. From the Great Market Hall it is a straightforward walk south through Ferencváros, past apartment blocks and corner shops rather than anything you would stop to photograph, which is roughly the point.

Photo: Globetrotter19, CC BY-SA 3.0. The listed entrance portal, monument ID 8559, on the building’s Vaskapu utca side.

Next Door: the Unicum House

The Zwack distillery is not near the bath, it is on the same street. The Unicum House at Dandár utca 1 runs timed tours of the old 1892 distillery and the barrel cellars, in English as well as Hungarian, ending in a tasting of Unicum straight from the oak. Slots are sold as timed tickets and English departures are limited, so book the time rather than turning up and hoping.

Do the tour first and the bath after, not the other way round. Thermal water at 38°C and a cellar tasting are a poor combination in that order.

For a market stop on the way, the Great Market Hall is fifteen minutes north on foot.

A Bit of History, Because It Explains the Building

The architect was Ferenc K. Császár. The bath was commissioned in 1930 and rebuilt in 1936. It came through the war with light damage and reopened in 1945, which in this city counts as a miracle. For its first half-century it was a sanitary bath, a place to get clean rather than to get well, and it only became a thermal bath after a thorough reconstruction in 1978.

That history is legible in the tiling. Dandár was built for function, and it still looks it. Nobody is going to gasp at the changing rooms.

The Verdict

Buy the komplex ticket. The 500 Ft difference is the whole sauna world and the courtyard, and skipping it to save the price of a coffee is a false economy.

Go on a Thursday evening if the late session is running, on a weekday morning if it is not. Do not bring anyone under 14. Bring your own towel, because the bath sells one for 6,900 Ft and will not take your cash for a coffee afterwards.

And do not go expecting Széchenyi at a quarter of the price. Dandár is a working neighborhood bath with real medicinal water, a small sauna, and a courtyard that is genuinely lovely in February. Priced fairly, run without ceremony, and quiet in a city that has largely stopped being quiet about its baths.

Prices, hours and service status taken from the operator, Budapest Gyógyfürdői és Hévizei Zrt., checked 4 August 2026. Currency rate: ECB, 31 July 2026. Official site: dandarfurdo.hu.