Is Red Light Therapy Worth It? Recovery Tech's Price Ladder Runs Backwards

Recovery tech prices run the opposite way to the evidence

Three recovery treatments have been tested on the same outcome, muscle soreness in the days after hard exercise. Ranked by the size of the reviews in our research, the order is cold-water immersion, then red light therapy, then whole-body cryotherapy. Ranked by price, the order is reversed. An ice bath ($40) is the cheapest. A red light therapy session ($60) costs one and a half times as much, and a whole-body cryotherapy session ($80) costs twice as much, at Going Rate's prices. Cryotherapy costs about a third more than red light.

The two Cochrane reviews show the gap. Cochrane's 2012 review of cold-water immersion included 17 small trials with 366 participants and found some evidence that it reduced soreness compared with rest, while rating study quality low. Cochrane's 2015 review of whole-body cryotherapy found four small studies with 64 physically active young adults, and rated the evidence very low quality for every outcome. The ice bath review has more than four times as many trials and nearly six times as many people.

More trials do not make ice baths proven. Both reviews are old, both rate their evidence weak, and three products are too few to show that price follows anything. The ranking shows where the money goes against where the studies are.

Is red light therapy worth it for recovery?

A red light therapy session ($60) sits in the middle of the price ladder, and its evidence splits two ways. A 2025 meta-analysis by Tsou, Chang and Chang found 14 controlled studies of photobiomodulation for delayed-onset muscle soreness. Only 4 had enough data to pool against placebo. Those 4 showed a moderate reduction in soreness, with a standardised mean difference of -0.55 at 72 hours and -0.56 at 96 hours, and better strength at 24 and 48 hours. The abstract gives no confidence intervals or participant count. An earlier meta-analysis by Nampo and colleagues, published in 2016, covered 15 studies and 317 participants and concluded that low-level phototherapy may not have a substantial effect on muscle injury and pain caused by exercise. Its authors added that small samples and differences between studies limit any firm conclusion.

Those trials applied light from lasers or LEDs to the muscle after a lab exercise protocol designed to cause soreness. The 2025 review describes light aimed at one to six points on the affected muscle, which differs from lying in a studio bed or standing in front of a panel. A Cochrane review of light therapies for acne, covering 71 studies and 4,211 participants, found low certainty of the usefulness of red-light photodynamic therapy for moderate to severe acne. That treatment pairs light with a photosensitising drug, so it says nothing about a red light bed. Consumer NZ asked dermatologist Paul Le Grice about red light beds in 2025, and he said there is no good evidence for many of the claims it found on websites, including faster recovery from exercise and fat loss. Australian insurer nib says the evidence for red light is still emerging.

Studio prices sit around the Going Rate figure. Sitchu's 2025 guide to Sydney red light studios puts the cost at $40 to $80 a session of 20 to 30 minutes, and lists Casa Soleil in Bondi at usually $60 a session. No TGA or ACCC enforcement action on red light advertising turned up in our research.

Cryotherapy: twice an ice bath, a review of 64 people

A whole-body cryotherapy session ($80) is the dearest of the three soreness treatments, at twice an ice bath ($40). Time Out Sydney reported in 2025 that single sessions cost $99 at Cryo Stay Young in Double Bay, with about three minutes at around minus 140°C. That studio sits about a quarter above the Going Rate typical price.

Cochrane's 2015 review found some evidence that whole-body cryotherapy may reduce soreness, rated that evidence very low quality for all outcomes, and said it was insufficient to support the treatment's use. None of the trials actively monitored adverse events. We found no update to the review. A 2023 scoping review from an international consortium counted 16 documented adverse events across five case reports and two trials, and concluded the risks are within acceptable limits and can be prevented by following existing guidelines. The same review opens by calling the treatment exciting, and adverse events that trials never monitored cannot appear in its count.

NBC News reported in 2015 that the manager of a Nevada cryotherapy salon died in a chamber, and the coroner found asphyxia, with oxygen falling as low as 5%. Such chambers can reach minus 240°F, and NBC reported that machines should be used for no more than three minutes. In July 2016 an FDA medical officer was reported as saying the agency had not cleared or approved whole-body cryotherapy devices as safe and effective for treating medical conditions.

Ice baths: the most evidence, with a catch for lifters

An ice bath ($40) has the most trials of the three, and the findings are modest. Machado and colleagues pooled 9 randomised trials in 2016 and found cold-water immersion can be slightly better than passive recovery for muscle soreness. A 2025 network meta-analysis of 55 trials by Wang, Wang and Pan found 10 to 15 minutes at 11 to 15°C worked best for soreness, and its authors said higher-quality studies are needed to confirm the result. A 2017 study by Peake and colleagues found cold water no more effective than active recovery for reducing inflammation or cell stress in muscle after weights.

Lifters pay a price of their own. A 2021 meta-analysis by Malta and colleagues found regular cold-water immersion after resistance training reduced strength gains, with a standardised mean difference of -0.60, and did not appear to affect aerobic performance. In a 12-week trial of 21 men published in 2015, Roberts and colleagues found strength and muscle mass grew more with active recovery than with cold water after each session. nib advises sessions of around 10 to 15 minutes in water at 10 to 15°C, and notes that regular use after resistance training could reduce muscle and strength gains. The Australian Institute of Sport keeps its plunge pool at 15°C.

Wellbeing claims rest on thinner ground than the headline numbers suggest. A 2025 PLOS One review of cold-water immersion counted 3,177 participants, but 3,018 of them came from a single Dutch cold-shower trial. The review found stress fell 12 hours after immersion and at none of the other time points tested, and inflammation rose immediately and an hour afterwards. Sydney ice bath prices in Sitchu's 2025 guide ran from $24.65 for 20 off-peak minutes to $45 for 45 minutes with a sauna.

Infrared sauna and home sauna: the strongest evidence is Finnish

No sauna trial for muscle soreness appeared in our research, so saunas sit outside the ladder above. The best-known sauna findings come from one Finnish cohort of 2,315 men aged 42 to 60, followed for a median of 20.7 years, who used traditional Finnish saunas. Laukkanen and colleagues reported in 2015 that men who used a sauna 4 to 7 times a week had a lower risk of sudden cardiac death than once-a-week users, with a hazard ratio of 0.37. For two to three times a week, the hazard ratio of 0.78 was not statistically significant. In the same cohort, 4 to 7 sessions a week was associated with lower dementia risk than one session a week, a hazard ratio of 0.34. These are associations from an observational study, and they do not show that the sauna caused the difference.

Infrared trials are smaller. Hussain and Cohen's 2018 review of regular dry sauna, Finnish and infrared, found 40 studies with 3,855 participants, and only 13 were randomised controlled trials. A 2018 heart-failure review by Källström and colleagues included nine studies, all of infrared sauna, and pooled seven. Their protocol of 15 minutes at 60°C, five times a week for 2 to 4 weeks, was associated with short-term improvement in heart function, and the review rated the strength of evidence moderate to insufficient. That is a short trial protocol for patients, and no source here recommends it as a dose for healthy people.

A home sauna, installed ($15,000) costs the same as 300 sessions at an infrared sauna studio ($50), at Going Rate's prices. Used five times a week, our assumption borrowed from the heart-failure trials, 300 sessions would last 60 weeks. The home sauna price covers a generic installed sauna, which may not be infrared. Retailer VERVE says its 1 and 2 person Mysa Mirage infrared models use a standard 10A household plug, while its 3 and 4 person models need a 15A dedicated circuit installed by a licensed electrician. Finnish data from 1990 to 2002 put deaths in saunas at under 2 per 100,000 people a year, and half of those who died were under the influence of alcohol.

Float tanks: one open-label study

A float session ($90) costs more than twice an ice bath ($40) at Going Rate's prices. The float study in our research is a 2018 study by Feinstein and colleagues of 50 people with anxiety and stress-related disorders. A single one-hour float reduced their state anxiety, with an estimated effect size of Cohen's d above 2, and the authors described the reduction as transient.

The study was open-label and, in its authors' words, lacked a control group. It reported a reference group of 30 people without anxiety but ran no statistical comparison against them, and it tested one session, so it cannot show what regular floating does or whether a float beats a quiet hour somewhere else.

Recovery memberships against single sessions

Single-session prices overstate what regular users pay at some chains. Concrete Playground reported in 2024 that P3 Recovery entry memberships for wet therapy access cost about $25 to $35 a week, across four sites with more than ten planned. One ice bath ($40) at the Going Rate typical price costs more than a week of entry membership at that chain. The report does not say the entry tier includes red light or cryotherapy.

For people who pay per visit, a sports massage ($130) and a physio consult ($130) each cost about 3.25 times an ice bath at Going Rate's prices. Our research did not cover the evidence for either, so they serve here only as reference prices for a recovery budget.

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