Surface acoustic wave (SAW) waveguide‐coupled resonators are of considerable interest for narrow‐band filter applications, though to date there has been very little published on the acoustic details of their operation. As in any resonator, one must fully understand its mode structure and herein we study the SAW mode profiles in these devices. Transverse mode profiles in the resonant cavity of the device were measured at various frequencies of interest using a knife‐edge laser probe. In addition we predict the mode profiles for the device structure by two independent methods. One is a stack‐matrix approach adapted from integrated optics and the other is a conventional analytical eigenmode analysis of the Helmholtz equation. Both modeling techniques are in good agreement with the measured results.