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The water you already pay for, and then buy again

Your utility delivers a gallon for a fraction of a cent. Almost everything you hand over at the register is markup - and you have to run the number yourself, because no federal agency publishes an average bottled price.

by · Published · 5 min read

One case of bottled water a week, carried from the trunk to the kitchen, at $5 a case: that is $261 a year. The case holds twenty-four 16.9-ounce bottles, which is 3.17 gallons, so you are paying about $1.58 a gallon. The same gallon out of the faucet costs, in the EPA's own worked example of a water bill, $0.00295[1]. Nothing else in a household budget has a spread like that.

Where the tap number comes from

The EPA figure above is not a national average, and we are not going to pretend it is: it appears in a section called “Uniform Rate Example”, written to explain how a bill is put together[1]. What it is good for is the order of magnitude, and a second public source lands in the same place. New York City's Department of Environmental Protection puts it plainly: “At approximately one penny per gallon, tap water is about 1,000 times less expensive than bottled water.”[4] A penny and a third of a cent are not the same number, but neither of them is a dollar.

For scale on the other side of the meter: the EPA reports that each American uses an average of 82 gallons of water a day at home, and that the average family spends more than $1,000 a year on water[2]. Drinking water is a rounding error inside that bill. What you drink is not what your water costs you - the shower, the laundry and the lawn are.

What we cannot tell you

A federal average price per gallon for bottled water. We looked for one and did not find it; the EPA's own consumer fact sheet makes the comparison without a number at all, saying only that “Bottled water is much more expensive, per gallon, than tap water.”[3] That is why the arithmetic above starts with a case you can hold and a receipt you can read, rather than with a national figure. Your store brand in a gallon jug and a single 16.9-ounce bottle out of a cooler are the same product at prices that differ by more than a factor of ten.

The multiple does not depend on how thirsty you are

Divide $1.58 by $0.00295 and you get a factor of about 535. That number is not hiding in the size of the case or in how much you drink - both of those cancel out. It sits entirely in two per-gallon prices, which is why the honest version of this article asks you for one of them. Drink twice as much and you pay twice as much on both sides; the ratio does not move.

The part almost nobody has the right way round

Tap water is regulated by the EPA under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Bottled water is a food, and the FDA regulates it as one. Those are not the same regime, and the Government Accountability Office looked at the difference: “FDA does not have the specific statutory authority to require bottlers to use certified laboratories for water quality tests or to report test results, even if violations of the standards are found.”[5] In the same study, the GAO surveyed officials in the fifty states and the District of Columbia and found that “consumers often believe that bottled water is safer or healthier than tap water”[6]. The belief is common. The oversight runs the other way.

The honest counter-argument

There are households for which none of this applies, and they are not rare. If your utility has issued a boil-water notice, if your building still has lead service lines, or if you are on a private well that nobody tests but you, then the price comparison is beside the point and the question is a different one. Carbonation does not come out of a faucet either, and if you buy a particular water because of how it tastes, that is a preference and a price calculation does not beat it. What the arithmetic settles is only the case bought out of habit.

Run it with your own receipt

This calculation runs on our server and is not stored – neither your result nor your entry.

per week

$5.00

per month

$22

per year

$261

Once $5.00
Times per year (weekly) 52.18
Per year $261
Invested as a monthly amount $22
After the period, nominal $17,726
Of that, in today’s purchasing power $9,786

Assumptions behind this calculation

  • Assumed return per year: 5.0%
  • Assumed inflation per year: 2.0%
  • Period considered: 30
  • Calculated as if the annual amount were invested in twelve monthly instalments.

Put in what the register actually charged you, and divide by gallons rather than by bottles - a 24-pack of 16.9-ounce bottles, a 32-pack, and a pair of gallon jugs are three different per-gallon prices on the same shelf. Set the rhythm to what you really buy, not to what you meant to buy. The long view underneath the yearly figure is there because a habit this size is easier to see over thirty years than over one week; it is arithmetic on the amount, not advice about where to put it.

What you can do about it

  1. Fill something tonight and put it where you sit

    The reason a case gets bought is that the faucet is in the other room at the moment you are thirsty. A filled pitcher within arm's reach settles more of this than any decision about brands does, and it costs nothing to test for a week.

  2. Read your own utility's rate rather than our example

    Your water bill states a rate, usually per 1,000 gallons or per hundred cubic feet - a hundred cubic feet is 748 gallons. Divide it out once. Whatever it comes to, it is the number that belongs in this comparison, and it is almost certainly closer to the EPA's example than to anything on a shelf.

  3. Settle the water-quality question once instead of paying it weekly

    If you are on a public system, your supplier has to send you an annual water quality report; the EPA's own advice is to read it[3]. If the answer is that your water is fine, you have stopped paying a subscription for a worry. If it is not, you have a specific problem to fix, which is worth more than a case of water.

  4. Buy the carbonation machine after you know the volume, not before

    If what you actually want is fizzy water, the machine can pay for itself - but only against a volume you have measured. Run the calculator on your real weekly spend first, then decide whether the device clears it.

Frequently asked

Why do you calculate with $5 a case? Mine costs more.

Because it is an example and yours is the number that matters. Put your own receipt into the calculator and the yearly figure moves with it. The example is deliberately at the cheap end: if the case in your trunk costs more, the gap in this article is understated, not overstated.

Does the tap figure include the sewer charge and the fixed monthly fee?

No, and that is on purpose. A water bill has a volume charge and a fixed service charge, and the fixed part is owed whether or not you ever fill a glass. Adding it to the price of a gallon you drink would load a cost you already carry onto the one decision this article is about. The EPA's example figure is the volume side.

Is bottled water not held to a higher standard than tap?

That is the common belief, and the GAO found state officials naming it as the most frequent misconception. The regimes are different: the EPA regulates public water systems under the Safe Drinking Water Act, while the FDA regulates bottled water as a food and, in the GAO's finding, lacks the authority to require certified laboratories or the reporting of failed tests. That is not a claim that any particular bottle is unsafe. It is a claim about who has to prove what.

Sources

  1. Understanding Your Water Bill: “Uniform Rate Example” - “$0.00295 per gallon (or roughly 3 cents for every 10 gallons)”, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, WaterSense, retrieved August 27, 2026.
  2. Statistics and Facts: “Each American uses an average of 82 gallons of water a day at home” and “The average family spends more than $1,000 per year in water costs”, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, WaterSense, retrieved August 27, 2026.
  3. Water Health Series: Bottled Water Basics - “Bottled water is much more expensive, per gallon, than tap water”, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Water, retrieved August 27, 2026.
  4. Water-On-the-Go Fountains Will Help New Yorkers Stay Hydrated This Summer - “At approximately one penny per gallon, tap water is about 1,000 times less expensive than bottled water”, New York City Department of Environmental Protection, release 19-053, retrieved August 27, 2026.
  5. GAO-09-610, Bottled Water: FDA Safety and Consumer Protections Are Often Less Stringent Than Comparable EPA Protections for Tap Water, June 2009, U.S. Government Accountability Office, retrieved August 27, 2026.
  6. GAO-09-610, Highlights: state and District of Columbia officials report that “consumers often believe that bottled water is safer or healthier than tap water”, U.S. Government Accountability Office, retrieved August 27, 2026.

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