The UK's water crisis, and the cheapest place to buy a bottle of it
Hosepipe bans across eight regions, a record 3.6 million hours of sewage spills, and bills up more than a quarter in a year — the water crisis has made people think harder about what comes out of the tap. So we priced the alternative. Here is the cheapest bottled water in the supermarkets, per litre, from PriceLens data.
Water has quietly become one of the most contested things in British life. As of late July 2026, eight water companies have hosepipe bans in force, after the driest spring in years, three heatwaves and a summer of demand running roughly a tenth above normal. Thames Water alone put 10.1 million customers under a Temporary Use Ban from 23 July — breaking it is a criminal offence carrying a fine of up to £1,000. At the same time, the industry is asking those customers to pay steadily more, while the rivers the water comes from are, by the regulator's own monitoring, in a poor state.
None of that is really PriceLens' beat. But one consequence of it is: when people lose confidence in what comes out of the tap, they buy it in bottles instead — and bottled water is a supermarket product with a price we can check. So this piece does two things. It lays out, briefly, what the "water crisis" actually is. Then it answers the practical question that follows from it: if you are going to buy bottled water, where is it cheapest right now?
What the crisis actually is
It is three separate problems that happen to have arrived together.
- Drought and restrictions. A dry spring — some regions saw only about 40% of average rainfall — followed by repeated heatwaves left reservoirs and groundwater low and demand high. The result is the widest set of simultaneous hosepipe bans in years, from Thames Water and South East Water down to Anglian, South West, Affinity and Cambridge Water.
- Rising bills. The average household water bill in England and Wales jumped by around 26% in 2025–26, and rises again — more modestly — for 2026–27, taking the typical bill past £600 a year. The increases fund a record £104bn investment programme to 2030, but they land now, and land hardest on the households least able to absorb them.
- The state of the water itself. In 2024, storm overflows discharged untreated sewage into England's rivers and seas for a record 3.6 million hours across some 450,000 spills, on the first year every overflow was monitored. It is the sewage numbers, more than anything, that have eroded trust in the tap.
Sitting underneath all of it is the finances of the companies. Thames Water — the biggest — carries around £15.2 billion of debt and was signed off for a 35% bill increase across 2025–30, having asked for 44%. A crisis of drought, a crisis of infrastructure and a crisis of company balance sheets, all charged, ultimately, to the same bill.
The reflex: buy it in bottles
Faced with all that, a lot of people reach for bottled water — for drinking, for topping up, for the reassurance of a sealed cap. The UK already gets through around 36 litres of bottled water per person per year, and a bad-news summer pushes that up.
It is worth saying clearly, before the price table, what that reflex costs. Tap water in the UK runs at roughly a tenth to a third of a penny per litre. As you will see below, the cheapest bottled water is about 21p a litre — somewhere between 70 and 200 times more — and a single bottle of a premium brand can be several hundred to a thousand times the price of the identical-in-all-that-matters liquid from the kitchen tap. Bottled water is also the source of an estimated 15 million plastic bottles a day in the UK that are littered, landfilled or incinerated rather than recycled.
So the honest headline is: the cheapest water in Britain is still the tap, by a distance nothing on a shelf can close. But if you are buying bottled anyway, the gap between the cheapest and the dearest bottle is large, avoidable, and worth knowing.
The cheapest bottled water, by the litre
We priced every still bottled water in the supermarkets we track and worked it out per litre, so a 6-pack and a single bottle can be compared on the same basis. The pattern is the usual one: big own-brand multipacks are far cheaper per litre than singles or premium brands, and the cheapest of all is the own-label 6 × 2-litre pack.
Cheapest still water at each supermarket, priced per litre (PriceLens data, checked between 30 June and 29 July 2026):
| Supermarket | Cheapest still water | Pack | Price | Per litre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Morrisons | Yorkshire Vale Still Spring Water | 6 × 2L | £2.50 | ~21p |
| Iceland | Elm Spring Still Water | 6 × 2L | £2.50 | ~21p |
| Asda | Still Natural Mineral Water | 6 × 2L | £2.55 | ~21p |
| Tesco | British Natural Mineral Water Still | 6 × 2L | £2.55 | ~21p |
| Sainsbury's | British Spring Water | 6 × 2L | £3.00 | ~25p |
| Waitrose | Essential Still Natural Mineral Water | — | £2.20 (offer) | ~28p |
| B&M | Cristaline Still Spring Water | 6 × 500ml | £1.00 | ~33p |
| Poundland | Gill Beck Still Spring Water | 6 × 500ml | £1.00 | ~33p |
Two things stand out. First, the four cheapest supermarkets are level pegging: Morrisons and Iceland at £2.50 for 12 litres, Asda and Tesco a nickel behind at £2.55, all landing at about 21p a litre. If bottled water is a staple in your house, the own-brand 6 × 2L pack is the buy, and where you get it barely matters.
Second, format matters far more than brand loyalty. The same water in a smaller or single-bottle format costs multiples more per litre, and the premium labels more again. Evian is the clearest example in our data:
| Evian, same water | Format | Cheapest price | Per litre |
|---|---|---|---|
| Multipack | 6 × 1.5L | £6.00 (Morrisons / Sainsbury's) | ~67p |
| Single large bottle | 1.5L | £1.50 (Morrisons) | ~100p |
| Small multipack | 6 × 500ml | £3.35 | ~112p |
At its cheapest, Evian is about three times the price per litre of own-brand still water. Bought as a single 1.5L bottle, it is closer to five times — and roughly 300 to 1,000 times the price of the tap water it is standing in for.
What to take from it
- The 2026 water crisis is really three at once — drought and hosepipe bans, bills up more than a quarter in a year, and record sewage spills — and it has pushed more people towards bottled water.
- If you buy bottled, the cheapest is the own-brand 6 × 2L still-water pack at about 21p a litre, and Morrisons and Iceland are joint cheapest at £2.50, with Asda and Tesco a few pence behind. At these prices the shop hardly matters — the format does.
- Brand and pack size cost you far more than choosing the wrong supermarket. A premium single bottle can be five times the per-litre price of an own-brand multipack of essentially the same thing.
- And the cheapest water of all is still the tap — at a fraction of a penny a litre, no bottle to bin. A filter jug closes most of the taste-and-trust gap for a fraction of a bottled-water habit.
PriceLens re-checks supported supermarket prices every 24 hours. We can't fix the reservoirs or the sewage or the bills. We can tell you which shop is cheapest for the bottle in your hand today — and remind you that the cheaper option is usually already plumbed into your kitchen.
Water-sector figures are drawn from Environment Agency storm-overflow data (2024), Ofwat and Water UK bill figures (2025–26 and 2026–27), and water-company drought announcements (July 2026), as cited in contemporaneous reporting. Bottled-water prices are PriceLens data for the retailers we track, checked between 30 June and 29 July 2026; prices and availability change, so compare the live listing before buying.
