Skip to content

Free B2B tool

Commercial RO Plant Cost & TCO Calculator

For facility managers, plant engineers and procurement teams: size the plant, estimate capex, and model five-year total cost of ownership including power, consumables and AMC — with a CapEx-vs-OpEx comparison for your approval note.

Commercial RO plant cost & TCO estimator

A budgetary planning tool for facility and procurement teams. It sizes the plant, estimates capex, and models five-year total cost of ownership including power, consumables and AMC — plus a CapEx-vs-OpEx comparison.

Recommended plant

500 LPH

Includes headroom for membrane ageing

Indicative capex

₹4.3 lakh

Depends on pre-treatment needed

5-year TCO

₹9.4 lakh

≈ ₹0.31 per litre

Estimated cost breakdown
Line itemEstimateBasis
Capital cost₹4.3 lakh500 LPH plant with pre-treatment sized for 800 ppm feed
Power₹48,600/yr~18 kWh/day × 300 days × ₹9
Consumables + AMC₹52,200/yr12% of capex — higher on difficult feed water
Total annual opex₹1,00,800/yrPower + consumables + AMC
Feed water consumed3,636 L/dayAt ~55% recovery for this feed TDS
Reject water1,636 L/dayPlan reuse (flushing, landscaping, cooling makeup) or disposal

CapEx (purchase)

₹9.4 lakh

Over 5 years, including power and AMC. You own the asset, and it is the lowest total cost.

OpEx (rental / subscription)

~₹10,900/month

₹6.5 lakh over 5 years, everything included. No capital outlay and easier internal approval, at a higher total cost.

These are budgetary planning estimates, not a quotation. Actual cost depends on your feed-water analysis, materials of construction, automation level, storage and site conditions. Commercial water treatment is always quoted against a water report — send yours and we will give you a specification-backed proposal.

Full price guide

Most commercial water treatment purchases are evaluated on capex alone, and that is why so many of them disappoint. A plant that costs 15% less to buy can cost 40% more to run if its pre-treatment is undersized, its pump is inefficient, or its recovery ratio is poor — and on a five-year view those differences dwarf the purchase price gap.

The calculator above models the whole picture: plant sizing from your actual demand profile, capex banded by feed-water difficulty, annual power from realistic kW-per-LPH figures, consumables and AMC as a share of capex, and the feed and reject volumes implied by your recovery ratio. It then compares outright purchase against a rental/OpEx model over five years.

Two things it deliberately does not do. It does not pretend to be a quotation — commercial water treatment is specified against a laboratory water analysis, and any vendor quoting a firm price without one is guessing. And it does not hide its assumptions: every line in the output states its basis, so your engineering team can check the arithmetic rather than take it on trust.

Frequently asked questions

How do I size a commercial RO plant?
Divide your daily requirement in litres by the hours over which you can produce it, then round up to the next standard plant size with roughly 15% headroom for membrane ageing. Producing 2,000 litres over 9 hours needs about 220 LPH, so you would specify a 250 LPH plant. If demand is concentrated in a short peak, buffer storage is almost always cheaper than extra plant capacity.
Why does feed water TDS affect the cost of a commercial RO plant?
Because it determines the size of the pre-treatment train and the achievable recovery ratio. Higher TDS and hardness require larger sand and carbon vessels plus antiscalant dosing or softening, and recovery falls — meaning you consume more feed water and discharge more reject per litre produced. Two identical-capacity plants can differ 60% in price purely on feed-water quality.
Is it cheaper to buy or rent a commercial RO plant?
Buying is cheaper over five years — typically by a meaningful margin — and you own the asset. Renting converts capex to opex, bundles installation, consumables, servicing and breakdown response into a monthly charge, and is much easier to get approved when capital budget is the constraint. The calculator on this page compares both over five years.
What is included in a commercial RO plant AMC?
Comprehensive AMC (typically 10-14% of capital cost annually) includes scheduled preventive visits, membrane and cartridge replacement, and priority breakdown response. Non-comprehensive (5-8%) covers visits and labour only, with parts billed as consumed. Always get the inclusion list itemised, and get response times in writing.

Free consultation · Pan-India

Not sure what you actually need? Ask us before you spend.

Tell us your city, your water source and your budget. For homes we will recommend the right technology — including telling you when a ₹3,000 purifier is genuinely enough. For offices, societies and factories, our team will size a system against your water report and send a specification-backed quotation.

Or email betterworkindia@gmail.com — attach a water analysis report and we can quote faster.

  • Homes

    Right-sized recommendation for your TDS, not the most expensive unit

  • Offices & societies

    25 LPH to 2,000+ LPH, sized on headcount and feed water

  • Industry

    Pharma, food, textile, boiler feed — engineered to your specification

  • Service & AMC

    Installation, repair and AMC with written response times

Pan-India installation & serviceAMC support availableFree site water-quality auditCustom-engineered to your TDSHow our quotation process works →