What a purifier really costs over 3 years

The price tag on a purifier is the smallest number you'll pay over the years you own it. What actually decides whether you got a good deal is the annual maintenance contract you sign up for, the filters and membrane you replace whether or not you have an AMC, and two costs almost nobody accounts for at purchase: the electricity the pump draws, and the water an RO membrane throws away to make the water it keeps.

None of this is exotic information, but it's scattered — a technician quotes one number, an AMC brochure quotes another, nobody adds it up over three years. Here's what the real total looks like, with the assumptions shown so you can swap in your own numbers.

AMC pricing, tier by tier

AMC pricing in India runs roughly ₹1,000 to ₹6,000 a year, and the number alone tells you almost nothing — what's included varies more than the price does. Three tiers show up consistently across service providers.

• Basic (₹999–1,500/year): scheduled visits and labour only — sediment/carbon filters, the membrane, and any parts are billed separately when actually changed.
• Mid-range (₹2,500–3,500/year): visits plus routine consumables — sediment and carbon filters — included. The RO membrane, which lasts longer and costs more, is usually still extra.
• Comprehensive (₹4,000–6,000+/year): all filters, the membrane on its replacement cycle, and minor parts (valves, connectors) bundled in, sometimes with priority turnaround. Read the exclusions anyway — electrical components and physical damage are commonly carved out even here.

The individual parts an AMC covers aren't expensive on their own: a sediment or carbon filter runs about ₹60–250, and a replacement RO membrane is roughly ₹1,600–3,000, needed once every two to three years. What an AMC really prices in is labour and scheduling — someone shows up on time so you don't have to track filter life yourself.

Is AMC worth it, or is it a scam

Neither answer is honest on its own. The complaints people post — AMC costing more than the machine, technicians pushing an early filter change, renewal quotes jumping sharply after a discounted first year — are real and traceable to specific practices, not just dissatisfaction.

• Renewal step-ups happen because the first year is often bundled cheap into the sale; the second year reflects the provider's real rate.
• A basic AMC marketed without qualification can read as full coverage when it's visits-only — parts still get billed on top, so the effective annual cost ends up close to paying per visit with none of the convenience.
• Technicians paid or incentivised per part replaced have a reason to call a filter 'due' earlier than it needs to be — sediment and carbon filters typically last six to twelve months depending on source water, not on a fixed calendar.

None of that makes AMC a bad product. What it buys is genuinely useful for someone who won't otherwise track filter age or wants to avoid negotiating a call-out fee mid-emergency. It's a bad deal specifically when the tier doesn't match your usage — a municipal connection with low TDS (total dissolved solids, the salts and minerals RO removes) and light daily use gets little from four scheduled visits a year — or when you don't check what a tier excludes before comparing prices.

Electricity: a small but real line item

Storage-tank RO units run their pump only while refilling — typically a 25–60W motor active for under two hours a day, plus a 5–11W UV lamp if fitted. That works out to roughly 0.05–0.1 kWh a day, or 1.5–3 kWh a month — about ₹9–24 a month at typical residential tariffs (₹6–8 a unit). Over three years, that's roughly ₹324–864.

Tankless (direct-flow) units run the pump every time a tap opens rather than topping up a tank on a schedule, so a household drawing water frequently through the day can push consumption two to three times higher. It's still a modest number next to the maintenance cost, but worth checking if a unit is being marketed on convenience without mentioning it runs the motor far more often.

Water wastage: the 60% recovery rule, and its limits

In 2023, India mandated a minimum 60% recovery rate for domestic RO purifiers, after years of National Green Tribunal pressure over how much treated water these units waste. Recovery rate is the share of feed water that comes out purified; the rest exits as reject, drained straight down the pipe. At that minimum, a compliant unit rejects about two-thirds of a litre for every litre it purifies — not the 2–3 litres still quoted as 'typical' in older material.

That worse ratio hasn't disappeared — it now describes non-compliant units: bought before the mandate, running a fouled membrane from skipped filter changes, or operating past design pressure. Rejecting 3–8 litres per litre purified is a maintenance and compliance problem, not a fixed cost of owning an RO purifier.

For a household purifying around 10 litres a day for drinking and cooking, a compliant unit rejects roughly 6–7 litres alongside it — about 7,300 litres over three years. On municipal supply, even at a relatively high tariff (₹30 per 1,000 litres), that's ₹50–220 over three years; several cities also give a free monthly slab that pushes it toward zero. On tanker-sourced water, commonly ₹0.10–0.30 a litre in water-stressed cities, the same volume costs roughly ₹730–2,190 — a real number for households already paying a premium for water. An old or poorly maintained unit rejecting 3–8 litres per litre pushes three-year volumes to roughly 33,000–88,000 litres, multiplying both cost figures well beyond that.

The real 3-year number

Put together for a mid-range unit bought around ₹12,000: the unit itself, plus three years of a comprehensive AMC (₹12,000–18,000), plus electricity (₹324–864), plus water wastage on municipal supply for a compliant unit (₹50–220), lands total ownership at roughly ₹24,400–31,100 — meaning the maintenance contract alone can rival or exceed what the purifier cost to buy.

Paying per visit instead — a filter-change appointment roughly once a year (₹1,200–1,800 including labour) plus one membrane swap over three years (₹1,600–3,000) — totals ₹5,200–8,400 for the same three years, before electricity and water. That's the real finding here: the AMC tier you pick swings the three-year total by ₹3,600–12,800 — comfortably more than electricity and water wastage combined, and at the top end, more than the purifier's own purchase price. Add tanker-water costs of roughly ₹730–2,190 (far more on a poorly maintained unit) regardless of maintenance route — that number depends on where your water comes from, not your AMC decision.