Countries with the Best Tap Water Quality (2024 Data Ranked)

The best tap water in the world is not one country's prize but a cluster of them. In the most recent WHO and UNICEF estimates, which cover 2024, Iceland, New Zealand, Singapore, and Hungary report that 100 percent of their people use safely managed drinking water, and much of Western Europe sits above 99 percent. The gaps among those countries are tiny. The larger story is that 2.1 billion people still lack safely managed water, and that lead pipes and PFAS chemicals complicate even high-scoring systems.

Key takeaways

• Iceland, New Zealand, Singapore, and Hungary report 100 percent of the population using safely managed drinking water in 2024; the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany are at 99.9 percent or higher.
• 2.1 billion people, about 1 in 4 worldwide, still lacked safely managed drinking water in 2024, including 106 million who drank untreated surface water.
• A well-known reputation does not guarantee a top score: Switzerland is at 96.7 percent and Austria at 98.9 percent in the same dataset.
• Lead service lines and PFAS are the main chemical concerns in rich countries, and rules on both are changing in 2026.
• Differences of a few percentage points between wealthy countries say more about data coverage and small supplies than about whether the water is safe to drink.

What "best tap water" can and cannot mean

People use the phrase to mean three different things. The first is safety: no disease-causing microbes and no chemicals above health-based limits. The second is reliability: water that arrives at the tap whenever you open it, without long outages or intermittent pressure. The third is taste, which depends on minerals, disinfectant, and temperature, and has little to do with safety. A supply can be perfectly safe and still taste of chlorine, and a soft, sweet-tasting supply can carry lead from old pipes.

International comparisons mostly measure safety and reliability together. The WHO and UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) counts a person as using safely managed drinking water when the source is improved, located on the premises, available when needed, and free from fecal and priority chemical contamination. That is a population share, not a lab score. It tells you what fraction of a country's people have this level of service, not how the water would rank in a blind tasting. (WHO fact sheet on drinking-water)

As far as we can find, no official body publishes a single worldwide ranking of "tap water quality" built from lab measurements. Composite scores that circulate online, with figures like 99.9 percent attached to a country, usually cannot be traced to a dataset. The JMP series is the closest thing to a consistent, citable comparison, so this article uses it and says plainly what it leaves out.

The ranking: safely managed drinking water, 2024

The table below lists selected countries ordered by the share of their population using safely managed drinking water in 2024. Ranks are positions within this table, not worldwide positions: other countries and territories may also report 100 percent in the same series. Ties are marked with T.

Rank in table	Country	Share using safely managed water	Source (year)
T-1	Iceland	100%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
T-1	New Zealand	100%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
T-1	Singapore	100%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
T-1	Hungary	100%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
5	Netherlands	99.96%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
T-6	Denmark	99.92%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
T-6	Germany	99.92%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
8	United Kingdom	99.82%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
9	Sweden	99.76%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
10	France	99.71%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
T-11	Finland	99.65%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
T-11	Luxembourg	99.65%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
13	Belgium	99.55%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
T-14	Israel	99.46%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
T-14	Spain	99.46%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
16	South Korea	99.28%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
17	Norway	99.06%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
18	Estonia	98.94%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
19	Austria	98.89%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
20	Japan	98.73%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
21	Czechia	98.14%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
22	Chile	97.82%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
23	United States	97.57%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
24	Canada	96.89%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
25	Italy	96.76%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
26	Switzerland	96.7%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
27	Greece	96.69%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
28	Ireland	96.13%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
29	Portugal	95.22%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
30	Malaysia	94.70%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
31	Poland	88.68%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
32	Brazil	88.62%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
33	Costa Rica	80.5%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
34	India	76.44%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
35	Russia	76.26%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
36	South Africa	68.0%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
37	Bangladesh	59.1%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
38	Philippines	48.5%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
39	Pakistan	45.0%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
40	Mexico	43.0%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
41	Indonesia	30.5%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
42	Nigeria	29.9%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
43	Zimbabwe	25.5%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
44	Ethiopia	13.6%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
45	Democratic Republic of the Congo	11.9%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)
46	Chad	6.3%	WHO/UNICEF JMP (2024)

Source: WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme estimates for 2024 (published August 2025), as distributed by Our World in Data. Values rounded; countries were selected for illustration, not exhaustively.

How to read the table

Among the top 17 rows, the spread is under one percentage point, from 99.06 percent in Norway to 100 percent in the leaders. That is too small to say one system produces safer water than another. The meaningful break comes further down: a country at 95 percent has roughly five in 100 people outside the safely managed category, and a country at 30 percent has most of its population outside it.

The right column is a population share, so size and geography matter. A small, compact country can reach 100 percent more easily than a large one with remote settlements. And the measure reflects monitoring data: a country that tests every small supply and reports the results can look worse than one that reports only its large utilities, even if the underlying water is similar.

Why reputation and the data do not always match

Switzerland and Austria are often named as having the world's best tap water, with Alpine springs and glacier melt as the usual explanation. In the JMP series, Switzerland sits at 96.7 percent and Austria at 98.9 percent, below the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark. That does not mean Swiss or Austrian water is unsafe. It means the headline figure answers a different question than the reputation does.

The JMP figure counts everyone, including people on small and private supplies, and it requires evidence that water is free from fecal and chemical contamination. A few points below the leaders can reflect how many small supplies are monitored and how results are reported rather than a failure at the tap. The dataset does not give a country-by-country explanation, so the honest reading is: both countries are in the high-performing group, and the order inside that group is not a reliable guide to quality.

Source water still matters. Denmark is a clear case: almost all of its drinking water comes from groundwater, with total use of nearly 1,000 million cubic meters a year against an estimated groundwater resource of 1,800 million cubic meters. Groundwater has been filtered by soil and rock, which tends to reduce pathogens, though it can pick up natural contaminants such as arsenic and fluoride and is vulnerable to nitrate and pesticides from farming. (Wikipedia: Water supply and sanitation in Denmark; WHO)

How tap water is made safe: the multi-barrier idea

Safe water is not a property of the source alone. Think of a car's safety: seat belts, airbags, and crumple zones each fail sometimes, so the design stacks them. Drinking-water systems use the same logic, which the WHO calls a framework for safe drinking-water: health-based targets, water safety plans that identify risks from catchment to tap, and independent surveillance to check that the plan works. The framework has been promoted since 2004. (WHO)

In practice the barriers run in sequence. First comes source protection, such as keeping farms, sewage, and industry away from reservoirs and wells. Then treatment: most surface-water plants add a chemical that makes fine particles clump together, let the clumps settle, and filter what remains. Next is disinfection, usually chlorine or ultraviolet light, to inactivate microbes. Finally, distribution keeps the water safe on its journey through pipes, often with a small disinfectant residual that continues to protect it. How the water cycle supplies and recycles these sources is described in How the Water Cycle Works.

Scale and distance shape the design. New York City delivers more than 1 billion gallons (about 3.8 billion liters) a day to about nine million customers, from upstate reservoirs, some of them more than 125 miles from the city. A system that long has many places where something can go wrong, which is why monitoring and pipe condition matter as much as the pristine reputation of the source. (NYC Department of Environmental Protection)

Where fresh water is scarce, countries add more steps, from recycling to desalination. The costs and trade-offs are covered in Why Desalination Uses So Much Energy and in Water Scarcity: The Growing Global Crisis Explained.

The last few meters: lead pipes and Flint

Treatment plants can deliver excellent water that is then contaminated on the way into a home. Lead is the standard example. The EPA says lead enters water when plumbing containing lead corrodes, that lead service lines (the pipes that connect homes to the water main) are typically the biggest source in homes that have them, and that lead pipes are more likely in older cities and in homes built before 1986. Water chemistry, temperature, pipe wear, how long water sits in the pipe, and protective mineral scale on the pipe wall all influence how much lead dissolves. (EPA)

The health case for caution is strong. EPA and the CDC agree there is no known safe level of lead in a child's blood, and EPA's health-based goal for lead in drinking water is zero. EPA estimates that drinking water can account for 20 percent or more of a person's total lead exposure, and for infants fed mostly formula mixed with tap water it can reach 40 to 60 percent. (EPA)

Utilities control lead mainly by corrosion control, adjusting the water's pH or adding a corrosion inhibitor such as orthophosphate so that a protective scale forms inside pipes. Flint, Michigan shows what happens when that step is skipped. On April 25, 2014, the city switched from Detroit's system to the Flint River as a cost-saving measure, and officials did not add corrosion inhibitors. The more corrosive water leached lead from aging pipes, and about 100,000 residents were exposed. A 2015 study led by pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha found that the share of Flint children with elevated blood lead rose from 2.4 percent in 2013 to 4.9 percent in 2015, although a 2018 follow-up did not find the increase statistically significant after a correction for multiple comparisons. The city returned to Detroit water on October 16, 2015, and a settlement of $600 million was announced in August 2020, later growing to $641 million. (Wikipedia: Flint water crisis)

What the 2024 US rule changed

In October 2024, the EPA finalized the Lead and Copper Rule Improvements, which require water systems to identify and replace lead pipes within 10 years and lower the lead action level to 10 micrograms per liter. The earlier rule triggered action when more than 10 percent of tap samples exceeded 15 parts per billion. An action level is a trigger for further steps, not a guarantee that water below it is harmless. Estimates of the number of lead service lines in the United States have varied by source and year, with one account from the 2010s citing up to six million, and utilities are still completing inventories. (EPA; Wikipedia: Lead service line)

Why wealthy countries still struggle with old pipes

Lead pipes are an old-city problem, not only an American one. As of 1997, about 8.9 million homes in England and Wales had lead service lines. Paris replaced all 66,000 of its public-side lead pipes between 1999 and 2009. Ireland had replaced about 22,000 public-side lead lines by April 2019 but only about 800 full replacements, because the private portion belongs to the homeowner. In Germany, public-side lines in the north were replaced when a 2003 standard took effect, while private lines were not fully removed as of 2013. Health Canada lowered its lead limit to 0.005 milligrams per liter (5 micrograms per liter) in March 2019. (Wikipedia: Lead service line)

The split between public and private ownership is the recurring obstacle. A utility can replace the pipe under the street, but the stretch under a lawn belongs to the property owner, and replacing only one side can disturb the other and release more lead for a time. That is why a national average can hide a block, a building, or a town with a much worse result than the headline figure suggests. The same point applies to a similarly large gap in unrelated rankings such as Countries with the Cleanest Air: national numbers summarize, and local conditions decide.

PFAS and the contaminants regulators are tightening

PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are manufactured chemicals used in products from firefighting foam to nonstick coatings, and many of them break down very slowly. In 2023, the US Geological Survey estimated that at least 45 percent of US tap water contains one or more PFAS. The estimate was based on samples from 716 locations, collected from 2016 to 2021, and tested for 32 individual PFAS, out of more than 12,000 types of PFAS, so it likely understates the total. Exposure was highest near urban areas and potential sources, and PFAS concentrations were similar in private wells and public supplies. (USGS)

In April 2024, the EPA set enforceable limits for six PFAS. They are shown below alongside the EU's approach.

Rule	Limit	Status
US, PFOA	4.0 ng/L (parts per trillion); health goal zero	Final 2024 rule; EPA kept it in May 2025
US, PFOS	4.0 ng/L; health goal zero	Final 2024 rule; EPA kept it in May 2025
US, PFHxS, PFNA, HFPO-DA (GenX)	10 ng/L each	Final 2024 rule; EPA proposed rescinding in May 2026
US, mixtures including PFBS	Hazard Index of 1	Final 2024 rule; EPA proposed rescinding in May 2026
EU, sum of PFAS	0.10 micrograms per liter (100 ng/L)	Directive 2020/2184 annex values
EU, PFAS total	0.50 micrograms per liter (500 ng/L)	Directive 2020/2184 annex values

Sources: EPA PFAS drinking water page, EUR-Lex, Directive (EU) 2020/2184. Check the regulator's current page, because these rules are in motion.

The US timeline has shifted. Under the 2024 rule, systems must finish initial monitoring by 2027 and, if levels exceed the limits, have until 2029 to act. On May 18, 2026, EPA proposed to uphold the PFOA and PFOS limits while letting systems request two more years, to 2031, to comply, and to rescind the limits for PFHxS, PFNA, HFPO-DA, and the mixture index. Those proposals were not final when this article was updated. The technical picture of what PFAS are, why they persist, and how they are removed is covered in a separate explainer.

The EU approach

The EU's Drinking Water Directive entered into force on January 12, 2021, with national transposition due in January 2023. It lists limits for lead (10 micrograms per liter until January 12, 2036, then 5), arsenic (10), nitrate (50 milligrams per liter), and zero for E. coli and enterococci. It also moves toward a risk-based approach: assessments of the catchments feeding abstraction points are due by July 2027, and assessments of domestic distribution and supply systems by January 2029. (European Commission; EUR-Lex)

Microplastics

Microplastics, fragments smaller than 5 millimeters, have been reported in tap and bottled water. In 2019 the WHO published a report that reviewed the evidence on microplastics in the water cycle, how treatment removes them, and the potential health impacts, and it identified key knowledge gaps. The reasonable summary is that exposure is real and the health significance is unclear. The wider issue is described in The Plastic Pollution Crisis Explained. (WHO)

The global gap: 2.1 billion people

The countries at the bottom of the table are not failing to polish a good product; many lack basic service. The JMP's 2025 report found that about 1 in 4 people, or 2.1 billion, still lacked safely managed drinking water in 2024, and that 106 million people drank untreated surface water. The earlier WHO estimate for 2022 was 2.2 billion, which suggests slow progress. In 2022 the group lacking safely managed water included 1.5 billion with basic service, 292 million with limited service, 296 million using unprotected wells and springs, and 115 million collecting untreated surface water. (WHO/UNICEF JMP 2025; WHO)

The health toll is concentrated in children. WHO estimates that microbiologically contaminated drinking water causes about 505,000 diarrheal deaths a year, and that about 1 million people die each year from diarrhea linked to unsafe water, sanitation, and hand hygiene, including 395,000 children under 5. Water is also a basic matter of rights: the UN General Assembly recognized the human right to water and sanitation in 2010. (WHO)

Chemistry matters as well as microbes. Arsenic and fluoride occur naturally, especially in groundwater, and can reach harmful levels where people rely on untreated wells. Fixing that takes testing, treatment, and an alternative source, which is why the countries with the lowest JMP scores often face a mix of infrastructure, funding, and monitoring gaps. How water stress interacts with supply is covered in Countries Facing the Worst Freshwater Stress.

Questions to ask about any tap water ranking

Because the top of any list is crowded, a few questions help interpret the next ranking you see.

Question	Why it matters
What exactly is measured?	Access, microbial safety, chemical compliance, and taste are different things
Which year and which source?	Water data change slowly but rules change quickly
Is it a national average?	Averages hide poor neighborhoods, small supplies, and private wells
Does the score include pipes?	Treatment can be excellent while service lines add lead
Who reported the data?	Self-reported utility data and independent testing differ in rigor
Are small and private supplies counted?	They are often the weakest and least tested

For households, many utilities publish annual water quality reports, and owners of private wells are responsible for testing them, as the USGS notes. If you have a specific concern, use current guidance from your local water utility or public health authority rather than a general ranking. This article is educational and is not health or legal advice.

Frequently asked questions

Q: Which country has the best tap water? A: No single country can be named with confidence. In the WHO/UNICEF 2024 estimates, Iceland, New Zealand, Singapore, and Hungary report 100 percent of people using safely managed drinking water, and many European countries are above 99 percent. The differences among them are too small to rank reliably.

Q: Is Swiss tap water the best in the world? A: Switzerland has a strong reputation, but its 2024 JMP figure is 96.7 percent, below the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark. That does not show Swiss water is unsafe. The figure counts all supplies and depends on monitoring data, so it measures something different from reputation or taste.

Q: Is tap water safe to drink in the United States? A: Most people are served by public systems, and the 2024 JMP figure for the United States is 97.57 percent. Risks are uneven: lead from old service lines and PFAS in some supplies are the main concerns, and utility reports and local authorities are the right source for a specific address.

Q: Why does tap water taste different in different places? A: Taste depends on the source, minerals, temperature, and the disinfectant used, and it is not a reliable guide to safety. A water that tastes of chlorine can be safe, and a water that tastes pleasant can still carry contaminants.

Q: How many people lack safe drinking water? A: The JMP's 2025 report estimated 2.1 billion people lacked safely managed drinking water in 2024, about 1 in 4 people, and 106 million drank untreated surface water.

Q: Can PFAS be removed from tap water? A: Treatment methods exist, including activated carbon, ion exchange, and high-pressure membranes, but removal moves the chemicals into waste that must be handled. What works depends on the water and the compounds, so rely on the utility's current guidance.

The takeaway

The best tap water is the kind you stop noticing: it is there when you want it, it is free of anything that can hurt you, and the system behind it is monitored closely enough that a failure would be caught. By the best available measure, a group of wealthy countries has reached that level for nearly everyone, and the order within the group is mostly noise. The real differences are elsewhere. They show up in the 2.1 billion people left out, in the old pipes under rich cities, and in new chemicals that regulators are still learning to measure. Good tap water turns out to be less a gift of geography than a maintenance schedule that someone keeps paying for.

Sources

• WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (2025), Progress on household drinking water, sanitation and hygiene
• Our World in Data, Share of the population using safely managed drinking water
• WHO, Drinking-water fact sheet
• EPA, Basic information about lead in drinking water and Lead and Copper Rule Improvements
• EPA, PFAS in drinking water
• USGS (2023), Tap water study detects PFAS across the US
• European Commission, Drinking water; Directive (EU) 2020/2184
• WHO (2019), Microplastics in drinking-water
• NYC Department of Environmental Protection, Drinking water
• Wikipedia, Flint water crisis, Lead service line, and Water supply and sanitation in Denmark, used for summary figures

Related Reading

• Countries with the Most Freshwater Stress
• Countries with the Largest Freshwater Reserves
• Countries with the Most Freshwater Lakes
• Countries with the Best Healthcare Systems
• Countries Most Vulnerable to Climate Change
• How Water Works: The Unique Chemistry of H2O