# The 2026 American Water Rate and Finance Benchmark

> **Cite as:** Municorn.us, "The 2026 American Water Rate and Finance Benchmark", Municorn water loss index, https://municorn.us/benchmark/ (source filings retrieved 2026-09-12).
> **Licence:** CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ — reuse and redistribution are permitted with attribution to Municorn.us and a link to this URL.
> **Caveat that must travel with these figures:** "Water loss" is at least three different quantities depending on the jurisdiction, and nothing here supports a comparison between states.

Every active community water system in the United States: 49,378 systems across 66 primacy agencies.

- 13,667 with their government's water utility finances
- 31,237 with the household income of the territory served
- 1,108 with a residential bill computed from a filed tariff
- 854 with both, and therefore an affordability figure
- 985 published in full — 485 serving over 100,000 people, plus a stratified random sample of 500

## National distributions

Computed over all 49,378 systems, not over the 985 named in the study.

| Metric | n | p10 | median | p90 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Annual residential water bill at 72 HCF | 1,108 | $358 | $745 | $1,555 |
| Water utility revenue per connection | 13,658 | $289 | $562 | $1,171 |
| Water utility operating cost per connection | 12,748 | $188 | $438 | $971 |
| Water utility capital spending per connection | 5,888 | $11 | $115 | $884 |
| Operating cost as a share of revenue | 12,507 | 0.38 | 0.77 | 1.38 |
| Annual water bill as a share of median household income | 854 | 0.35% | 0.75% | 1.64% |
| Median household income in the service territory | 31,237 | $45,795 | $71,827 | $125,313 |

_Municorn.us · https://municorn.us/benchmark/ · CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ · source filings retrieved 2026-09-12_