Salt-Free System or Water Softener?

If your home has hard water, you've probably heard of both water softeners and salt-free systems. Both help with hard water, but they do it in completely different ways.

How a water softener works

A softener uses something called ion exchange. Resin beads inside the tank trade the calcium and magnesium in your water for sodium (or potassium). Every so often, the system rinses the beads with salty brine to recharge them.

What you get is truly soft water: that slippery feel in the shower, lots of soap lather and spot-free dishes. The trade-offs are that you have to keep adding salt, it sends brine down the drain, it adds a small amount of sodium to your water, and it takes up more space.

How a salt-free system works

A salt-free system, often called a water conditioner, doesn't soften the water. It changes the minerals so they're much less likely to stick to surfaces as scale.

There's no salt to buy or carry, no brine going down the drain, no electricity in most designs and very little upkeep, and the minerals stay in your water. But the water won't have that slippery soft-water feel, and very hard water or a lot of iron may need extra treatment.

Side by side

• Both help prevent scale buildup.
• Only a softener gives you that soft, slippery feel.
• Only a salt-free system uses no salt and no brine.
• A salt-free system needs less upkeep.
• For extremely hard water, a softener is usually the better choice.

Which one should you choose?

It comes down to your test results and what you care about most. If you want low upkeep and no salt, salt-free is a good fit for most homes. If you want the softest water, a softener may be better, and we offer salt delivery so you never have to lift a heavy bag again.

We'll test your hardness for free and tell you what we'd do, even if that means telling you that you don't need anything at all.