Yes, with one large caveat: bottled does not mean soft. Several popular mineral waters are considerably harder than tap water in most cities, and using them will scale a machine faster, not slower.
What to read on the label
Two numbers matter.
Bicarbonate (HCO₃⁻), sometimes shown as alkalinity. This is what forms limescale. Lower is better for the machine — under about 50 mg/l is comfortable.
Total dissolved solids or dry residue. Somewhere around 50 to 150 mg/l is a reasonable target. Very low figures mean the water will extract poorly.
Waters marketed for their mineral content are usually the wrong choice; waters described as low-mineral or “suitable for infant formula” are often close to ideal.
The cost problem
A machine drinking two litres a week gets through about a hundred litres a year. At bottled prices that is a substantial annual bill and a great deal of plastic, for a result a thirty-euro filter achieves.
For a household machine, filtered tap water is almost always the better answer. Bottled makes sense if your tap water is genuinely unusable — extremely hard, or heavily chlorinated in a way filtering does not fix.
What not to use
Distilled or deionised water alone. No minerals means poor extraction and hollow-tasting coffee, and some machines with conductivity-based water sensors will not even detect it.
Sparkling water. Obviously, and it does get asked.
If you do use bottled
Stick to one brand. Switching between waters changes extraction, and it is one more variable when you are trying to work out why today’s coffee tastes different.
Questions people actually ask
Which bottled waters are commonly recommended?
Rather than name brands that vary by country, use the label: low bicarbonate, total dissolved solids in the 50 to 150 mg/l range. That specification is available in every market.
Does bottled water still require descaling?
Unless the bicarbonate is very low, yes. Scale forms from what is in the water, not from where it came from.
Last reviewed 8 August 2026