Pelican (Pentair) Water Softener Cost & Review
Seven brand pages on this site have been about companies that will not tell you what their equipment costs until somebody is sitting in your kitchen. This one is different, and I want to say so before anything else: Pentair publishes its prices, and it does not call its flagship product a water softener. It calls it a water softener alternative. After a year of reading in-home sales scripts, I found that single word genuinely refreshing — and it is also, as it turns out, the entire review.
Pelican’s NaturSoft is a salt-free conditioner, not a softener — Pentair says so in the product name and in its own FAQ. It carries a DVGW certification for 99.6% scale prevention, costs roughly $22–$44 a year to run, and uses no salt, electricity or wastewater. It will not make your water test soft, because it removes nothing.
Editorial rating: 4.1/5 — honest naming, published prices, certified for what it actually claims — reviewed as exactly that
So this page is a comparison, not an exposé. There is no opaque quote to reconstruct and no financing trick to decode. The only question worth 2,000 words is the one the marketing quietly blurs: you are being offered scale prevention. Are you sure that is what you came for?
On this page
Removed vs. prevented
This is the confusion the whole category lives inside, and one chart settles it:
What Pelican genuinely gets right
I have spent seven pages on this site being hard on brands, so let me be equally precise when a company earns credit. Pelican earns quite a lot of it.
It is performance-certified, which almost nothing in this category is. The salt-free aisle is full of devices making scale claims that rest on nothing but a datasheet. NaturSoft holds a DVGW certification for 99.6% scale prevention — an independent German standard with an actual test protocol behind it. Whatever else is true, that is real evidence, and most of Pelican’s competitors cannot show you anything like it.
It is honest in the product name. “Water softener alternative” is a mouthful, it is worse marketing than “softener,” and it is accurate. Their FAQ goes further and states that the system only addresses hardness scale. Compare that to the in-home channel, where the word “softener” gets applied to anything with a tank.
The engineering removes whole categories of problem. Up-flow design, no moving parts, no electronic head, no backwashing, no drain, no wastewater, no electricity. Read our repair cost guide and notice that the two components which fail most on a salt softener — the control valve and its piston and seals — do not exist here. You cannot be quoted $545 for a valve you do not have.
And the price is on the website. After Culligan, Kinetico, RainSoft, EcoWater and Leaf Home, that should not feel remarkable. It does.
The certifications, read properly
One thing needs care, because the marketing runs the certifications together and they do not mean the same thing:
| Certification | What it covers | What it does not cover |
|---|---|---|
| DVGW DW-9191 | 99.6% hard water scale prevention — the performance claim | Softening. Nothing is removed from the water. |
| NSF/ANSI 61 (NaturSoft) | Material safety — the tank will not leach anything into your water | Any statement about whether it works |
| NSF/ANSI 42 (NaturSoft) | Tested for structural integrity only — the vessel holds pressure | Performance. This is the one most likely to be misread as an efficacy certification |
| NSF/ANSI 42 (PC600/PC1000 carbon) | Chlorine taste and odour reduction — a genuine performance cert, for the carbon filter | Anything to do with hardness or scale |
None of that is dishonest on Pentair’s part — every line above comes from their own documentation, plainly stated. But if you skim a product page and see “NSF certified” next to a softening claim, you will conclude something the certification does not say. The scale claim rests on DVGW. The NSF marks on the NaturSoft tank are about safety and structure, not efficacy. Know which is which.
The limits — from Pentair’s own manual
I did not have to dig for these. They are printed in the installation manual Pentair ships with the product, which is more than most brands on this site can say:
Maximum 75 grains per gallon. Generous — typical municipal water is 5–15 gpg — but a real ceiling. Past it, you are in salt territory.
“All iron/manganese, sulfur and Tannin should be removed prior.” That is Pentair’s sentence, not mine, and it is the single most important line in the document. If you are on a well, this system does not go first. An iron filter goes first, and then this. Buy it the other way round and you are fouling brand-new media on day one.
And the one nobody mentions: your water will still be hard. Not “a bit hard.” Exactly as hard as it was. Test it before and after and the grains-per-gallon number will not move, because nothing was taken out. You will not get the slippery shower, you will not get spot-free glassware, and you will not halve your detergent — those are all consequences of removal, and this device does not remove. It is not underperforming when that happens. It is doing precisely what it says on the tank.
What it costs to run
| Item | Low | High |
|---|---|---|
| Prefilter cartridges Published: ~$22 each, replaced one to two times a year | $22 | $44 |
| Salt None. There is no brine tank | $0 | $0 |
| Electricity None. Up-flow design, no moving parts, no electronic head | $0 | $0 |
| Regeneration water & sewer None. No backwashing, no drain, no wastewater | $0 | $0 |
| Per year, excluding carbon media | $22 | $44 |
Add carbon media replacement roughly every five years (Pentair rates the carbon tank by volume — on the order of 650,000 gallons for the smaller combo unit), and the softening media itself is described as lasting the life of the system. Equipment pricing is published on Pentair’s site and moves with promotions, so check it at the source rather than trusting a number I typed in July.
Set that against the salt route. Our own maintenance worksheet puts a salt softener at about $151 a year all in — $120 of it salt. Over ten years that is roughly $1,510 against a few hundred dollars of prefilters. The conditioner wins the running-cost argument decisively, and it is not close. It also does a different job. Both of those sentences are true at once, and the entire decision lives in holding them both in your head.
Conditioner or softener?
So decide it properly. Tell the tool what you actually want — not what the category is called:
The iron and hardness thresholds come from Pentair’s own installation manual. If you have never measured either, a test kit is $10–$25 and it decides this entire question for you.
Then a salt-free conditioner is a legitimate answer, and you should compare the two brands that both publish their prices. SpringWell’s FutureSoft is the direct competitor — same salt-free approach, published pricing, free shipping, 6-month money-back window. The honest limit is identical to Pelican’s and I will not soften it: it conditions scale rather than removing hardness, so your water will not test soft. Compare flow rates, certifications and current price, and buy whichever wins on the merits.
Check current SpringWell FutureSoft price →Then no conditioner — Pelican’s, SpringWell’s or anyone’s — will give it to you, and it is worth being blunt about that before you spend anything. Slippery water, spot-free glasses and half the detergent all require the hardness to be removed, and removal means ion exchange, which means salt. SpringWell publishes softener pricing online with free shipping and a 6-month money-back window. Size it against your measured hardness first — bathroom-count sizing is a proxy, not a measurement.
Check current SpringWell SS price →Frequently asked
Is the Pelican NaturSoft a real water softener?
No, and Pentair does not claim it is — they market it as a “water softener alternative,” and their own FAQ says it only addresses hardness scale. It prevents scale rather than removing hardness. Your water will still test hard.
Does the Pelican salt-free system actually work?
For scale prevention, the evidence is unusually good: NaturSoft carries a DVGW certification for 99.6% scale prevention. That is the strongest independent performance evidence in the salt-free category. It just is not softening, and those are different claims.
What does a Pelican system cost to run?
Very little. Roughly $22–$44 a year in prefilters, plus carbon media replacement about every five years. No salt, no electricity, no wastewater and no drain — against roughly $151 a year for a salt-based softener on our own worksheet.
Is Pelican NSF certified?
Partly, and the detail matters. The NaturSoft tank is certified to NSF/ANSI 61 for material safety and tested to NSF/ANSI 42 for structural integrity only — not performance. The scale-prevention claim rests on the DVGW certification, not on NSF.
Can I use Pelican on well water with iron?
Not without pretreatment. Pentair’s own installation manual states that iron, manganese, sulfur and tannin “should be removed prior” to the system. On a well, the iron filter comes first — that is Pentair’s instruction, not our opinion.
What is the hardness limit for NaturSoft?
75 grains per gallon, published in Pentair’s own manual. That is a generous ceiling — most municipal water is 5–15 gpg — but if you are past it, you are in salt territory.
Pelican or SpringWell FutureSoft?
Both are salt-free conditioners using the same broad approach, both publish prices, and both spare you the salt. Compare the certifications, the flow rate you need and the current price. Neither will make your water test soft, because neither removes hardness.
Should I buy a conditioner or a softener?
Ask what outcome you want. Scale protection for pipes and appliances — a conditioner is a legitimate answer. Slippery water, no spots, half the detergent — that is hardness being removed, and only ion exchange does it.
Related guides
Where these numbers come from
- Pentair — Pelican PSE1800-P / PSE2000-P installation and owner’s manual (primary source) — pentair.com. Supports the limits and certifications quoted on this page, all in Pentair’s own words: NaturSoft effective to a maximum hardness of 75 gpg (1,282 ppm); “all iron/manganese, sulfur and Tannin should be removed prior”; DVGW DW-9191 certified for 99.6% hard water scale prevention; NaturSoft NS3/NS6 certified to NSF/ANSI 61 for material safety and tested to NSF/ANSI 42 for structural integrity only; PC600/PC1000 carbon certified to NSF/ANSI 42 for chlorine taste and odour.
- Pentair — Pelican Salt-Free Water Softener Alternative product page — pentair.com. Supports: the product is marketed as a “water softener alternative,” and Pentair’s own FAQ states it only addresses water hardness scale; maximum flow rate 15 GPM; sizing by bathroom count (PSE1800-P for 1–3 bathrooms, PSE2000-P for 4–6); up-flow design with no moving parts, no backwashing, no wastewater and no electricity. Equipment pricing is published on the site and changes with promotions — check it there.
- Pentair — combo system with UV, carbon media specification — pentair.com. Supports: carbon tank media replacement every 5 years or 650,885 gallons (PSE1800-P) / 1,301,770 gallons (PSE2000-P).
- Quality Water Lab — Pelican NaturSoft review — qualitywaterlab.com. Supports the running-cost figures: prefilter replacement at roughly $22, once or twice a year, with the softening media described as lasting the life of the system. A third-party review site — treated here as a reported figure, not a manufacturer specification.
- SoftWaterSystemCost.com — our own maintenance worksheet — the complete maintenance schedule. Supports the $151/year salt-softener baseline the running-cost comparison is measured against ($120 salt, $31 consumables).