Costco members can order Primo Brands 5-gallon jug delivery through Costco’s water delivery page, at member-only pricing that is shown only once you start an order with a delivery ZIP code. No per-jug price is published. What is published is the offer and the service agreement, and those decide what an office really signs up for. Aqualume offers bottleless water cooler rentals for businesses in Los Angeles, Orange County and the Inland Empire, so this is the comparison we get asked about.
Everything below about Costco and Primo is quoted from their own public pages, read on September 25, 2026. Dollar figures are theirs, in US dollars.
Key Takeaways
- Costco does not deliver the water. Primo Brands and its affiliates supply it under a separate service agreement, and the member order site says it is operated by a third party, not by Costco.
- As of 2026-09-25, the new-customer offer was two free 3- or 5-gallon bottles when you buy two on a recurring plan, first delivery only, with a $25 minimum; it expires September 30, 2026.
- The agreement makes the customer clean and maintain a rented dispenser at least once every three months, and it sets no minimum term: either side can end it.
- If your Costco membership lapses, the agreement keeps running, but Primo can move you to its standard pricing instead of the Costco price.
- At a planning figure of half a gallon per person per workday, a 25-person office goes through about 50 jugs every four weeks.
What the Costco page actually offers
Costco’s water delivery page describes the program in three steps: build your order by picking bottled water and an optional rental dispenser, have a Route Sales Representative bring it and pick up your empties on your scheduled delivery date, then drink. It says Costco members get exclusive pricing on 5-gallon bottles of spring and purified water, and it points to bottom-load dispensers with hot and cold taps.
The page lists no price. To see one, you go to the member order site, order.costcowater.com, and start an order with a delivery ZIP code. Until you do, the site shows no products at all. Some areas are served by an independent distributor, and the site tells those customers to call the distributor directly instead of ordering online.
The promotion in the fine print on September 25, 2026 reads, in summary:
| Offer term (order.costcowater.com, as of 2026-09-25) | What it says |
|---|---|
| Who qualifies | New Primo Brands delivery customers only, one offer per account |
| What you must buy | Subscribe to recurring delivery and purchase two 3- or 5-gallon bottles of spring, purified or alkaline water |
| What you get | Two additional 3- or 5-gallon bottles at no charge |
| When it applies | Your first delivery only |
| Minimum spend | $25 before discounts, excluding taxes, fees and deposits |
| Extra charges named | Account and/or bottle deposits and activation fees may apply |
| Deadline | Offer expires 9/30/2026; delivery must occur by 10/30/2026 |
On 2026-09-25 the same page carried a “First 3 months free” banner for dispenser rental. Its terms are in a pop-up we could not open, and we could not read them, so we are not repeating any claim about it. Check it at checkout.
Costco water delivery is a Primo Brands contract
If you searched “Costco water delivery”, this is the detail worth knowing first. The service agreement on the Costco member order site names the supplier as Primo Brands Corporation and its affiliates, including BlueTriton Brands and DS Services of America, which it calls the Company. Costco is a party for billing: the Company provides the water and equipment and may invoice you on Costco’s behalf, and payment may go directly to Costco. The order site itself states it is operated by a third party, not by Costco.
Primo Brands also owns Sparkletts, another of its purified water brands. If you want to see how a Sparkletts account is billed, including its published fee ceilings, our Sparkletts delivery cost breakdown goes line by line. We will not repeat that table here.
A few clauses in the Costco-channel agreement matter more to an office than the jug price:
- Charges beyond the water. You agree to pay account deposits, any applicable delivery fees, a surcharge on credit card payments where the law allows it, and all applicable state bottle deposits and redemption value. None of these are given as dollar amounts in the agreement.
- Prices can move. Prices for products, equipment, bottles and services are subject to change on notice to you.
- Membership is the price key. If you stop being a Costco member, the agreement does not end. Primo may then condition further sales or rentals on its standard terms and pricing, which the agreement spells out as “not the Costco price.”
- The bottles and cooler stay theirs. The dispenser is a true lease, the multi-gallon bottles remain Primo’s property, and you may not reuse or refill the bottles for any purpose. Anything you do not return is billed at full replacement value, and account deposits can be applied toward it.
- Either side can walk away. The term runs from the day you open an account until either party ends it, and the Company can terminate at any time, for any reason.
That last point cuts both ways. There is no minimum term written into this agreement, which is good news if you want out. It also means the arrangement, and the member price, are only as stable as the membership on the account.
Jug math for a 10, 25 and 50 person office
Because the per-jug price only appears once you enter a delivery ZIP code, the honest way to compare is by volume. Volume you can calculate yourself. We use a planning figure of half a gallon per person per workday and a four-week month of 20 workdays. Replace it with your own number from past invoices; the arithmetic scales straight across.
| Office size | Gallons per 4 weeks | 5-gallon jugs per 4 weeks | Jugs per delivery on a 2-week cycle | Water moved per 4 weeks (lb) | Offer’s 2 free jugs as a share of the first 4 weeks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 people | 100 | 20 | 10 | 832 | 10% |
| 25 people | 250 | 50 | 25 | 2,080 | 4% |
| 50 people | 500 | 100 | 50 | 4,160 | 2% |
How the columns are built: gallons is people × 0.5 × 20 workdays. Jugs is gallons ÷ 5. The delivery column assumes two deliveries per four weeks. Water weight uses about 41.6 pounds of water per full 5-gallon jug, the figure we derived from USGS water density in the Sparkletts article, before the weight of the bottle itself. The last column is simply 2 ÷ jugs per four weeks: the promotion is worth the same two bottles whether you have 10 people or 50, so it matters far less to a bigger office.
To turn the table into money, take the member price your ZIP code shows for one 5-gallon bottle and call it P. Four weeks of water is then jugs × P, plus any dispenser rental you added, plus whichever deposits and fees your account carries. For a 25-person office that is 50 × P before anything else. Write that number down and it becomes something you can hold against any alternative, including ours. For the broader bottled versus plumbed comparison across a year, see our bottled vs. bottleless cost guide for SoCal offices.
Storage, lifting and the cleaning clause
At 25 people, a two-week delivery is about 25 full jugs coming in and roughly as many empties going out. Both need floor space somewhere between the door and the break room. In a mid-rise in Irvine or downtown Los Angeles, delivery day can also mean booking the freight elevator or the loading dock with building management. Missing the route can mean waiting for the next one.
Primo’s own order site makes a fair point here. Its bottom-load dispensers hide the bottle behind a lower door, and the site says that when it is time to change the bottle, there is no need for heavy lifting. That is true at the cooler. It does not cover the trip from the delivery stack to the break room, or the stack itself, which is where full jugs get lifted off the floor.
For a sense of scale, NIOSH’s revised lifting equation, published by Waters and colleagues in 1993, sets a load constant of 23 kg, or 51 pounds, as the maximum recommended weight for a lift under optimal conditions. The equation then reduces that limit for real conditions, such as starting low, reaching out or twisting. The paper describing the revised equation, archived by the CDC, says the committee judged a load at that constant, under ideal conditions, acceptable to 75% of female workers and about 90% of male workers (the paper’s section on the load constant). A full 5-gallon jug holding about 41.6 pounds of water is under 51 pounds, but a jug picked up from floor level is not an optimal-conditions lift. The point is not that jug service is unsafe. It is that somebody on your staff does this job, whether or not it is written into their role.
Then there is a clause that is easy to scroll past. Under the Costco-channel agreement, cleaning the rented dispenser is your job, on a schedule:
“clean and maintain the Equipment periodically and at least once every three months”
Primo Brands service agreement for Costco members, order.costcowater.com (read September 25, 2026)
The same clause says only the Company or its authorized representatives may repair the equipment, and you may not alter it at all, or move it from your location without written consent. So your staff owns the quarterly cleaning, and the Company owns the repairs. If nobody has put that cleaning on a calendar, it is not happening.
What a plumbed bottleless cooler changes
A bottleless cooler connects to the cold water line your building already has and filters on demand. Nothing is ordered, stacked or carried, so a lot of the list above simply stops applying. Here is the same set of concerns, side by side, using only what each side publishes:
| Concern | Costco Primo jug delivery (per its agreement and order site) | Aqualume bottleless rental (per aqualume.com) |
|---|---|---|
| Where the water comes from | 5-gallon (or 3-gallon) bottles delivered on a schedule | Your building’s cold water line, filtered in the unit |
| Deposits and fees named | Account deposits, delivery fees, card surcharge, state bottle deposits | Filters billed separately when changed, about once a year |
| Who cleans the dispenser | Customer, at least once every three months | Scheduled service and sanitization included while you rent |
| Who repairs it | Company or its authorized representatives | Repairs and unit replacement included |
| Price anchor | Costco price while a member; standard pricing possible if membership lapses | Rate and term put in writing before you sign |
| Weight handled by staff | About 41.6 lb of water per jug, every jug | None |
The install is smaller than it sounds. On an Aqualume trial, our technicians connect the unit to your existing cold water line, sanitize it and test it in one visit, which on our trial page is typically under an hour. After that, scheduled service, sanitization and repairs are covered for as long as you rent, according to our water cooler rental page, which is also where you can book the 7-day free trial with no credit card.
What a bottleless line does not remove: filter changes, billed separately about once a year, and a rental agreement you should read as carefully as the Primo one. It also needs a water line within reach of where the cooler will stand. If your break room has no plumbing nearby, say so when you tell us where the water line runs, before anything is installed.
Ending jug delivery without paying twice
If the numbers point toward switching, the order of operations saves money:
- Count every bottle and dispenser on the account against your last invoice. Anything unreturned is billed at full replacement value, and your deposits can be applied toward it.
- Cancel through the channel the agreement names. For Costco-channel accounts it points to the online cancellation option in your ReadyRefresh account settings, or to Primo customer service at 1-800-274-5282. You should receive an email confirmation; keep it.
- Time the last delivery to the pickup. Let the final route collect the empties and the cooler, and confirm the equipment goes back in the condition you received it, reasonable wear and tear excepted.
- Overlap for a few days. Have the new cooler installed and tested before the jugs stop, so nobody goes without water.
- Check the card. The agreement authorizes recurring charges until you tell Costco you want to cancel, so watch the next statement for a stray cycle.
Our guide to canceling a water cooler contract covers the paperwork in more detail. If your account is a direct ReadyRefresh account rather than a Costco-channel one, its terms are different, and our ReadyRefresh vs. bottleless comparison walks through them.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Costco Primo water delivery cost?
Costco and Primo do not publish a per-jug price. Member pricing appears only once you start an order with a delivery ZIP code on order.costcowater.com. On top of the water, the agreement lets Primo charge account deposits, delivery fees, a card surcharge and state bottle deposits.
Is Costco water delivery run by Costco?
No. The water, bottles and dispensers come from Primo Brands and its affiliates under a separate service agreement. Costco is involved in billing, and payment may go directly to Costco, but the order site states it is operated by a third party, not by Costco.
What was the Costco Primo new-customer offer as of 2026-09-25?
As of 2026-09-25, new Primo delivery customers who subscribed to recurring delivery and bought two 3- or 5-gallon bottles got two more free on the first delivery, with a $25 minimum before discounts. The offer shown on September 25, 2026 expires September 30, 2026.
What happens to the Costco price if our membership lapses?
The agreement keeps running, but Primo can require you to accept its standard terms and pricing, which the agreement describes as not the Costco price. An office that relies on one employee’s personal membership should plan for that.
Who cleans a Primo dispenser rented through Costco?
You do. The agreement requires the customer to clean and maintain the equipment periodically and at least once every three months. Repairs are reserved for Primo or its authorized representatives.
How do we cancel Costco Primo water delivery?
The agreement points to the online cancellation option in your ReadyRefresh account settings or to customer service at 1-800-274-5282. Return every bottle and dispenser, because unreturned items are billed at full replacement value.
How many 5-gallon jugs does a 25-person office use?
At a planning figure of half a gallon per person per workday, about 50 jugs every four weeks, or 25 per delivery on a two-week cycle. Check your last three invoices for your real rate before comparing quotes.
