Recently, the consumption of bottled water has increased significantly, even though the quality of tap water is considered excellent, which contributes to plastic pollution. Moreover, it is recommended worldwide to reduce the use of plastic, as its consumption is increasing at an alarming rate. Therefore, this study aims to make a comparison between tap water and bottled water and to show the reasons for choosing bottled water, which is less convenient and often more expensive than tap water. In this study, a total of 20 samples were collected from different parts of Hyderabad and analyzed for bacteriological quality using MPN method and heterotrophic plate count method. Other factors like pH, electrical conductivity (EC) and TDS value were also checked. For bottled water samples, pH was in the acidic range in most cases, which is not good for health, while for tap water it was within the permissible limits, i.e., in the neutral range. The TDS value was very low in most samples of bottled water, while in tap water samples it was in the acceptable range. The number of viable bacteria ranged from 1160 to 9500 CFU for the different bottled water samples and from 1400 (T20) to 10170 CFU (T19) for the tap water samples. The MPN index was zero for all bottled water samples, indicating that they did not contain coliform bacteria or indicator organisms. In the tap water samples, the highest MPN count (17) was found in samples T3, T6, T12, T19, and T13, while the other samples had varying degrees of E. coli contamination. In this study, we isolated Pseudomonas from the bottled water samples of B16 and Staphylococcus from samples B5, B7, B11, and B14. There is a possibility that these microbes may cause opportunistic infections in immunocompromised individuals. Similarly, E. coli was isolated from samples of T3, T5, and T6. Staphylococci were isolated from samples of T9, T14, T16 and Pseudomonas from T16 and T17.