Brita Maxtra Pro cartridges: what they cost per month, what they filter, and whether a compatible is worth it

The jug is the cheap part. A Brita Maxtra Pro cartridge is rated for 150 L or four weeks, so a household that follows the reminder light buys about 13 a year, and that is where the money goes. The cheapest genuine cartridge we could price on 1 November 2026 was the Pure Performance 6-pack at Bunnings, $61.49, about $10.25 each, against $15.95 for a single on the same shelf. Hard-water homes want the Limescale Expert, which BRITA sells on Amazon Australia. The compatibles are cheaper again and they fit, but none of them tells you how many litres it lasts, which makes “cheaper” a guess. We can’t show Amazon prices; the Amazon buttons show today’s.

Which Brita cartridge should you buy, and where?

Buy the genuine Pure Performance in the biggest pack you’ll use before the four-week clock runs out on the last one, and buy it at Bunnings or on Amazon rather than singly. The arithmetic from the pages we loaded: Bunnings single $15.95, Officeworks 3-pack $40 ($13.33 each), Bunnings 6-pack $61.49 ($10.25 each), BRITA’s store single $17.00. Amazon Australia sells 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12-packs from the BRITA store; we can’t print Amazon prices, so compare the per-cartridge figure on the button with $10.25. Thirteen a year at the Bunnings 6-pack price is about $133; at the single price, about $207. That gap is the whole reason to plan ahead.

If your kettle scales up, which it does in Adelaide, Perth, parts of Brisbane and on most tank and bore water, buy the Limescale Expert instead. BRITA’s listing says it is “50% more effective at removing limescale from your tap water than the BRITA MAXTRA PRO Pure Performance cartridge”, keeps the chlorine, lead and copper reduction, filters “finest particles (≥ 30 µm)”, and has the same 150 L or four-week life. It fits every BRITA jug except the Classic range. BRITA sells it on Amazon Australia and from its own store, where the collection page listed it from $36.40 (pack size not shown on that page).

What the cartridge actually does

BRITA describes four stages: activated carbon for chlorine and taste or odour substances, and ion-exchange pearls for lead, copper and limescale, plus a mesh for microparticles. The Bunnings listing claims reductions of chlorine, “metals including lead and copper”, limescale, microparticles (“4x better” than the old MAXTRA+) and “impurities from certain herbicides, pesticides and pharmaceuticals”. BRITA’s Australian store page goes further: “over 99% of total PFAS, including PFOS and PFOA, tested to NSF/ANSI 53”. We couldn’t find a listing for the cartridge in NSF’s public database, so treat it as BRITA’s claim to a named standard, which is still more than any compatible offers.

What it doesn’t do: fluoride, dissolved salts, bacteria or viruses. A jug cartridge is a taste, limescale and metals filter for treated town water. The fluoride guide covers what removes fluoride; the rainwater and bore guides cover untreated water, where a jug is the last step, not the only one.

Are the compatibles worth it?

They fit, and that’s the part the listings are confident about: FilterLogic names Maxtra, Maxtra+ and PerfectFit jugs including the Marella XL; Rainvia names Marella, Marella XL, Marella Cool and Style. The part they’re vague about is what they filter and for how long. FilterLogic claims limescale and chlorine reduction and “certified by TUV to European/German standards”, without saying which standard or for what. Rainvia claims “up to 99.99% filtration efficiency” of “impurities from tap water, including heavy metals”, names no test, and rates life as “approximately 480 water bottles” rather than litres or weeks.

So the honest comparison is this. If you bought a Brita jug to get the chlorine taste out of Sydney or Melbourne water, a compatible will very likely do that for less, and the risk is only taste and fit. If you bought it for the lead, limescale, microparticle or PFAS claims, only the genuine cartridge makes those claims, and the saving on a compatible is money you’re spending to not know. A middle path: genuine cartridges for drinking, a compatible in the second jug for the kettle.

Getting the full four weeks

Soak and flush a new cartridge as BRITA directs, keep the jug in the fridge or out of the sun, and change on the reminder, not when the flow slows, because a saturated carbon stage keeps passing water long after it’s stopped doing much. Don’t run hot water through a jug cartridge, and don’t try to “refresh” one; the ion-exchange resin can’t be regenerated in a jug. If you’re changing cartridges more often than monthly because the jug is the whole household’s water, the under-sink guide shows what a year of cartridges buys instead: the Stefani twin’s cartridges run about $62 a year.

The one trap

Buying singles. At $15.95 a cartridge the jug costs more to run than most under-sink filters, and the reminder light makes you do it thirteen times a year. The 6-pack at Bunnings or a bigger pack on Amazon cuts the yearly bill by about $70, and the cartridges keep sealed, so there’s no reason to buy one at a time after the first.

What we left out and why

• BRITA Maxtra Pro 4, 8, 10 and 12-packs (Amazon Australia, BRITA store). Same cartridge in other quantities; compare the per-cartridge price on the button with the Bunnings 6-pack.
• BRITA Marella XL with four Maxtra Pro cartridges (Amazon Australia). A jug bundle, covered in the jug guide.
• Coles, Woolworths and Big W packs. In store, but their pages wouldn’t load for us on the day, so no price.
• Generic “for Brita” 12-packs with no brand (Amazon Australia). No maker, no claims, no life rating.
• Aquaphor Maxfor+. Fits Maxtra-shaped jugs and is rated to 200 L by Aquaphor, but on 1 November 2026 we found it sold only inside the Aquaphor jug bundle in our jug guide, not as a loose Australian pack we could load.
• Philips Micro X-Clean Softening+ (Bunnings, $49.95 with a jug). A Philips cartridge for Philips jugs; the Bunnings listing makes no Maxtra claim.