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Brondell Water Filters

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Brondell certifies with WQA rather than NSF, and its products are listed by model code with no brand name. So searching NSF for "Brondell", or searching anywhere for "Circle", returns nothing at all. The certifications are real, public and specific: the Coral UC300 is certified for lead, PFOS and PFOA under standard 53 and for all sixteen claims under standard 401, microplastics among them.

The table below is every claim, for five models across four standards, read from the certifier's own listing. As far as we can tell nobody else has printed it, which is less impressive than it sounds: it took one person opening a database in a browser.

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Why you cannot find them

Four bodies certify drinking water treatment in North America: NSF, WQA, IAPMO R&T and CSA. They all certify against the same NSF/ANSI standards and they all publish their listings, but none of them carries the others' records. A product certified by WQA is simply not in NSF's database, and its absence there means nothing whatsoever.

Brondell certifies with WQA. That is the first reason a search fails. The second is the model code:

Sold asListed as
Brondell CircleRC100
Brondell H2O+ CapellaRC250
Brondell H2O+ CoralUC300
Brondell CypressH630

Search the code, not the name. Every certifier indexes by the string the manufacturer registered, and it is almost never what is printed on the front of the box. This is the most useful habit in the whole subject and it is not specific to this brand.

What each model is certified for

From WQA's Gold Seal listing, read on 6 August 2026. A blank cell means that model is not listed under that standard.

Model Standard 42 Standard 53 Standard 58 Standard 401
Coral UC300 Under-sink, three stage Chloramine, chlorine, particulate class I, taste and odour Asbestos, cyst, lead, mercury, MTBE, PFOS, PFOA, turbidity, VOC not listed All sixteen claims, microplastics included
Capella RC250 Under-sink reverse osmosis Chloramine, chlorine, particulate class I, taste and odour Asbestos, cyst, lead, mercury, MTBE, PFOS, PFOA, turbidity, VOC Arsenic V at 300 ppb, barium, cadmium and more All sixteen claims
Circle RC100 Under-sink reverse osmosis Chlorine, taste and odour VOC as chloroform Arsenic V at 50 ppb, barium, cadmium, copper, cyst, fluoride, hexavalent and trivalent chromium, lead, radium 226/228, selenium, TDS not listed
Cypress H630 Countertop Chlorine, particulate class I, taste and odour Cyst, turbidity, VOC not listed All sixteen claims, microplastics included
UF-15 Replacement cartridge Chloramine, chlorine, particulate class I, taste and odour Asbestos, cyst, lead, mercury, MTBE, PFOS, PFOA, turbidity, VOC not listed All sixteen claims

Standard 401 is the one to look at twice. It is the emerging contaminants standard and it contains sixteen claims, granted one test at a time, so most certified products hold a handful. Three Brondell models hold all sixteen, and microplastics is one of them. That is the claim almost nobody can actually show you.

The cartridge is certified on its own

The last row is the unusual one. The UF-15 is a replacement cartridge, and WQA lists it in its own right, as an element and as a component, under three standards.

Normally a cartridge appears on a certificate as the component a system was tested with, which tells you which part keeps the system in its certified state. That is already more than most sites print. A cartridge holding PFOS, PFOA and lead on its own listing is a step past that, and it is why the Coral and the Capella hold what they hold. It is on our replacement filter page with the full claim table.

What Brondell makes

Around 84 water treatment products, spanning under-sink reverse osmosis (Circle, Capella), under-sink carbon (Coral), countertop (Cypress), and a large range of shower filters under the VivaSpring name. The bidets and air purifiers they are equally known for are outside what this site covers.

The trade-off worth knowing before buying: the certified claim lists are among the strongest at these prices, and the owner rating counts are smaller than iSpring's or Waterdrop's. Owner evidence is 45 of the 100 points in our scoring, so a Brondell product tends to score well on verification and less well on how many people have lived with it.

Where we review them

Common questions

Is Brondell NSF certified?
Brondell certifies through the Water Quality Association rather than NSF International, which is why searching NSF's database for Brondell returns nothing. WQA is one of the four bodies that certify drinking water treatment products in North America, alongside NSF, IAPMO R&T and CSA, and its Gold Seal listings are public. Brondell's products appear there under NSF/ANSI standards 42, 53, 58 and 401, which are the same standards NSF certifies against. The standard and the certifier are two different things.
Why can I not find the Brondell Circle in the certification database?
Because it is listed as RC100, with no brand name shown against it. Certifier databases index by the model string the manufacturer registered, and that is rarely the name on the box: the Circle is RC100, the Capella is RC250, the Coral is UC300. Search the code rather than the product name and it comes straight up. This is not specific to Brondell, and it is the single most useful habit when checking any filter.
Which Brondell filter removes lead?
On WQA's listing the Coral UC300 and the Capella RC250 are certified for lead under standard 53, and the Circle RC100 is certified for lead under standard 58. The UF-15 cartridge, which is the element inside the Coral and the Capella, carries the lead claim in its own right. The Cypress countertop unit is certified under 53 for cyst, turbidity and VOC, which does not include lead.
Is Brondell certified for PFAS?
The Coral UC300 and the Capella RC250 are both certified under NSF/ANSI 53 for perfluorooctane sulfonate and perfluorooctanoic acid, PFOS and PFOA, and so is the UF-15 cartridge they take. That is an unusual thing to hold: PFAS has more search demand than almost any contaminant and comparatively few certified answers, and the claim is checkable by model number in WQA's database.
Are Brondell filters worth the money?
On the thing this site measures, the certified claim lists, they are among the strongest available at their prices. The Coral UC300 is a carbon system certified for lead, PFAS and microplastics that costs less than most reverse osmosis systems. Against that, Brondell's owner rating counts are smaller than iSpring's or Waterdrop's, which is real evidence and counts for 45 of the 100 points in our scoring, and the cartridges are proprietary.

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