Home PFAS testing, Cyclopure, Tap Score, Eurofins

The two-sentence answer

A credible mail-in PFAS test for residential tap water costs roughly $235 to $475, ships you a sample kit, and is analysed at a fixed lab using EPA Method 537.1 (long-chain PFAS), with the better kits adding EPA Method 533 for short-chain compounds like PFBA and PFBS. What you should test for is the same six analytes regulated under the April 2024 federal MCLs (PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS, PFNA, HFPO-DA, PFBS) plus the broader EPA target list, reported in nanograms per litre (ng/L) and compared against the 4.0 ng/L MCL for PFOA and PFOS.

Which EPA method actually matters

"PFAS testing" is not one test. The lab method on the report is what determines whether your number means anything. Three EPA methods come up in commercial drinking-water work, and they are not interchangeable.

EPA Method 537.1 (Rev 2.0, March 2020), the foundational drinking-water method. It uses solid-phase extraction (SPE) followed by liquid chromatography / tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS) to quantify 18 long-chain PFAS in finished drinking water. This is the method EPA itself wrote for UCMR 4 and the early federal PFAS work. If a kit does not run 537.1, it is not a drinking-water PFAS test in the regulatory sense, full stop.

EPA Method 533, the companion method, released to capture the short-chain PFAS that 537.1 struggles with. It adds roughly 25 analytes, including PFBA, PFBS, PFHxA, HFPO-DA (GenX) and other ether-acid replacements that became commercially important after the long-chain phase-outs. EPA Method 533 uses isotope-dilution quantitation, which improves precision for the trickier compounds. For UCMR 5, EPA required both 537.1 and 533 to cover the 29-analyte target list.

EPA Method 1633, a non-drinking-water method (Office of Water + Department of Defense), designed for wastewater, surface water, soil, biosolids and tissue. It quantifies 40 PFAS but is not validated for finished drinking water. If a vendor offers you a "1633 home test" for your tap, that is the wrong method on the wrong matrix; politely look elsewhere.

A defensible drinking-water PFAS test in 2026 runs 537.1 and 533 together. That combination covers the six federally-regulated compounds plus the dozens of legacy and replacement PFAS that show up in real distribution-system samples. Single-method tests miss things, typically the short-chain compounds (PFBA, PFBS, HFPO-DA) that dominate replacement chemistry and that are common in groundwater downgradient of fluorochemical plants. See our notes on the PFAS groundwater hotspot map for where short-chain signal matters most.

NELAP accreditation, the one credential to verify

The credential you want the receiving lab to hold is NELAP, the National Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Program, administered through state-level accrediting authorities under the umbrella of The NELAC Institute (TNI). NELAP accreditation is matrix- and method-specific: a lab is accredited to run EPA Method 537.1 on drinking water, not "PFAS" in the abstract. Ask the vendor for the lab's NELAP certificate number and the methods it covers; legitimate labs publish this.

A few accreditation distinctions trip people up:

• NELAP is the right credential for a third-party lab analysing a sample you collected at your kitchen sink.
• EPA Drinking Water Laboratory Certification is a different scheme, run by EPA Regions and primacy states, that certifies labs to perform compliance monitoring for public water systems. It is the credential your utility's lab needs, not the credential a residential mail-in kit needs.
• ISO/IEC 17025 is the international general-competence standard for testing labs. Most NELAP labs are also 17025-accredited; 17025 alone, without a NELAP scope for 537.1 or 533, is not enough for a defensible drinking-water PFAS result.

If a vendor will not name the receiving lab, or the lab is not NELAP-accredited for the specific PFAS method on your report, treat the number with caution.

The three credible options

The home PFAS market is noisy, but three providers consistently turn up with documented lab partners, transparent methods, and reports a household can actually read. Pricing and panel sizes change; check each vendor's site before ordering.

Provider	Approx. kit price	PFAS analytes	Lab method	Turnaround	Sample collection
Cyclopure PFAS Test Kit	~$89 kit + analysis	55+ PFAS (long + short chain)	LC/MS/MS (adsorbent SPE)	~3 weeks	Adsorbent cartridge, water is passed through a Puratein disc, the disc is mailed back (not the water).
SimpleLab Tap Score Advanced PFAS	~$250 – $475	14 – 55+ PFAS (panel-dependent)	EPA 537.1 + 533	~2 – 3 weeks	Glass bottles + chain-of-custody form, shipped cold to a partner NELAP lab.
Eurofins Environment Testing Direct-to-consumer / commercial	~$300 – $500+	18 – 40+ PFAS (method-dependent)	EPA 537.1 (and 533 / 1633 on request)	~2 weeks	Glass bottles supplied; sometimes routed through a local sampler. Commercial-grade chain-of-custody.

Cyclopure uses a proprietary adsorbent disc (Puratein) to concentrate PFAS on-site, which means you ship the cartridge rather than litres of cold water. The analytical finish is LC/MS/MS in their own NELAP-accredited lab. The trade-off: the method is Cyclopure's adsorbent-based protocol, not a verbatim EPA 537.1 run from a glass bottle. For households who want a wide PFAS screen at the lowest entry price, it is the easiest box to mail.

SimpleLab Tap Score is a logistics layer on top of a network of NELAP-accredited partner labs. The "Advanced PFAS" panels are explicitly run to EPA 537.1, with the higher tiers adding 533. The kit ships glass bottles, ice packs, and a chain-of-custody form; the report is the most consumer-readable in the category, with each compound plotted against health-based reference levels.

Eurofins Environment Testing is the commercial laboratory network most utilities and consultants use for compliance work. Residential customers can order a kit directly or through a local Eurofins site; the analysis is run in the same labs that handle municipal samples. It is the most institutionally serious option, and priced accordingly. If you need a result that an attorney, real-estate buyer, or municipal review board will accept without footnotes, Eurofins is the obvious choice.

We have no affiliation with Cyclopure, SimpleLab, or Eurofins. These three turn up because their methods, lab partners, and reports are publicly documented, not because any one of them is "best."

How to take the sample correctly

A bad sample produces a bad number, regardless of which lab analyses it. PFAS sampling is unusually fussy because the compounds are everywhere, in shipping tape, in waterproofing on clothing, in food-grade plastics, in the Teflon plumber's tape on your fittings. Cross-contamination is real.

The protocol that protects the result:

• Use the kit's containers. EPA 537.1 specifies polypropylene bottles; some labs use HDPE. Do not substitute glass jars from your kitchen or any container that previously held food. If your kit ships glass, use glass, the lab has chosen its container for a reason.
• Never substitute generic plastic. Bottled-water bottles, food-storage containers, and most consumer plastics are not PFAS-clean and will bias results upward.
• Remove the aerator on the tap you are sampling if the kit instructions say to. Some protocols require it; some require you to leave it in place to characterise the household water.
• Run the cold tap for the duration the kit specifies, typically 2 to 5 minutes, before collection, to flush the stagnant water in your home's service line.
• Fill the bottle to the indicated line, leaving the prescribed headspace. Overfilling can bias preservation chemistry; underfilling reduces the volume the lab has to work with.
• Avoid hand contact with the bottle interior, cap interior, or sample stream. Do not apply lotion, sunscreen, or hand sanitiser immediately before sampling, many of these contain PFAS.
• Chill and ship same-day. EPA 537.1 requires the sample arrive at the lab cold (typically below 6 °C) and within the method holding time. Use the ice packs and the prepaid overnight label the kit supplies. A sample that arrives warm or late is a void sample.

If you want a second data point on the home you are buying or selling, collect two samples at the same time from the same tap and run them through two providers. The numbers should agree within method precision; if they diverge wildly, the sampling, not the chemistry, is usually the issue.

How to read the result

PFAS results come back in nanograms per litre (ng/L), which is identical to parts per trillion (ppt). One nanogram per litre is one part in a trillion, roughly a single drop of water in twenty Olympic swimming pools. Two numbers on the report matter:

• Detected concentration, the measured value. Compare this against the federal MCLs codified at 40 CFR § 141.61(c): 4.0 ng/L for PFOA, 4.0 ng/L for PFOS, 10 ng/L each for PFHxS, PFNA and HFPO-DA, and a Hazard Index of 1 for the mixture of PFHxS, PFNA, HFPO-DA and PFBS.
• Reporting limit (RL) or limit of quantitation (LOQ), the lowest concentration the lab can confidently quantify. If your PFOA result reads "< 2.0 ng/L," the lab did not detect PFOA above its 2.0 ng/L reporting limit. That is not the same as "no PFOA present." For drinking-water PFAS work in 2026, you want an RL at or below 2.0 ng/L for PFOA and PFOS so the result is meaningful against the 4.0 ng/L MCL.

A typical Cyclopure or Tap Score report lists each PFAS analyte, its concentration (or "< RL"), the reporting limit, and a comparison column showing the federal MCL or a health-based reference where no MCL exists. Eurofins commercial reports are more austere, analyte, result, units, RL, method, and assume you will do the comparison yourself.

Our full breakdown of the April 2024 federal rule sits at the EPA April 2024 PFAS MCL guide. For utility-level data that may already cover your address, see UCMR 5 explained.

When a home test is worth the money

Most US households on a large public water system can answer the PFAS question without a kit, by reading their utility's UCMR 5 sample results. A home test earns its place in four situations:

• Hotspot ZIP codes. If your address sits in a documented PFAS impact zone, Cape Fear Basin (NC), Merrimack (NH), New Castle County (DE), parts of Michigan, the Colorado Front Range, the utility-level number can hide block-to-block variability. A kitchen-tap sample tells you what is actually coming out of your tap after the distribution system.
• Private wells. Roughly 13 percent of US households are on private wells, which are not covered by the federal MCLs and are not sampled under UCMR 5. If you are on a well, a home PFAS test is the only way to know.
• Sensitive households. Pregnancy, infants, immunocompromised members of the household, or households downgradient of a fluorochemical plant, military firefighting training area, or landfill, all of these justify a baseline number rather than relying on the utility aggregate.
• Before and after a filter install. If you have installed reverse osmosis or an NSF 53 P473-certified carbon block system, two samples, one from a bypass tap, one from the treated tap, verifies the unit is doing what its certification claims. See also RO vs pitcher filter for PFAS.

What a home test cannot tell you

A residential PFAS test is a snapshot of the water leaving one tap on one day. It does not, by itself, answer four things people often expect it to answer.

It does not characterise your source water. Surface-water utilities draw from rivers and reservoirs whose PFAS concentrations swing with rainfall, river stage, and upstream industrial activity. Groundwater utilities pull from aquifers whose contamination plume moves on geological timescales. A single tap sample is a downstream artefact; it tells you nothing about why the water is, or is not, contaminated, and nothing about whether next month's value will look the same.

It does not capture raw-water variability. A utility that treats Cape Fear water in July reports very different raw-water PFAS than the same utility in February. One tap sample cannot represent that distribution. Several samples taken across seasons can, and that is what utility compliance monitoring is for.

It does not certify a filter. A clean post-filter result tells you the unit was working on the day you sampled. It does not certify the unit for ongoing performance, that is the job of NSF/ANSI 53 P473 or NSF/ANSI 58. Replace cartridges on the schedule the manufacturer specifies; do not lean on a single test result.

It is not medical advice. A PFAS number on a lab report is not a clinical biomarker; serum PFAS testing is a separate conversation with a physician. We do not interpret health outcomes here and neither do the home labs, they report concentrations in water, full stop.

Sources

LAST REVIEWED · 30 JUNE 2026, We update this guide when EPA revises 537.1 or 533, when the named labs change their published methods or pricing, or when the federal PFAS MCLs change. Always confirm current kit pricing and analyte panels with the vendor before ordering.