The purification of water is not only essential for human consumption but is becoming a necessity considering the limited freshwater reserves of the planet. Over the last few decades advancements in material sciences and technology have paved the way for the development of novel purification techniques. Amongst these techniques membrane-based filtration is considered as the least expensive and most effective. These membrane-based filtration techniques can be broadly categorized into reverse osmosis (RO), ultrafiltration, microfiltration and activated carbon filters (ACF). The mode of operation, research evolution and practical applications of each technique are compared in this holistic analysis. Although RO is the oldest and most established membrane-based filtration technique in the literature, it is ACF that is ranked as the most promising new technique with much simplicity and effectiveness.