This research involves discovering on real-time Internet of Things (IoT) based water quality monitoring system using three sensor parameters which are temperature, turbidity and pH. Using this, people can monitor the water quality, collect all relevant data and information, decide and perform suitable water treatment immediately. By performing comprehensive data analysis, people can measure water pollution level referring to Water Quality Index (WQI). Other than that, this project also involves cloud computing storing all data transferred remotely from the device at anytime and anywhere. Furthermore, this project applies good power management method to reduce power consumption and extend the battery life of the device within a single charge for up to 31 days. The system also able to be deployed at 7 different location in UTP and able to clarify monitoring data based on WQI. On the other hand, mobile application is developed to monitor relevant data. Lastly, this project has high reliability and practicality as it is applied with comprehensive techniques for every step used and good response time to transmit data for water quality monitoring in real-time. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.