The need of the hour in places where portable water is scarce is solar distillation. In the present work, a comparative study on the thermal performance .of the step type solar still and wick type solar still is carried out. Numerical analysis has been carried out by making use of temperatures of water, glass, basin and ambient and the performances of both the stills are compared. Efficiency of the still is found to be in the range of 10-25 % (wick type) and 20-40 % (step type). Physical and chemical analysis of the water samples have been done. Cost-benefit analysis has been carried out and found that the amount spent on the system could be recovered in three years. The distilled output is found to vary from 47-817ml (wick type) and 82-1258ml (step type). Step type still is found to be better in performance than the wick type still.