Increasing water shortage in Egypt approaches an alarming level. Treatment and reuse of secondary water sources (comprising brackish water and wastewater) is of current national and international concern. The Egyptian Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT) allocates considerable funding for numerous R/D projects addressing key issues pertinent to water quality and reuse. One recent project entitled Novel Technologies for Drainage Water Treatment financed by ASRT and executed by National Research Center (NRC) comprised a detailed assessment of the desalting technologies for reclamation of ADW. The investigations focused on functional analysis and financial assessment of membrane-based systems and pertinent pretreatment requirements. This paper addresses the comparative economics of the following systems (a) activated carbon (AC)/ultrafiltration (UF)/reverse osmosis (RO), (b) UF/electrodialysis reversal (EDR)/RO, (c) AC/ED/ion exchange (IE), (d) microfiltration (MF)/UF/RO1/RO2 and (e) slow sand filtration (SSF)/AC/IE. The selected schemes cover the variations of ADW characteristics geographically and seasonally and also copes with demand characteristics of potential users. The results reveal promising indicators for ADW reuse within selected sectors (e.g. industrial applications) in some geographical locations in desert areas adjacent to central agricultural drains. The most important recommendations point to the importance of field demonstration in selected locations to explore the system reliability and performance under actual applications. Also, desalination of ADW should be restricted to small- and medium-scale plants in the near future.