Multi-effect distillation shines as a thermal desalination technique due to its economic viability and broad range of application. It effectively tackles desalination for seawater and brackish water, regardless of capacity, using a low-temperature (below 70°C) evaporation and distillation process. This study employs exergy analysis to identify the components within a six-effect Multiple Effect Distillation (MED) system where exergy destruction occurs, followed by an exergy-economic analysis to evaluate the system’s overall performance. Exergy, representing the maximum obtainable work from a substance, is examined for both feed water and distillate in the context of their chemical potential differences. The calculated exergy values for different system states are presented, revealing the exergy destruction attributed to irreversibility such as friction and heat transfer. The system’s overall exergy efficiency is determined to be 74.47%, indicating that only this portion of feed water exergy is converted into useful distillate exergy. The remaining exergy is lost due to irreversibility. An exergy balance for the 6-effect MED system is provided, showing that 25.53% of the energy input is lost as exergy destruction. Three different economic model are used to estimate the distillate cost for different feedwater temperature and distillate cost found to be 3.63, 1.9, 2.45 $/m 3 respectively.