Abstract: The method for determination BrO^-₃ in packing drinking water by high performance liquid chromatography coupling with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (HPLC-ICP-MS) was developed. The detection limit, accuracy and precision of HPLC-ICP-MS and ion chromatography were compared. And the two methods were employed to determine BrO^-₃ in 20 packing drinking water samples. The HPLC-ICP-MS shows good linearity within 1.0-50.0 μg/L with the correlation coefficient (R) 0.999 9. The limit of detection is 0.048 μg/L and the recovery is 96.8%-104.9%. The ion chromatography shows good linearity within 10.0-200.0 μg/L with the correlation coefficient (R) 0.999 2 as well. The limit of detection is 2.0 μg/L and the recovery is 85.6%-101.3%. The two methods show good accuracy, precision and consistency. Moreover, in comparison to ion chromatography, the HPLC-ICP-MS was found to be more sensitive, selective and rapid, especially suitable for the routine analysis of low concentration bromate in packing drinking water.