Sustainable development throughout the world depends on several factors such as the economy, quality education, agriculture, industry, among others, but the environment is one of the most important. Industrialization and new land use plans have caused the proliferation of pollutants in water resources, which poses a serious public challenge. As outlined in the sustainable development goals (SDGs), innovative water quality monitoring methods are needed to ensure access to water, sustainable management and sanitation. In this sense, technologies are sought that contribute to the development and implementation of groundwater and surface water quality monitoring systems in real time, so that their parameters can be evaluated through descriptive analysis, in rural populations and areas of difficult access. Nowadays, the internet of things (IoT) and the development of modern sensors are more used, so this research reviews the latest technologies to monitor and evaluate water quality using the potential and possibilities of the IoT. The main contribution of this article is to present an overview of the state of the art of IoT applications and instrumentation for water quality monitoring, focusing on the latest innovations, in order to identify interesting and challenging areas that can be explored in future research.