Cost per page is the only comparable printer number
Printer pricing is the classic razor-and-blades model, and it works because buyers compare the razor. A $60 inkjet whose cartridges cost $30 for 200 pages runs at $0.15 a page; a $250 laser whose toner costs $120 for 6,000 pages runs at $0.02. Print 2,000 pages a year for four years and the cheap printer costs $60 + $1,200 while the expensive one costs $250 + $160. That is the whole argument, and it is decided by one division.
Cost per page is cartridge price divided by rated page yield. The yield comes from an international test method rather than from marketing: ISO/IEC 19752 for monochrome toner, ISO/IEC 19798 for colour toner and ISO/IEC 24711 for inkjet, all printing the ISO/IEC 24712 suite of standard test documents until the cartridge is exhausted. Because every manufacturer runs the same pages, the yields on two competing cartridges are genuinely comparable.
What they are not is a prediction of your printing. The monochrome standard's test page sits at roughly 5% coverage — a page of ordinary double-spaced text. If your pages carry charts, coloured headers, a logo on every sheet or a background tint, you are laying down two to eight times as much ink and your real cost per page rises accordingly. That is what the coverage adjustment on this page is for.
Where a colour page's cost comes from, and what the yield does not include
A colour page uses black too. Text on a colour page is still printed with the black cartridge, so the cost of a colour page is the colour set's cost per page plus the black cost per page. With a $34.99 colour set rated 300 pages and a $24.99 black rated 400, that is $0.1166 + $0.0625 = $0.1791 — nearly three times a mono page. Costing colour pages at the colour cartridge alone understates them by the black component every time.
The colour yield covers the set. Under the ISO method the colours deplete together across the standard test suite, so one composite yield describes the whole set. If you buy individual cyan, magenta and yellow cartridges, add their three prices and use their common yield. If your printing is heavily skewed to one colour — a company blue on every page — the composite yield understates your cost, because you will replace that one cartridge repeatedly while the others sit half full.
The coverage adjustment is linear and approximate. Doubling coverage from 5% to 10% roughly doubles the ink laid down, so the calculator scales the rated cost by coverage ÷ 5. Real consumption does not track coverage exactly: printers use ink on start-up cycles, printhead cleaning and colour calibration regardless of what you print, which is why a lightly used inkjet can empty cartridges with almost no pages to show for it. That maintenance ink is not in any yield figure and is not in this calculation.
Paper and hardware are separate lines. A $8 ream of 500 sheets is $0.016 a sheet, which on mono text pages is a quarter of the ink cost and is easy to forget. The printer itself is amortised over its expected life — and at low volumes that term dominates everything. Printing 80 pages a month on a $180 printer replaced every four years costs $45 a year in hardware against about $103 in ink and paper.
Worked example: a home inkjet at 80 pages a month
A $24.99 black cartridge rated 400 pages, a $34.99 colour set rated 300, ordinary text at the 5% reference coverage, 60 mono and 20 colour pages a month, $8 paper in 500-sheet reams, a $180 printer expected to last four years.
- Mono cost per page. $24.99 ÷ 400 = $0.062475.
- Colour ink component. $34.99 ÷ 300 = $0.116633.
- Colour cost per page. $0.116633 + $0.062475 = $0.179108.
- Paper. $8 ÷ 500 = $0.016 a sheet.
- Monthly ink. 60 × $0.062475 + 20 × $0.179108 = $3.7485 + $3.5822 = $7.3307.
- Monthly paper. 80 × $0.016 = $1.28, so $8.61 a month in consumables.
- Annual. $8.61 × 12 = $103.33, plus $180 ÷ 4 = $45 of printer, giving $148.33 a year.
Now price the same 80 pages on an ink plan at $5.99 a month with a 100-page allowance. No overage applies, so the plan costs 12 × ($5.99 + $1.28) + $45 = $132.24 a year — about $16 less. The reason is entirely the colour pages: on the plan a full-colour page costs the same as a mono one, and colour pages cost 2.9 times as much on cartridges. Change the mix to 80 mono and no colour and the cartridge route drops to 12 × (80 × $0.062475 + $1.28) + $45 = $120.34 a year while the plan stays at $132.24, and the ranking reverses.
What your cost per page is telling you
Compare your mono figure against the market. Below about $0.02 a page you are on a laser with high-yield toner. Between $0.03 and $0.06 you are on a decent inkjet with XL cartridges or a tank printer. Above $0.10 you are on standard-capacity inkjet cartridges, which is the most expensive way to put marks on paper and is usually a sign that the printer was bought on its own price tag.
Then look at the ratio between your colour and mono figures. Around 2.5 to 3 to 1 is normal. If yours is much higher, the colour set is disproportionately priced or its yield is disproportionately low, and the fix is usually to buy the XL version — high-yield cartridges almost always cost less per page than standard ones, which is the single easiest saving available.
Check whether hardware or consumables dominate. At low volume the printer's own depreciation can exceed everything you spend on ink, which means paying more for a printer with cheaper consumables makes you worse off. The crossover is worth finding: the extra hardware cost divided by the cost-per-page saving gives the page count at which the more expensive machine wins. A $250 laser against a $60 inkjet, saving $0.13 a page, breaks even at ($250 − $60) ÷ $0.13 = about 1,460 pages.
Read the subscription comparison as a mix question, not a volume question. Plans price every page identically regardless of colour, so they are strong for anyone printing photos or colour-heavy documents and weak for anyone printing only text. They also charge in months you print nothing, and unused pages usually roll over only up to a cap. Both figures on this page include the same paper and printer depreciation so the comparison is like for like.
Cost per page across common cartridge types
| Cartridge type | Price | Rated yield | Cost per page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard inkjet black | $25.00 | 200 pages | $0.1250 |
| XL inkjet black | $25.00 | 400 pages | $0.0625 |
| XXL inkjet black | $35.00 | 600 pages | $0.0583 |
| Tank printer refill bottle | $45.00 | 1,000 pages | $0.0450 |
| Standard laser toner | $80.00 | 2,500 pages | $0.0320 |
| High-yield laser toner | $120.00 | 6,000 pages | $0.0200 |
| Enterprise toner | $180.00 | 12,000 pages | $0.0150 |
Note rows one and two: the same $25 for double the yield halves the cost per page. Buying standard-capacity cartridges when an XL exists is the most common avoidable printing expense.
What a cost-per-page figure leaves out
- Maintenance ink. Inkjets consume ink on start-up, printhead cleaning and calibration. A printer used once a month can empty a cartridge on maintenance cycles alone, and no yield figure includes it.
- The starter cartridge. Printers frequently ship with a partly filled cartridge of lower yield than the replacement, so the first refill arrives sooner than the arithmetic suggests.
- Drums, fusers and waste tanks. Laser drums and inkjet maintenance boxes are separate consumables with their own lives and prices. On high-volume laser printing the drum can be a meaningful fraction of cost per page.
- Colour skew. Composite colour yields assume balanced use of all colours. Printing one dominant colour exhausts that cartridge first and leaves the others unused, raising real cost per page.
- Photo and speciality media. Photo paper is many times the price of plain and photo printing runs at very high coverage. Neither belongs in a plain-paper cost-per-page figure.
- Third-party and refilled cartridges. They lower the price term but often have different yields, and some printers restrict them by firmware. Compare on cost per page, not on cartridge price.
- Cartridge expiry. Ink dries and some cartridges carry date limits, so a low-volume household can pay for pages it never prints.
Choosing a printer from the number rather than the price tag
The right way to buy a printer is to estimate your annual page count and colour mix first, then price two or three candidates over the machine's expected life. That reverses the order the retail display encourages and is the only method that catches the razor-and-blades trap. Tank printers with refillable reservoirs sit at the extreme of this trade: high purchase price, very low cost per page, and a break-even measured in thousands of pages.
The same annualised-cost structure appears everywhere a household buys hardware and then feeds it. The appliance repair vs replace calculator uses it for a failing machine, and the pool heating cost calculator for equipment plus fuel. If you are financing a printer or a large print run on instalments, the buy now pay later true APR calculator will price that separately.
For a one-off large job — a thesis, a wedding order of service, a set of handouts — compare the job cost on this page against a print shop quote. Shops win decisively on volume and on binding, and lose on convenience and on jobs under about fifty pages. For everyday household services quoted the same way, the house cleaning cost calculator shows the same hours-versus-unit-rate reasoning applied to labour.
Terms on a cartridge box
- Page yield
- The number of standard test pages a cartridge prints before it is exhausted, measured under the relevant ISO/IEC method. It is a comparison figure, not a promise about your documents.
- Coverage
- The proportion of the page area actually covered in ink or toner. The monochrome test page is around 5%; a dense chart or a photo can be 30% or more.
- XL / high yield
- A physically larger cartridge with more ink at a smaller premium than the extra capacity, so the cost per page is lower. Almost always the better buy if you print at all regularly.
- Composite colour yield
- One yield figure covering a whole colour set, based on the colours depleting together across the standard test suite.
- Duty cycle
- The manufacturer's maximum monthly page volume, and separately a recommended volume. Consistently printing near the maximum shortens the machine's life.