Some links on our site may earn us a commission at no extra cost to you. Learn more.
Published October 20, 2026. Prices and specs checked October 20, 2026.
Printer cost per page, from each maker’s own supply prices, runs from a third of a cent to almost 16 cents for black text. The Epson EcoTank ET-2850 is lowest at $0.0033 a page. Canon’s MegaTank G3270 is next at $0.0038. Brother’s HL-L2460DW laser costs $0.0328 on toner, and its INKvestment MFC-J1365DW $0.0348 on ink. An HP DeskJet 4255e on 67XL cartridges costs $0.1583.
I’ve printed at home for years, on cartridge inkjets, tank printers and a black-and-white laser. The cartridge inkjet is the one that costs money while it sits. Leave it for a few weeks and the first page comes out streaked. The fix is a cleaning cycle that pushes ink through the nozzles and into a waste pad. Do that a few times and a barely used cartridge runs low. A tank printer’s bottle of black lasts long enough that the refill date stops being something you track. For a house that prints mostly text, the laser wins. Toner is a dry powder, with nothing in it to dry out between jobs.
Still choosing a machine? Our home printer buying comparison covers which one to buy. This page follows the money instead, from the register price to three years of ink or toner.
The short version:
- Lowest black cost per page: Epson EcoTank ET-2850, $24.99 ÷ 7,500 = $0.0033.
- Lowest three-year total: Canon MegaTank G3270, on a $144.99 Staples price. Canon’s store marks it discontinued.
- Laser vs. INKvestment: Brother’s toner beats its own INKvestment ink per black page.
- Costliest to feed: HP DeskJet 4255e, about $190 a year in 67XL black at 100 pages a month.
Printer Cost per Page Comparison
Each figure divides a refill’s price by its maker’s rated page yield. Prices come from each maker’s store in October 2026, or from one named retailer where the maker showed none.
| Printer | Printer price | Black refill | Refill price | Rated black yield | Black cost per page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Epson EcoTank ET-2850 | $349.99 (Epson store) | 502 black bottle | $24.99 | 7,500 pages | $24.99 ÷ 7,500 = $0.0033 |
| Canon MegaTank G3270 | $144.99 (Staples) | GI-21 pigment black bottle | $22.99 | 6,000 pages | $22.99 ÷ 6,000 = $0.0038 |
| Brother INKvestment MFC-J1365DW | $129.99 (Brother store) | LC504XL black, twin pack | $104.49 | 3,000 pages (2 × 1,500) | $104.49 ÷ 3,000 = $0.0348 |
| Brother HL-L2460DW (mono laser) | $179.99 (Brother store) | TN830XL toner | $98.29 | 3,000 pages | $98.29 ÷ 3,000 = $0.0328 |
| HP DeskJet 4255e | $109.89 (Staples) | HP 67XL black cartridge | $37.99 (Quill) | 240 pages | $37.99 ÷ 240 = $0.1583 |
Some of those prices need context. Epson’s store listed the ET-2850 at $349.99 and showed it out of stock. Canon’s store page for the G3270 reads “Discontinued” and “Sorry, this item is no longer available” above a regular price of $248.99. So the $144.99 comes from Staples’ listing, which shows it as a promotional price. Brother’s store had the MFC-J1365DW at $129.99, down from $159.99. Brother also marks the older MFC-J1010DW and MFC-J1205W discontinued, which is why the INKvestment model here is the 1365DW.
HP’s own page for the DeskJet 4255e now carries the title of its replacement, the DeskJet 4355. It showed no usable price for the printer or for the 67XL black cartridge. Staples supplied the printer price, and Quill’s listing supplied the cartridge price.
Printer Cost per Month
Cost per page only means something once you multiply it by your own volume. So here are three households: 100 pages a month (1,200 a year), 300 a month (3,600 a year) and 1,000 a month (12,000 a year). Every page is black text. Each cell is pages per year × refill price ÷ rated yield.
| Printer | 100 pages a month | 300 pages a month | 1,000 pages a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Epson EcoTank ET-2850 | $4.00 | $12.00 | $39.98 |
| Canon MegaTank G3270 | $4.60 | $13.79 | $45.98 |
| Brother INKvestment MFC-J1365DW | $41.80 | $125.39 | $417.96 |
| Brother HL-L2460DW | $39.32 | $117.95 | $393.16 |
| HP DeskJet 4255e | $189.95 | $569.85 | $1,899.50 |
Two worked examples. The Epson at 300 pages a month: 3,600 × $24.99 ÷ 7,500 = $12.00 a year. The HP at the same volume: 3,600 × $37.99 ÷ 240 = $569.85. That is 3,600 ÷ 240 = 15 black cartridges a year.
At 100 pages a month, the gap between the two tank printers is 60 cents a year. That is noise. The gap that matters sits between the tanks and everything else. Brother’s inkjet and its laser both land near $40 a year at that volume, while HP’s cartridges take $190.
These yearly figures spread each refill across the pages it prints. In real life you pay for the whole bottle or cartridge up front. One $24.99 Epson black bottle covers 7,500 ÷ 1,200 = 6.25 years at 100 pages a month. An HP 67XL black covers 240 ÷ 100 = 2.4 months.
Which Printer Is Cheapest to Run?
Three years of ownership adds the printer’s price to 36 months of black ink or toner. In-box ink is not credited, because Epson and Canon describe theirs in years of use rather than pages. Paper is left out too, since every printer here takes the same sheet.
| Printer | 3,600 pages (100 a month) | 10,800 pages (300 a month) | 36,000 pages (1,000 a month) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Epson EcoTank ET-2850 | $361.99 | $385.98 | $469.94 |
| Canon MegaTank G3270 | $158.78 | $186.37 | $282.93 |
| Brother INKvestment MFC-J1365DW | $255.38 | $506.15 | $1,383.87 |
| Brother HL-L2460DW | $297.94 | $533.83 | $1,675.45* |
| HP DeskJet 4255e | $679.74 | $1,819.44 | $5,808.39 |
Worked example, the Epson at 300 pages a month: $349.99 + (10,800 × $24.99 ÷ 7,500) = $349.99 + $35.99 = $385.98.
The Canon finishes lowest at all three volumes, and the reason is its sticker. Staples’ $144.99 sits $205 under Epson’s $349.99. The Epson does save money on every black page, but only $0.0005: $0.003832 − $0.003332 = $0.000500. At that rate the Epson needs $205 ÷ $0.0005 = about 410,000 pages to earn back the difference. Even at Canon’s regular $248.99, the gap is $101 and the payback is about 202,000 pages. The Staples price is remaining stock, not a printer Canon still sells.
The Brother INKvestment inkjet costs $50 less than the laser to buy, and at 100 pages a month it stays cheaper over three years. By 300 pages a month the laser’s cheaper toner has nearly caught up: $533.83 against $506.15. Then at 1,000 pages a month, two drum replacements push the laser back above the inkjet. Without the drums it would be $1,359.47, or $24.40 under the inkjet.
Color Printer Cost per Page
Color, however, changes the order. Our method: a color page is charged the cyan, magenta and yellow refills divided by the maker’s color yield, plus one black page at the black rate. The HL-L2460DW prints black only, so its row is blank.
| Printer | Color refills | Color set price | Rated color yield | Color ink per page | Color page with black |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Epson EcoTank ET-2850 | 502 cyan, magenta, yellow bottles | 3 × $16.99 = $50.97 | 6,000 pages | $50.97 ÷ 6,000 = $0.0085 | $0.0118 |
| Canon MegaTank G3270 | GI-21 cyan, magenta, yellow bottles | 3 × $14.99 = $44.97 | 7,700 pages | $44.97 ÷ 7,700 = $0.0058 | $0.0097 |
| Brother INKvestment MFC-J1365DW | LC504XL cyan, magenta, yellow | 3 × $34.99 = $104.97 | 1,000 pages | $104.97 ÷ 1,000 = $0.1050 | $0.1398 |
| Brother HL-L2460DW | |||||
| HP DeskJet 4255e | HP 67XL tri-color cartridge | $38.99 (Quill) | 200 pages | $38.99 ÷ 200 = $0.1950 | $0.3532 |
Canon prints the cheapest color page here, just under a cent. The Epson is close behind too, at about 1.2 cents. Brother’s INKvestment is where color gets expensive, at about 14 cents a page, because each color cartridge is rated for only 1,000 pages. HP’s tri-color 67XL puts a full color page at about 35 cents.
Take a household printing 300 pages a month with one in five in color: 240 black pages and 60 color pages. On the Epson, a year of that costs 12 × (240 × $0.003332 + 60 × $0.011827) = $18.11. The same mix costs $18.00 on the Canon, $200.97 on the Brother INKvestment and $710.21 on the HP.
Inkjet vs Laser Printer Cost per Page
A laser is not the cheapest black page on this list. The two tank printers beat its toner by about ten to one: $0.0328 ÷ $0.0033 = 9.9. Where the laser wins is against cartridges. Its toner costs about a fifth as much per page as HP’s 67XL black ($0.0328 ÷ $0.1583 = 0.21), and a little less than Brother’s own INKvestment ink.
The drum is the cost people forget. Brother sells the DR830 for $157.99 and rates it at about 15,000 pages. Spread across that life, the drum adds $157.99 ÷ 15,000 = $0.0105 a page. That makes the laser’s full black page about $0.0433 once the in-box drum wears out. However, a household at 300 pages a month takes 15,000 ÷ 300 = 50 months to get there, a little over four years.
What a laser buys is indifference. It prints the same page after a month of sitting as it does after a day. For forms, letters and return labels, that is worth more to some people than the last fraction of a cent.
Does Printer Ink Dry Out If Not Used?
It can, and the cost shows up as wasted ink more than a dried cartridge. A cartridge inkjet that sits for weeks tends to print its first page with gaps or streaks. The fix is the cleaning cycle, which flushes ink through the print head. Run a few of those and some of the ink you paid for goes into a waste pad instead of onto paper.
None of the makers here publish how much ink a cleaning cycle uses. So the tables above can’t charge for it, and the HP figures should be read as a floor if you print in bursts. Tank printers clean too. But a cleaning cycle on a printer that pays a third of a cent per page costs very little.
My own habit after years of this: print one color page a week on any inkjet, tank or cartridge. It keeps the nozzles from sitting idle. On the Canon that habit costs 52 × $0.0097 = about 50 cents a year. On the HP it costs 52 × $0.3532 = $18.37 a year.
Printer Power Usage in Watts
Electricity barely moves these totals, and not every maker publishes it. Canon lists the G3270 at 16 W, with 0.6 W on standby and 0.1 W off. Canon also gives a typical electricity consumption of 0.15 kWh a week, which is 0.15 × 52 = 7.8 kWh a year. Brother lists the MFC-J1365DW at 21 W copying, 2.5 W ready, 0.6 W in deep sleep and 0.15 W off. HP gives the DeskJet 4255e at 2.8 W ready and 1.53 W asleep.
Epson’s ET-2850 product page does not show a wattage, so that figure is left out. The laser, though, is the outlier. Brother’s spec table for the HL-L2460DW runs from 0.06 W to 470 W, since a laser heats a fuser to bond toner to the page. That peak only lasts while pages are coming out.
How to Calculate Printer Cost per Page
You can run this math for any printer in a few minutes:
- Find the refill’s price on the maker’s store, or on one named retailer if the maker shows none.
- Find the rated page yield on the maker’s product or supplies page.
- Divide the price by the yield. That is your black cost per page.
- For color, add the color refills’ cost per page to one black page.
- Multiply by the pages you print in a year, then add the printer price and any drum the maker rates by page count.
Those yields come from standard test pages, not your documents. Brother rates ink under ISO/IEC 24711 and toner under ISO/IEC 19752, and Epson cites the ISO/IEC 24712 pattern. A dense spreadsheet uses more ink than a short letter. Even so, ISO yields are the only figures that put every maker on the same terms.
How we work is written up in our editorial standards. If the printer is going on a home office desk, our monitor resolution comparison covers the screen next to it. More comparisons live in Tech & Electronics.
Prices are approximate, current as of publication, and change frequently — confirm the latest price with the retailer before buying.
How Much Does Printer Ink Cost?
What Is the Average Cost per Page for an Inkjet Printer?
Across the four inkjets priced here, black text runs from $0.0033 a page on the Epson EcoTank ET-2850 to $0.1583 on an HP DeskJet 4255e using 67XL cartridges. Both tank printers sit under half a cent. The cartridge inkjets from Brother and HP run from about 3.5 cents to almost 16 cents.
How Long Does EcoTank Ink Last?
Epson rates a replacement 502 black bottle at 7,500 pages. At 100 pages a month that is 7,500 ÷ 100 = 75 months, or six and a quarter years. Epson also says the ET-2850 box holds up to two years of ink, based on about 150 pages a month.
How Many Pages Does HP 67XL Print?
HP rates the 67XL black cartridge at about 240 pages and the 67XL tri-color at about 200 pages. At Quill’s $37.99 for the black, that works out to $37.99 ÷ 240 = $0.1583 a page.
Does Laser Toner Dry Out?
No. Toner is a dry powder, so a laser printer can sit for weeks and still print a clean first page. The part with a set life is the drum. Brother rates the DR830 drum for the HL-L2460DW at about 15,000 pages.
Is Brother INKvestment Worth It?
On Brother’s own prices, the MFC-J1365DW is cheap to buy at $129.99 and costly to feed. Its black ink works out to $104.49 ÷ 3,000 = $0.0348 a page, a little more than the $0.0328 toner page on Brother’s HL-L2460DW laser. Color runs about 14 cents a page. So it suits a low-volume household that wants color and scanning for a low sticker price.
