Printer cost-to-print index

Data as of August 2026 · across 243 models with a known cartridge price. The cost of printing across the whole catalogue, in aggregate — not a ranking of which printer to buy, but where the typical model actually sits. Every figure is a real cost per page: an OEM black cartridge’s price divided by its rated yield.

Cost per page, by print technology

Ink-tank printing sits an order of magnitude below laser, and laser below cartridge inkjet — the gap between the median rows below is the whole reason running cost, not sticker price, decides what a printer costs you.

Print type	Models	Median	25th pct	75th pct	Cheapest	Dearest
Laser	115	2.3¢	1.3¢	3.3¢	0.3¢	50.2¢
Inkjet	88	5.4¢	3.8¢	8.8¢	1.4¢	16.8¢
Ink-tank	40	0.4¢	0.4¢	0.5¢	0.3¢	11.6¢

Mono (black-page) cost per page, in cents.

Cost per page, by brand

A reference view of where each brand’s models cluster — sorted by median, not ranked. A low median can mean a brand leans on ink-tank models rather than that any single printer is cheapest.

Brand	Models	Median	25th pct	75th pct	Cheapest	Dearest
OKI	5	0.8¢	0.6¢	0.9¢	0.6¢	2.8¢
Kyocera	26	1.0¢	0.6¢	2.0¢	0.3¢	3.4¢
Lexmark	24	1.6¢	1.5¢	3.5¢	0.7¢	50.2¢
Epson	52	2.2¢	0.4¢	4.2¢	0.3¢	9.7¢
Xerox	5	2.3¢	2.3¢	2.3¢	1.8¢	3.3¢
Brother	45	3.0¢	1.9¢	3.3¢	1.3¢	7.7¢
HP	51	3.8¢	2.6¢	7.3¢	0.4¢	16.8¢
Canon	33	5.1¢	2.0¢	10.5¢	1.1¢	13.9¢

Mono cost per page, in cents. Brands with fewer than 5 priced models (Ricoh) are omitted.

Mono vs colour

The intuition that colour always costs more only holds for laser. On ink-tank and cartridge-inkjet models a colour page’s median runs below the black-page median — the colour channels draw from the same cheap high-yield tanks, so the per-page arithmetic flips.

Print type	Models	Mono median	Colour median	Colour ÷ mono
Laser	55	2.5¢	3.9¢	×1.56
Inkjet	79	4.6¢	3.8¢	×0.83
Ink-tank	31	0.4¢	0.3¢	×0.75

Medians over the models that publish both a mono and a colour cost per page, in cents.

What’s in the sample

The index covers 243 of 291 published models — the ones with a trusted cartridge yield and a live price. The 48 left out are almost entirely a missing cartridge price (46 of 48), not weak yield data — so the numbers above rest on real, page-yield-backed cost, never a guessed figure.

Method

Cost per page = cartridge price ÷ ISO page yield. Prices are live Amazon US offers, refreshed nightly. Compatible (third-party) cartridges and structural supplies — drums, imaging units, maintenance kits and printheads — are excluded, as are any models without a trusted yield or a matched price. “Mono” is the cost of a black page; “colour” is a colour page. Every figure here is aggregated on the fly from those per-model costs; nothing is stored.