Printer Ink Cost Per Page Calculator
Your cartridge price and its page yield give you the real cost per page, per month and per year — plus what XL or third-party cartridges would actually change, and when the answer is a different printer.
How this tool works
The maths is trivial. The number you put into it is the hard part, so most of this page is about that.
Cost per page is cartridge price divided by page yield. At $24.99 for a 200-page cartridge that is 12.5¢ a page — and if you print 60 pages a month, $89.96 a year in ink. That is usually more than people expect, and it is often more than the printer cost.
We ship no yield table, on purpose. Manufacturers do publish page yields per cartridge, under ISO/IEC 24711 for inkjet and ISO/IEC 19752 or 19798 for toner. We tried to retrieve them from a primary source and could not: HP, Canon, Epson and Brother all serve yield figures behind JavaScript product modals or block automated retrieval, and ISO's own catalogue does the same. The alternative — transcribing yields from resellers — produces numbers that drift and get copied wrong, and a wrong yield gives you a confidently wrong cost per page. So this tool asks for the yield on your box, which is the only figure that applies to your cartridge anyway. Same for price: you know what you paid, and it changes weekly.
What we can tell you is how to read the number on the box. If it says "approximate page yield based on ISO/IEC 24711", it is comparable across brands, because every manufacturer measured it printing the same ISO/IEC 24712 test-page suite at default settings. If it just says "up to N pages" with no standard named, it is not necessarily comparable with anything.
And "at 5% coverage" is a red flag on an inkjet claim. 5% coverage is the old convention for monochrome laser toner — one twentieth of the page inked. The ISO colour test suite is a much heavier mix, including a graphics page and a photo-style page. So an inkjet yield quoted at 5% coverage has been measured against something far lighter than the standard set, and it will not survive contact with your actual printing.
Expect to miss the declared yield, not beat it. The ISO tests print continuously at default settings. Real printing is worse in specific ways: printing one or two pages a week means the printer runs head-cleaning cycles that consume ink with nothing to show for it; borderless photos and full-bleed graphics use far more per page than the test suite; and many inkjets draw a little from every colour cartridge even on a black-only document to keep the heads clear. If your real-world cost per page comes out 20–40% above the calculated figure, nothing is wrong — that is the gap the standard cannot capture.
The XL and third-party comparison rows are illustrative, and we label them as such. They are computed from multipliers we state openly on the page (an XL at 1.6× the price for 2.2× the yield, a third-party at 0.35× the price for 0.9× the yield) to show you the shape of the saving. They are not product data. When you have a specific cartridge in front of you, put its real price and declared yield back into this tool — that is the honest way to compare.
Third-party cartridges: the risk is not financial. The saving is real and large. So are the failure modes — firmware updates that reject non-original chips, clogged print heads, colour shift, and a printer manufacturer declining a warranty claim for damage they attribute to a third-party cartridge. Worth it on an old cheap printer you can replace; a different calculation on a machine still under warranty.
When the answer is a different printer. If your cost per page is high and your volume is steady, no cartridge fixes that structurally. A refillable ink-tank printer sells ink in bottles rather than cartridges and moves cost per page down by roughly an order of magnitude; a mono laser does the same for text. Both cost more up front, so compare your annual ink spend — which this tool gives you — against the price difference before switching.
Estimate, not financial advice. Cost per page here is the ink only: not the printer, the paper, the electricity, or a drum or maintenance box if your machine uses one. Verify the declared yield and the standard it was measured under on the box or the manufacturer's own spec page.
The ISO standards cartridge page yields are declared under — and how to read the number on the box
| Standard | Covers | What it measures | What to watch for on the box |
|---|---|---|---|
| ISO/IEC 24711 | Inkjet cartridge page yield (colour) | The method manufacturers use to declare 'approximate page yield' for an inkjet cartridge. The printer runs continuously at default settings, printing a defined suite of test pages, until the cartridge is spent; the declared figure is derived from the results across multiple cartridges and printers rather than from one run. | If a box says 'approximate page yield based on ISO/IEC 24711', the number is comparable between brands. If it just says 'up to N pages' with no standard named, it is not necessarily comparable with anything. |
| ISO/IEC 24712 | The colour test page suite | The standard set of pages the yield tests actually print - a mix of business documents, a graphics-heavy page and a photo-style page - so that every manufacturer's yield claim is measured on the same content. | This is why '5% coverage' is a red flag on a modern inkjet claim. 5% coverage is the old convention for MONOCHROME laser toner, not for the ISO 24712 colour suite. An inkjet yield quoted 'at 5% coverage' is being measured against something much lighter than the standard page set. |
| ISO/IEC 19752 | Monochrome toner cartridge yield | The equivalent standard for black-and-white laser toner, printing a defined test page repeatedly until the cartridge reaches end of life. | Toner yields are typically an order of magnitude higher than inkjet yields, which is the whole reason a laser printer has a lower cost per page for text even though the cartridge costs more. |
| ISO/IEC 19798 | Colour toner cartridge yield | The colour-laser counterpart, using the ISO/IEC 24712 page suite. Colour laser yields are usually declared per colour cartridge. | On a colour laser, the drum or imaging unit is often a separate consumable with its own life in pages. A toner-only cost per page understates the real running cost if the drum is not included. |
FAQ
How do I calculate cost per page for a printer?
Divide the cartridge price by its page yield. A $24.99 cartridge rated at 200 pages costs 12.5¢ per page. For colour, add the cost per page of every cartridge in the set, because a full-colour page draws on all of them — four cartridges at $18.99 each rated 240 pages is 31.7¢ a page, not 7.9¢. Multiply by your monthly pages for the monthly cost, and by twelve for the annual figure, which is the number that tends to change people's minds.
What is ISO page yield and can I trust it?
It is the standardised measure manufacturers declare cartridge yields under — ISO/IEC 24711 for inkjet, ISO/IEC 19752 for mono toner and ISO/IEC 19798 for colour toner — all printing the same ISO/IEC 24712 test-page suite at default settings until the cartridge is spent. You can trust it for comparing brands, which is exactly what it was designed for. You should not expect to hit it yourself: it assumes continuous printing on a defined page mix, and light intermittent printing, borderless photos and head-cleaning cycles all consume ink the test never charges for.
Are XL ink cartridges actually cheaper?
Per page, almost always yes, because the cartridge body, the chip and often the print head are the same and the extra money is mostly ink. Do the division rather than trusting the label, though: take the XL price and its declared yield, work out the cents per page, and compare to the standard cartridge. The one case where XL loses is low-volume printing — an XL that dries out, clogs or hits a printer's cartridge-expiry logic before you have printed the pages has cost you more, not less.
Why is 'at 5% coverage' a warning sign on an inkjet cartridge?
Because 5% coverage is the old convention for monochrome laser toner — about a twentieth of the page inked, which is roughly a page of plain text. Inkjet yields are declared against the ISO/IEC 24712 colour test suite, which is a much heavier mix including a graphics page and a photo-style page. So an inkjet yield quoted at 5% coverage has been measured against far lighter content than the standard, and it is not comparable with a properly declared ISO 24711 figure. Look for the standard number, not a coverage percentage.
Are third-party or remanufactured ink cartridges worth it?
The saving is genuine and large — often a third of the original price for a similar declared yield. The risks are not financial ones: firmware updates can reject non-original chips and disable the cartridge you already bought, print heads can clog, colour can shift on photos, and the printer manufacturer can decline a warranty claim for damage they attribute to a third-party cartridge. That trade is easy on an old inexpensive printer you would replace anyway, and a much closer call on a machine still in warranty or one you rely on for work.
When is an ink-tank or laser printer worth switching to?
When your annual ink spend approaches the price difference, and your volume is steady. Work out the annual figure — this tool gives it to you — and compare it to what a refillable ink-tank or a mono laser costs over the original. Tank printers ship ink in bottles and cut cost per page by roughly an order of magnitude; mono lasers do the same for text and are unbeatable if you never print photos. Both want regular use: a tank printer left idle for months can clog just as an inkjet does.
Why doesn't this calculator have my cartridge's page yield built in?
Because we could not get yields from a source we were able to verify. Manufacturers publish them, but HP, Canon, Epson and Brother all serve those figures behind JavaScript product modals or block automated retrieval, and ISO's catalogue does too. The alternative is transcribing yields from resellers, which drift and get copied wrong — and a wrong yield gives you a confidently wrong cost per page, which is worse than no answer. The number on your own box is the correct one for your cartridge, so we ask for it.
Does printing in draft mode really save money?
Yes, and it is the largest free saving available. Draft or economy mode lays down less ink per page, and on a machine you mostly use for reference copies and forms it can extend a cartridge substantially. Two other free wins: print in greyscale for anything that does not need colour, so the colour cartridges are not drawn on at all, and print regularly rather than in bursts — a printer that sits idle for weeks spends ink on head-cleaning cycles to recover, which is ink you paid for and never saw on paper.