Which printer is cheapest once you include supplies?
Of the printers we cover, the Canon PIXMA MegaTank G3270: $248.99 at list price and about 0.3 of a cent a mono page, which gives the lowest three-year cost of ownership we can publish at ordinary household volumes. The cheapest printer to buy, at $179.99, finishes well behind it.
Price-comparison tables for printers almost always compare the wrong number. The sticker is paid once; the supply is paid for as long as you own the machine, and on these models the second figure overtakes the first within two years at ordinary volumes. Both are below, with the sources for each.
Column one: what each printer lists for
These are manufacturer list prices, read from each maker’s own product page on the dates recorded in our registry. We publish list rather than street prices on purpose: a street price is a snapshot that is wrong within a week, and we would rather give you a number with a source than a number with a timestamp.
| Printer | Type | List price | Per mono page | Per ISO color page |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brother HL-L2460DW | Mono laser | $179.99 | ~3.3¢ | No color |
| Epson EcoTank ET-2400 | Ink tank | $189.99 | ~0.4¢ | ~1.1¢ |
| Brother DCP-L2640DW | Mono laser all-in-one | $209.99 | ~3.3¢ | No color |
| Epson EcoTank ET-2800 | Ink tank | $239.99 | ~0.4¢ | ~1.1¢ |
| Canon PIXMA MegaTank G3270 | Ink tank | $248.99 | ~0.3¢ | ~0.8¢ |
| Brother MFC-L2820DW | Mono laser all-in-one | $279.99 | ~3.3¢ | No color |
| Brother HL-L3220CDW | Color laser | $284.99 | ~3.2¢ | Not published |
| Brother HL-L5210DW | Mono laser | $329.99 | ~1.9¢ | No color |
| Epson EcoTank ET-2850 | Ink tank | $349.99 | ~0.3¢ | ~1.2¢ |
| Brother HL-L6210DW | Mono laser | $349.99 | ~1.3¢ | No color |
| Epson EcoTank ET-4950 | Ink tank all-in-one | $499.99 | ~0.3¢ | ~1.2¢ |
| Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8550 | Photo ink tank | $749.99 | ~0.4¢ | ~1.4¢ |
List prices as published by Brother USA, Epson US and Canon on the dates in our product registry. Three models we cover are absent because their makers did not publish a price on the page we read: the Epson ET-4800 and ET-3850, and the Canon imageCLASS LBP6030w. Cost per page is our arithmetic on supply prices and manufacturer-rated ISO yields. Color laser pages are not published because we could only confirm the black cartridge price.
Read down the price column and then down the cost-per-page column. They barely correlate. The cheapest printer on the list has one of the dearest pages; the dearest mono laser has the cheapest page of any toner machine we cover.
Column two: what each one costs to own
Here is the same set over three years at 100 pages a month, which is a realistic figure for a household that prints regularly. List price plus supplies, nothing else — no paper, no electricity, no drum, because those are either identical across machines or figures we have not confirmed.
| Printer | List price | 3 years of supplies | Three-year total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Canon PIXMA MegaTank G3270 | $248.99 | $11 | $260 |
| Epson EcoTank ET-2400 | $189.99 | $14 | $204 |
| Epson EcoTank ET-2800 | $239.99 | $14 | $254 |
| Brother HL-L2460DW | $179.99 | $118 | $298 |
| Brother DCP-L2640DW | $209.99 | $118 | $328 |
| Brother HL-L6210DW | $349.99 | $48 | $398 |
| Epson EcoTank ET-2850 | $349.99 | $12 | $362 |
Mono pages only. Supplies are our arithmetic at the rated ISO yield, which assumes you buy exactly the pages you print - in practice supplies come in whole cartridges and bottles, so real cash lands in lumps. Paper, drum units and electricity are excluded because they are either identical across machines or figures we have not confirmed.
At 100 pages a month the cheap laser is still competitive, because 3,600 pages of toner is only just over one cartridge. The ranking you are looking at is volume-dependent by construction, which is the real finding of this page.
Where the ranking flips
Raise the volume and the table rearranges itself. At 400 pages a month over three years — 14,400 pages — the $179.99 Brother HL-L2460DW spends $472 on toner, while the $349.99 HL-L6210DW spends $193. The dearer printer wins by a wide margin.
Lower it to 20 pages a month and nothing can overtake the cheap laser, because 720 pages in three years does not finish a single high-yield cartridge. There is no volume-independent answer to “which printer is cheapest”, which is why this site publishes a calculator rather than a verdict.
Why we publish list prices and not deals
Printers are discounted constantly and unevenly, and a comparison built on last week’s street prices tells you about last week. A manufacturer list price has one virtue a deal does not: it comes from a page we can cite, and it is comparable across brands at a single moment.
Use it as a baseline rather than as a forecast. Check the live price before you buy, and expect the lasers in particular to be available well below list. What will not move is the cartridge yield, which is the number that decides the rest of the cost.
What a price comparison cannot tell you
- Whether an inkjet suits your pattern. A tank printer that clogs from disuse is not cheap at any price. The occasional-use case.
- Whether you need a document feeder. It is worth more than $70 to anyone who scans stacks and nothing at all to anyone who does not.
- What a subscription would do to the total. A monthly plan replaces both columns with a third model entirely. Plans against buying outright, costed.
- Drum and maintenance parts. Lasers consume a drum as well as toner. We have not confirmed prices and rated lives, so no figure appears here.