What does it cost to print an invoice?
On the business printers we cover, between about 1.3 and 6.1 cents of toner per invoice, plus roughly a cent of paper. A business printing 400 invoices a month therefore spends between about $64 and $291 a year on supplies, depending entirely on which cartridge the printer takes.
Invoice printing is the easiest case to cost accurately, which is why it is a good place to see how much the printer choice matters. One side of one sheet, black text only, no images, well under the ISO 5% coverage the yields are rated at. The figure below is close to a best case for each machine.
What one invoice costs
Cost per page is the supply price divided by the manufacturer’s rated yield. For a single-sided mono invoice that is the whole calculation, plus about a cent for the sheet.
| Printer | Supply | Rated yield | Toner per invoice | Plus paper |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brother HL-L6210DW | TN920UXXL | 18,000 | ~1.3¢ | ~1¢ |
| Brother HL-L5210DW | TN920XXL | 11,000 | ~1.9¢ | ~1¢ |
| Brother DCP-L2640DW / MFC-L2820DW | TN830XL | 3,000 | ~3.3¢ | ~1¢ |
| Canon imageCLASS LBP6030w | Canon 125 | 1,600 | ~6.1¢ | ~1¢ |
| Epson EcoTank ET-4950 | 502 black bottle | 7,500 | ~0.3¢ | ~1¢ |
Our arithmetic on genuine supply prices read on the dates in our registry, against manufacturer-rated ISO yields. Paper is a nominal one cent a sheet for US letter plain paper and is the same on every printer.
Note what that table does to the usual assumption. On the cheapest-to-buy laser here the paper is a sixth of the cost of the toner; on the dearest-to-buy laser the paper costs almost as much as the toner does. Past a certain cartridge yield, the sheet becomes the dominant cost and further supply savings stop mattering.
What it adds up to across a year
| Printer | 100 invoices a month | 400 a month | 1,000 a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brother HL-L6210DW | $16 | $64 | $161 |
| Brother HL-L5210DW | $22 | $89 | $223 |
| Brother DCP-L2640DW | $39 | $157 | $393 |
| Canon imageCLASS LBP6030w | $73 | $291 | $727 |
| Epson EcoTank ET-4950 | $4 | $16 | $40 |
Toner or ink only, excluding paper. Twelve months of pages at our cost per page - a spend figure, not a cartridge count, since supplies are bought in whole units.
At 1,000 invoices a month the annual difference between the best and worst machine on that list exceeds the price of any printer on it. That is the entire argument for choosing a business printer by its cartridge rather than its sticker price.
The costs an invoice run adds that a cost-per-page figure misses
- Duplexing does not help you here. An invoice is one side of one sheet, so the paper saving that makes duplexing valuable elsewhere does not apply. It still matters for the statements and reports that go out alongside.
- Paper capacity does. A 150-sheet tray refilled three times during a monthly invoice run is a real cost in attention. Brother publishes 350 standard sheets on the HL-L5210DW and 620 on the HL-L6210DW, which is the practical reason to buy those machines.
- The drum, on a laser. Brother sells drum units separately from toner. We have not confirmed drum prices and rated lives for these models, so no figure appears above — budget for it as periodic rather than a surprise.
- Speed, once volume is high. At 1,000 invoices a month the difference between 19 and 50 pages a minute is an hour of someone standing by a printer.
Does a color logo change the answer?
Substantially, yes. A color laser runs four cartridges and published industry figures put color laser pages at between 12 and 15 cents a page, attributed to Toner Buzz rather than measured by us. Against about 1.2 cents for a full ISO color page on an EcoTank, the tank printer wins decisively on any invoice that carries brand color.
The honest alternative is cheaper still: print the invoice in black on pre-printed letterhead. A mono laser at 1.3 cents a page and a box of letterhead beats any color printer on cost and looks better than most. Full comparison: color laser vs ink tank and color laser cost per page.
Why we would not put invoicing on a supply plan
Invoice volume is predictable, which is precisely the case where buying supplies outright wins: there is no uncertainty for a plan to insure against, and the plan charges for it anyway. A page allowance also introduces a billing failure mode into a process that has to work on a deadline.
There is a second reason specific to cartridge printers. Supplies tied to a plan have stopped working when the plan ended, leaving owners unable to use cartridges they already had: what that looks like. For business paperwork, that is an operational risk rather than an inconvenience. Printers without a subscription.