Which desktop printers can order their own toner?
Most current Brother, HP, Epson and Canon office printers can, through the maker own reorder or subscription program, which you enrol in with an account. Two completely different arrangements get the same name: a reorder service that ships a cartridge and bills you for it, and a page plan that bills you monthly whether you print or not.
If you have searched for pricing on desktop printers with automatic toner ordering, the thing to establish first is which of those two you are being sold. The difference does not show up in the marketing, and it decides whether you own a printer or subscribe to one.
Two different things called automatic toner ordering
- Auto-reorder. The printer reports its supply level to the manufacturer, and when it runs low a cartridge is shipped. You pay for that cartridge at the maker own price. There is no monthly fee and no page allowance. Brother operates a Refresh auto-reorder service of this kind for eligible printers.
- A page-plan subscription. You pay a monthly fee for an allowance of pages, and supplies arrive as part of it. HP Instant Ink is the best-known example and Brother sells a Refresh EZ Print subscription. Print less than the allowance and you have paid for pages you did not use; print more and there are overage charges.
The first is a convenience with a straightforward cost: you are paying list price for manufacturer supplies in exchange for never thinking about it. The second is a different product entirely — a service with terms, and the printer side of it can be enforced in firmware. Cancel an ink subscription and the cartridges it supplied can stop working. What happens when a subscription ends.
What letting the printer order costs you
An auto-reorder service does not change your cost per page; it changes who chooses the supply. That is the real price. You pay the manufacturer own cartridge price forever, you stop comparing, and third-party and refilled toner leave the picture even on printers that accept them perfectly well. On a Brother laser that choice is worth having — the refillable toner page explains why.
| Cartridge | Rated yield | Price we read | Per page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brother TN920UXXL ultra high-yield toner cartridge | 18,000 pages | $241.49 | ~1.3¢ |
| Brother TN920XXL super high-yield toner cartridge | 11,000 pages | $204.29 | ~1.9¢ |
| Brother TN830XL high-yield toner cartridge | 3,000 pages | $98.29 | ~3.3¢ |
| Brother TN830 standard-yield toner cartridge | 1,200 pages | $60.99 | ~5.1¢ |
| Canon 125 black toner cartridge | 1,600 pages | $96.95 | ~6.1¢ |
Prices read on the dates recorded in our supply registry; yields are manufacturer-rated at the ISO standard. Our arithmetic is price divided by rated yield - the method is published in full.
Hold any monthly plan against that table. A plan costing ten dollars a month for a hundred pages is ten cents a page before you have printed anything, against about 3.3 cents on a standard household Brother cartridge and about 1.3 cents on a business one. Three years of the cheap cartridge at 100 pages a month is $48.
The option nobody sells: buy a spare
- When you buy the printer, buy one replacement cartridge with it. The reason people enrol in reorder plans is the panic of running out mid-job, and a spare on the shelf removes it completely.
- Choose the highest-yield cartridge the printer takes. High-yield toner is cheaper per page and it also means fewer orders — which was the convenience you wanted.
- Note the low-toner warning rather than acting on it. Most lasers keep printing well past the first warning; replace when quality drops, not when the panel asks.
- Write the cartridge number on a note in your phone. Reordering a known part number takes under a minute and costs whatever the cheapest reputable supplier charges that week.
- Or remove the cartridge from the equation: a refillable tank printer refills from a bottle rated for thousands of pages. Printers with refillable ink.
The recommendation
Enrol in an auto-reorder service only if you genuinely value not thinking about supplies more than you value the choice of supplier, and treat a monthly page plan as what it is: a subscription on a device you already own. Everything on this site is chosen so that neither is necessary. How to run a printer with no subscription is the companion piece, and which brands push plans hardest covers the sales pressure brand by brand.