How much does printer ink cost?
It depends entirely on the format. Refillable bottle ink works out under a cent a page — about 0.4 of a cent for Epson 522. Laser toner is a few cents. Published figures put cartridge ink at about 7.5 cents a page for black and about 20 cents a page for color, which is roughly twenty times bottle ink.
The reason “how much does printer ink cost” is hard to answer is that the useful unit is a page, not a cartridge. A $60 cartridge and a $25 bottle tell you nothing until you know how many pages each is rated for.
The real numbers, with every input
| Supply | Rated yield | Price we read | Per page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Canon GI-21 pigment black ink bottle | 6,000 pages | $17.99 | ~0.3¢ |
| Epson 502 black ink bottle | 7,500 pages | $24.99 | ~0.3¢ |
| Epson 522 black ink bottle | 4,500 pages | $17.99 | ~0.4¢ |
| 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¢ |
| Cartridge inkjet ink, black | varies widely | varies widely | about 7.5 cents a page |
Our figures are supply price divided by manufacturer-rated page yield, using prices read on 27 September 2026 from the sources at the foot of this page. The final row is Toner Buzz’s published range, quoted rather than claimed. Our method.
Read the top and bottom rows together: roughly a twentyfold difference, and both are “printer ink”.
And in color
A color page draws from all four channels, so every inefficiency in the supply format is multiplied by four. Bottle-fed color is about 1.1 of a cent on Epson 522 ink; published figures put cartridge color at about 20 cents a page.
Color is therefore where the format matters most, and where a refillable tank saves the most money.
Why cartridge ink costs so much more
Not because the ink is different. Because of what it is sold in. A cartridge is a molded plastic assembly with a chip, a sponge or bladder, packaging and distribution, holding a modest volume of liquid. A large share of the price is that assembly. A bottle is a bottle.
There is also the business model underneath it: printer hardware is often sold at or near cost, and the margin lives in supplies. That is not a conspiracy, it is published pricing strategy — but it does mean the cheapest printer in a shop is frequently the most expensive one to feed.
The one trick that always works
Why your real cost is higher than any of these numbers
Every rated page yield assumes about 5% page coverage — roughly a third of a page of double-spaced text, as Toner Buzz puts it. Real documents use more, and photographs use vastly more.
There is also maintenance ink on any inkjet: print head cleaning consumes ink that never reaches paper, and nobody itemizes it. Treat every figure on this page as a floor, and as a fair basis for comparing printers rather than a forecast.
Work out yours
Find the exact cartridge or bottle your printer takes, look up its rated page yield on the manufacturer’s page, note today’s price where you would buy it, and divide. Multiply by your monthly pages for a monthly ink cost you can compare against a subscription.
Or let the calculator do it. It runs in your browser, stores nothing, and shows the same working.