How much does toner cost?
Genuine laser toner cartridges cost roughly $61 to $241 each at the prices we read, which works out between about 1.3 and 6.1 cents a page depending on the rated yield. The cartridge price alone is misleading: the dearest cartridge on this page is the cheapest per page by a factor of four.
Two printers can take cartridges that cost almost the same and still differ fourfold in what a page costs you, because what you are buying is pages and not plastic. Every figure below is a price we read divided by the yield the manufacturer rates the cartridge at, with the source and the date attached.
What a cartridge costs
These are genuine, manufacturer-brand cartridges at the prices on the listings we read. We do not publish third-party or remanufactured prices, because supply and quality vary by seller in a way we cannot verify from here.
| Cartridge | Rated yield | Price we read | Per page | Date checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brother TN830 (standard) | 1,200 | $60.99 | ~5.1¢ | 27 September 2026 |
| Brother TN830XL (high yield) | 3,000 | $98.29 | ~3.3¢ | 27 September 2026 |
| Brother TN229XL black (color laser) | 3,000 | $96.29 | ~3.2¢ | 27 September 2026 |
| Brother TN920XXL | 11,000 | $204.29 | ~1.9¢ | 29 September 2026 |
| Brother TN920UXXL | 18,000 | $241.49 | ~1.3¢ | 29 September 2026 |
| Canon 125 | 1,600 | $96.95 | ~6.1¢ | 27 September 2026 |
Yields are manufacturer-rated at the ISO/IEC 19752 (mono) and 19798 (color) 5% page-coverage standard. Prices are what the listing showed on the date given and will have moved since. Cost per page is our arithmetic, not a manufacturer claim.
Why the cartridge price is the wrong number
Look at the two ends of that table. The Canon 125 costs $96.95 and prints 1,600 pages. The Brother TN920UXXL costs $241.49 — about two and a half times as much — and prints 18,000 pages, which is eleven times as many. Per page, the expensive cartridge costs roughly a fifth as much.
This is the single most useful thing to know when buying a laser printer, and it is the reason a cheap printer is often the expensive choice. Pick the printer by its cartridge, then check you can live with the hardware — not the other way around.
What that means for a year of printing
| Cartridge | 50 pages a month | 200 pages a month | 500 pages a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brother TN920UXXL | $8 | $32 | $80 |
| Brother TN920XXL | $11 | $45 | $111 |
| Brother TN830XL | $20 | $79 | $197 |
| Brother TN830 (standard) | $30 | $122 | $305 |
| Canon 125 | $36 | $145 | $364 |
Twelve months of pages at our cost per page. This is a spend figure, not a cartridge count - you buy toner in whole cartridges, so the actual cash lands in lumps.
At 50 pages a month the differences are small enough to ignore, which is the honest finding: a light user should buy the cheap printer. At 500 pages a month the spread across a single year exceeds the price of most of these printers.
Toner against ink, on cost alone
Toner is not the cheap option. Every ink tank printer we cover beats every laser we cover on cost per page, because bottled ink is sold without a chip or a cartridge body: about 0.3 of a cent a mono page on Canon GI-21 bottles, against about 1.3 cents at the very best on toner. That is a factor of four, in ink’s favor.
What toner buys instead is indifference to time. A toner cartridge is dry powder; it does not clog, dry out or need a cleaning cycle after a month in a drawer. If your printer sits idle for long stretches, that reliability is worth more than the cost per page — see toner vs ink in full and do laser printers dry out.
Third-party toner, and whether it is safe
Compatible and remanufactured toner is widely sold at a fraction of genuine prices, and it is the main reason people care which brand they buy. The risk is not usually quality, it is whether the printer will accept it after a firmware update. That varies by maker, and we cover it honestly rather than optimistically: how printer DRM works, Brother and third-party toner, and HP Dynamic Security.
We do not publish third-party prices or cost-per-page figures, because we cannot verify the yield claims and the sellers change constantly. Every number on this page is a genuine cartridge, which makes it the worst case — your real cost can only be lower.