Most ink-saving advice shaves pennies off a bill that was set the day you chose the printer. Here is what actually works, in order of how much it saves.
#ad — buy links are affiliate links and we may earn a commission at no cost to you. How this site is funded. Prices as shown on Amazon as of October 17, 2026; Amazon’s own page is the price of record. Cost-per-page figures are arithmetic on supply prices we read on 27 September 2026 — here is the method.
How do you save money on printer ink?
Change what the printer drinks before you change how you print. Moving from cartridges to bottled tank ink or to toner takes a page from tens of cents to under a cent, which dwarfs every setting you can change. After that: print in draft, print mono, use high-yield supplies, and never let a subscription meter your pages.
The saving, in order of size
Nearly all ink-saving advice online is about settings, and settings are the smallest lever you have. Here is the same list ordered honestly, biggest first.
Buy a printer that does not drink cartridges. This is the entire game. Bottled tank ink and toner both land under 3.3 cents a page in our arithmetic; cartridge inkjets routinely cost many times that. Why ink costs what it does.
Leave any subscription. A monthly plan charges for pages you did not print and can stop the cartridges working when you stop paying. How to cancel safely.
Print black unless color is the point. On a cartridge machine a color page can cost several times a mono one. Set grayscale as the printer default rather than remembering each time. Do you need color at all?
Buy the high-yield supply. Brother’s TN830 is rated 1,200 pages at $60.99, about 5.1 cents a page; the TN830XL is 3,000 pages at $98.29, about 3.3 cents. Same printer, a third cheaper per page, for more money up front.
Use draft mode for anything disposable. Boarding passes, recipes, a map, a first read of a document. Less ink laid down, visibly lighter print, nobody minds.
Print two-sided. This saves paper rather than ink, but it is the other half of the bill. What duplex printing is.
Stop printing the parts you do not need. Print selection rather than the page, use a reader view for articles, and print to PDF when a record is all you wanted.
Leave the printer switched on. On an inkjet, power cycling triggers cleaning cycles that spend ink on nothing. Sleep mode uses very little.
The same page, on different supplies - our arithmetic on published prices and yields
Supply
Rated yield
Price we read
Per page
Epson 522 black ink bottle
4,500 pages
$17.99
~0.4¢
Canon GI-21 pigment black ink bottle
6,000 pages
$17.99
~0.3¢
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¢
Supply price divided by the manufacturer's rated ISO yield, using prices read on 27 September 2026 from the sources at the foot of this page. Rated yields assume 5% page coverage, so your real cost will be higher.
Third-party ink: the honest position
Compatible and refilled cartridges are cheaper, and for some brands they work fine for years. The risk is not quality, it is policy: firmware on some printers checks the chip and refuses a cartridge it does not recognise, sometimes after an update you did not ask for. That turns a saving into a dead printer full of stock you cannot use.
So the rule we apply is simple. Buy third-party supplies for a printer whose maker has no history of blocking them, and treat a brand that does block as a brand you do not buy again. We keep the brand-by-brand position in printer DRM explained, with the specific policies on the Brother, Canon and Epson pages.
What the switch is worth
Put a number on it. A household printing 100 pages a month for three years spends $118 on TN830XL toner, $14 on 522 black ink, and $218 on Canon 125 toner in a cheap laser. The printers cost between $179.99 and $248.99. Which means the supply choice, over three years, matters about as much as the printer did — and over six years it matters more.
Specifications and running costs side by side, for the printers discussed on this page.
#ad — the price buttons are affiliate links and we may earn a commission at no cost to you. How this site is funded. Prices as shown on Amazon as of October 17, 2026; Amazon’s own page is the price of record.
Cost-per-page figures are our own arithmetic: supply price divided by the manufacturer’s rated page yield, using prices read on 27 September 2026 and yields rated at the ISO 5% coverage standard. They are not measured by us and they are not current prices. Every input, and the working · run the numbers for your own printing
The picks in detail
Biggest saving: switch to bottled ink
Epson EcoTank ET-2800
The cheapest way to get genuinely low-cost color printing at home, as long as you can live without an auto duplexer or a document feeder.
Product photograph supplied by Amazon for this listing. We do not have this model in hand and have not photographed it ourselves.
#ad — we may earn a commission. How this site is funded. Prices as shown on Amazon as of October 17, 2026; Amazon’s own page is the price of record.
~0.4¢ per mono page · ~1.1¢ per color page
Based on a Epson 522 black ink bottle rated at 4,500 pages at $17.99, priced on 27 September 2026.
The color figure adds one per-page cost for each of the three color channels, because an ISO color page draws from all of them.
Epson 522 black ink bottle — rated 4,500 pages (ISO/IEC 24712), $17.99 at Epson US, checked 27 September 2026
Epson 522 color ink bottle — rated 7,500 pages (ISO/IEC 24712), $17.99 at Epson US, checked 27 September 2026
Yields are manufacturer-rated at the ISO 5% page-coverage standard, not measured by us, and real-world cost runs higher. Prices are not live: this is arithmetic on a price we read on the date shown, not a current price. How we calculate cost per page.
Among the lowest cost per page of any printer sold for home use
Refillable bottles, so no chipped cartridge can be locked out by firmware
Comes with enough ink in the box to last most households a long time
What you give up
No automatic two-sided printing, so paper costs twice what it needs to
Flatbed scanner only - no document feeder for multi-page scans
Inkjets still need to be used occasionally or the print head can clog
The whole argument in one number. Epson’s 522 bottles are rated at 4,500 black pages for $17.99 and 7,500 color pages for $17.99 a bottle, which puts a mono page at roughly 0.4 of a cent and an ISO color page at about 1.1 cents. A cartridge printer charges you tens of cents for the same page.
$239.99 at list for print, scan and copy over wireless. No automatic duplexer and no feeder, and being an inkjet it wants using every week or two. Our budget tank picks.
#ad — we may earn a commission. How this site is funded. Prices as shown on Amazon as of October 17, 2026; Amazon’s own page is the price of record.
~0.3¢ per mono page · ~0.8¢ per color page
Based on a Canon GI-21 pigment black ink bottle rated at 6,000 pages at $17.99, priced on 27 September 2026.
The color figure adds one per-page cost for each of the three color channels, because an ISO color page draws from all of them.
Canon GI-21 pigment black ink bottle — rated 6,000 pages (ISO/IEC 24712 (Canon default print mode)), $17.99 at Target, checked 27 September 2026
Canon GI-21 color ink bottle — rated 7,700 pages (ISO/IEC 24712 (Canon default print mode)), $12.99 at Target, checked 27 September 2026
Yields are manufacturer-rated at the ISO 5% page-coverage standard, not measured by us, and real-world cost runs higher. Prices are not live: this is arithmetic on a price we read on the date shown, not a current price. How we calculate cost per page.
List price
$248.99 at Office Depot, checked 27 September 2026
Supply type
Refillable ink bottles
Two-sided printing
Not stated on the spec page we read
Document feeder
None
Connectivity
Wireless
Subscription
None required
What we like
Lowest cost per page of any model on this site, mono and color
Pigment black ink smudges less on plain paper
Large 170 mL bottles, so refills are infrequent
What you give up
Canon's own store would not show us a price, so ours is a retailer listing
No document feeder
Canon's headline yields assume its default print mode, not draft mode
If what you are overspending on is color, this is the cheapest page on the site: GI-21 bottles put an ISO color page at about 0.8 of a cent and a mono page at around 0.3 of a cent. The black ink is pigment, which is more water-resistant on plain paper than dye black.
$248.99 at list, with a flatbed scanner. Canon does not state automatic duplexing or a document feeder on the page we read. Our MegaTank picks.
#ad — we may earn a commission. How this site is funded. Prices as shown on Amazon as of October 17, 2026; Amazon’s own page is the price of record.
~3.3¢ per mono page
Based on a Brother TN830XL high-yield toner cartridge rated at 3,000 pages at $98.29, priced on 27 September 2026.
Brother TN830XL high-yield toner cartridge — rated 3,000 pages (ISO/IEC 19752), $98.29 at Brother USA, checked 27 September 2026
Yields are manufacturer-rated at the ISO 5% page-coverage standard, not measured by us, and real-world cost runs higher. Prices are not live: this is arithmetic on a price we read on the date shown, not a current price. How we calculate cost per page.
Dual-band wireless (2.4 GHz / 5 GHz), Ethernet or USB
Subscription
None required
What we like
Toner does not dry out, so it is ideal if you print in occasional bursts
Automatic two-sided printing at 36 pages per minute
Brother has publicly denied blocking third-party toner with firmware
What you give up
Black only - no color at all
Cost per page is roughly ten times a tank printer's
The 700-page starter cartridge runs out fast; budget for a TN830XL
If almost everything you print is black text, the real saving is leaving ink behind. Toner is a dry powder: it does not dry out, does not need the printer exercised, and does not get spent on cleaning cycles. About 3.3 cents a page on the TN830XL, and the DR830 drum is rated at approximately 15,000 pages.
$179.99 at list, up to 36 pages a minute, automatic duplexing, dual-band wireless, Ethernet and USB. Our cheap-toner picks.
A bottle-fed tank printer for color, a mono laser for text. Both put a page under a cent to a few cents in our arithmetic, against tens of cents for a cartridge inkjet. The choice of printer sets the bill; the settings only trim it.
+−Does draft mode really save ink?
Yes, and it is the most reliable setting-level saving there is: less ink or toner is laid down per page. The print is visibly lighter, which is irrelevant for anything you will read once and recycle.
+−Is it cheaper to use high-yield cartridges?
Almost always, per page. Brother’s TN830 works out at about 5.1 cents a page and the TN830XL at about 3.3 cents for the same printer. You pay more at the till and less per page.
+−Should I turn my printer off to save ink?
On an inkjet, no. Powering up often triggers head-cleaning cycles that spend ink. Leave it in sleep mode. On a laser there is nothing to dry out, so it makes no difference to supplies either way.
+−Is third-party ink safe to use?
It depends entirely on the brand’s firmware policy, not on the ink. Some printers reject unrecognised chips after an update. Check the brand before you commit, and prefer makers with no history of blocking.
+−How much can switching printers actually save?
At 100 pages a month over three years our arithmetic puts 522 bottled ink at $14 and the Canon 125 toner cartridge at $218 — a gap wider than the price of either printer.
