What can I use instead of HP Instant Ink?
Three things. Buy retail cartridges for the printer you already own, which needs no new hardware. Buy a refillable ink tank printer, at a fraction of a cent a page with no monthly charge. Or buy a mono laser if your printing is black text and sporadic, which is the cheapest option of all.
The reason to consider each of these is different, and the cheapest one is not always the best one. Notably, the first alternative involves buying nothing at all beyond ink.
Option one: keep your printer, buy retail cartridges
The simplest answer and the one nobody selling printers mentions. You already own a working machine; canceling a plan does not stop it printing, it stops the plan cartridges working. Retail cartridges for the same printer are sold everywhere.
Published figures put cartridge inkjet printing at about 7.5 cents a page for black and about 20 cents a page for color, which is expensive per page. But if you print twenty pages a month, expensive per page amounts to very little, and you have spent nothing on hardware.
Option two: a refillable ink tank printer
The right answer if you print color, or more than about forty pages a month of anything. Ink arrives in bottles you pour into the printer, at a fraction of a cent a page, with no monthly charge and no page allowance.
There is a second benefit that has nothing to do with money: no cartridge means no chip, which means the situation described in printer DRM cannot arise. You are buying out of two problems, not one.
The obligation is regular use. An inkjet left untouched for months can clog, and printing one page every couple of weeks prevents nearly all of it.
Option three: a mono laser
The cheapest total cost if your printing is black text and unpredictable. Cheaper to buy than a tank printer, faster, and completely unaffected by sitting idle because toner is a dry powder.
About 3.3 cents a page, which is more than bottle ink and less than cartridges. At low volumes that difference is a few dollars a year, and you have bought the most reliable option available.
The three options, side by side
| Keep your printer | Ink tank printer | Mono laser | |
|---|---|---|---|
| New hardware needed | None | Yes | Yes |
| Cost per black page | about 7.5 cents a page | ~0.4¢ | ~3.3¢ |
| Color | Yes, expensively | Yes, very cheaply | No |
| Monthly charge | None | None | None |
| Cost in a month you print nothing | Nothing | Nothing | Nothing |
| Tolerates months of disuse | No | No | Yes |
| Can a cartridge be locked out? | Possibly | No — no chip in a bottle | Possibly |
Our figures are arithmetic on prices read 27 September 2026; the cartridge range is Toner Buzz’s. The fifth row is the structural difference with any subscription: none of these charges you for a month you did not use.
What about other manufacturers’ plans?
Epson and Brother both sell optional supply subscriptions, so switching brand does not by itself mean leaving subscriptions behind — it means declining the offer during setup. Every printer we recommend prints entirely normally on supplies bought outright, and none requires a plan.
The practical advice is the same across all of them: do not accept a plan during setup because the wizard suggests it and offers a discount. You can always add one later; getting out is measurably more work than getting in.
Before you cancel anything
Whichever alternative you choose, buy your replacement supplies before canceling the plan. Plan cartridges can stop working when the plan ends, and a printer you cannot use while you wait for a delivery is an avoidable annoyance. The cancellation guide sets out the order to do things in.