“Budget tank printer” is a slightly odd category, because the thing that makes a tank printer worth buying — the ink — does not get worse at the bottom of the range. The entry-level models use the same bottles as the expensive ones. The budget is spent on hardware, and hardware is where you should decide.
How we picked
We restricted this page to models that were under about $250 at the list prices we could verify, then ranked on cost per page. The result is deliberately boring: because the entry-level and mid-range EcoTanks share an ink family, the cost-per-page column barely moves across the page and the interesting differences are all in the features table.
We also included a mono laser in the comparison table rather than as a pick, because for a genuinely tight budget combined with low printing volume it beats every tank printer here on total cost — and a budget roundup that hides that is not being honest with the reader.
The same ink at three different prices
This is worth seeing laid out, because it is the opposite of what people expect from a budget tier.
| Printer | Ink family | Black per page | Color per page | List price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Epson EcoTank ET-2400 | 522 | ~0.4¢ | ~1.1¢ | $189.99 |
| Epson EcoTank ET-2800 | 522 | ~0.4¢ | ~1.1¢ | $239.99 |
| Epson EcoTank ET-2850 | 502 | ~0.3¢ | ~1.2¢ | $349.99 |
List prices from Epson’s own store, read 27 September 2026. Note that the two cheaper printers have an identical cost per page, and the dearest one is cheaper per black page because the 502 black bottle is rated higher. Price tier and running cost are not the same axis. Our method.
So the question on a budget is not “which is cheaper to run”. It is “which hardware omissions can I live with”, and there is one that costs real money.
The one omission worth paying to fix
Automatic two-sided printing. Paper is roughly a cent a sheet. On a printer whose ink costs 0.4 of a cent a page, paper is the larger cost — about twice the ink — so a machine that halves your paper use saves more than any bottle-price difference.
Neither of the two cheapest EcoTanks duplexes. If you print multi-page documents regularly, the honest advice on a budget page is that the extra money is better spent on a duplexer than on anything else in the range.
When a cheap laser beats all of these
Below roughly twenty pages a month. At that volume three years of laser toner costs very little in absolute terms, the laser is cheaper to buy, and it is the only technology here that will not be affected by sitting unused for weeks. About 3.3 cents a page sounds bad next to 0.4 of a cent until you multiply both by 240 pages a year.
This is not a reason to avoid tank printers. It is a reason to be honest about your volume before spending the money. The full comparison works through the arithmetic at several volumes.
Third-party bottles, on a budget
There is no chip in a bottle, so nothing stops you filling any of these with cheaper third-party ink. We do not publish cost-per-page figures for it, because those yields are not rated to the ISO standard and we would be multiplying a real price by an unverified claim. It is also worth noticing that the manufacturer’s own ink is already under half a cent a page — the remaining saving is small, and the variable you are trading is warranty rather than money.