Which printer brands do not require a subscription?
All of them. Epson, Canon, Brother and HP all sell printers that print with supplies you buy outright and no plan of any kind. Three of the four also sell a subscription: Epson ReadyPrint on its cartridge printers, Brother Refresh EZ Print, and HP Instant Ink. None is compulsory on the models on this page.
The useful question is not which brand has no subscription. It is what each brand does with your supplies once you have declined one — because that is where the four of them genuinely differ, and it is the part nobody puts on the box.
What we compared, and what we did not
We read the manufacturer specification page and the supplies page for every printer in our registry, recorded whether a subscription is required to print, and recorded separately whether the brand has a documented history of restricting third-party supplies. Those are two different risks and conflating them is how most writing on this subject goes wrong.
- A subscription is a billing relationship. You can decline it, and on every printer here the hardware works if you do.
- A supply restriction is a technical mechanism in the printer firmware that decides whether a cartridge is acceptable. You cannot decline that one after the fact — you avoid it at purchase, by buying a printer whose supply has no chip in it.
What we did not do is rank the brands on reliability or print quality. We have no units in hand and no lab, and a brand-level reliability verdict from a publisher in that position would be invention. Our editorial policy says so in more detail.
Brand by brand, on the one question that matters
| Brand | Subscription sold | Required to print? | Bottle-fed range | Documented supply restrictions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canon | None we found at purchase | No | PIXMA MegaTank | None we could confirm |
| Epson | ReadyPrint, on cartridge models | No | EcoTank | None we could confirm |
| Brother | Refresh EZ Print, optional | No | None in our registry | Alleged in 2025, denied by Brother |
| HP | Instant Ink, marketed heavily | No | Smart Tank | Dynamic Security on cartridge models |
Subscription and supply facts as recorded against each product in our registry, from manufacturer pages read on 27 September 2026, plus the reporting cited at the foot of this page. Policies change; we re-verify them quarterly.
Read down the fourth column rather than the second. A bottle-fed range is the thing that makes the subscription question moot: a bottle of ink has no electronics in it, so there is nothing for a printer to authenticate, nothing for a firmware update to reject, and no mechanism by which an account status could change what the hardware does. Canon, Epson and HP all have one. Brother, in the models we cover, does not — it competes on cartridge economics instead, and those economics are better than people assume.
Why HP needs its own paragraph
HP is the brand this search mostly exists because of, so it is worth being precise. No HP printer requires a subscription in order to print — we wrote a whole page establishing that. What HP does have is Instant Ink, marketed across the range, and Dynamic Security, a firmware mechanism that has rejected third-party cartridges on its cartridge-based printers. PCWorld reported that HP offered firmware for some models that removes the restriction, which tells you the mechanism is a choice rather than a technical necessity.
If you want an HP and you want none of that, the Smart Tank range is the answer: it is bottle-fed, so neither mechanism applies to it. The full picture is on our HP Dynamic Security page.
And why Brother needs one too
Brother has the best reputation in this category among people who want supply freedom, and in early 2025 that reputation was publicly challenged: allegations circulated that firmware updates were blocking third-party toner. Brother denied it directly, stating that its firmware updates do not block third-party ink. Tom’s Hardware and TechRadar Pro covered both the claims and the denial. As at 27 September 2026 it is an unresolved dispute, and we report it as one.
It does not change our recommendation. Brother mono lasers remain the printers we point at most often for people who print in bursts, on the strength of the hardware and the cartridge arithmetic. It does change one thing: if your purchase depends on being certain you can use compatible cartridges forever, no cartridge printer from any brand can give you that certainty. Buy bottle-fed instead.
Choosing a brand from here
- You print color regularly. Canon MegaTank or Epson EcoTank. Both bottle-fed, both under a cent and a half an ISO color page on the prices we read.
- You print mono, in bursts, with months of nothing. Brother laser. Toner does not dry out, which is the failure mode that ends tank printers in houses that barely print. The dry-out question in full.
- You already own an HP and want out of the plan. You can cancel and keep printing with cartridges you buy — here is how, and here is what to do if the printer stops cooperating afterwards.
- You want the decision to be permanent. Buy a bottle-fed printer from any of the three brands that sell one. No chip, no authentication, no future policy change that can reach your supplies.