Homework printing has three properties that together point at one answer: it is higher volume than parents expect, a meaningful share of it is in color, and it is always needed by tomorrow morning.
How we picked
We weighted color cost per page above everything else, because the defining feature of school printing is that it arrives in color without warning — a map, a diagram, a poster, a set of flashcards. On a cartridge printer that is where the money goes, and it is where the rationing starts.
After that we looked at automatic duplexing, because school documents run long, and at whether the machine scans, because the permission slip that has to go back is a real and recurring job. Speed we largely ignored: nobody is printing two hundred pages at once for homework.
The problem nobody names: rationing
Ask a parent with a cartridge printer about school printing and you will eventually hear some version of “do you really need it in color?” That question is the actual cost of an expensive printer, and it does not appear in any spending figure.
Published industry figures put a cartridge inkjet color page at about 20 cents a page, per Toner Buzz. A bottle-fed color page on the printers above is a small fraction of a cent. At that price the question stops being asked, and that is worth more to a household than the arithmetic suggests.
How much does school printing actually amount to?
More than people estimate, and unevenly. A quiet month might be ten pages; the week a project is due might be forty. What matters for a buying decision is the average across a year, not the peak — buying for the peak is how households end up with more printer than they need.
| 30 pages a month | 80 pages a month | |
|---|---|---|
| Epson EcoTank ET-2800 (mono) | about $4 | about $12 |
| Brother HL-L2460DW (mono) | about $35 | about $94 |
| Paper, at about a cent a sheet | about $11 | about $29 |
Supplies only, over three years. Note the third row: on a tank printer, paper costs more than ink, which is why automatic duplexing is the feature we argue for most consistently in a school household.
That paper row is the genuinely surprising line. Once you own a printer this cheap to feed, the cost of school printing is paper — so the machine that halves your paper use is the one saving you money.
What school printing actually consists of
- Worksheets and reading packs. Multi-page, black text. Duplexing matters.
- Project material. Color, unpredictable, sometimes image-heavy. This is where cartridge costs bite.
- Forms and permission slips. Print, sign, scan, send back. A scanner earns its place here, and a flatbed is enough.
- Revision notes. High volume, black text, and printed at the last minute. Speed helps slightly; reliability helps more.
Why not a subscription, for a school household
Because school printing is seasonal and a plan is not. A supply subscription bills for a page allowance rather than for pages printed, so the summer holiday is two months you paid for and did not use, and the week of the project is the week you exceed the allowance. That is close to the worst possible fit.
Owning your supplies means the quiet months cost nothing and the busy week costs a few cents. If you are currently on a plan, see how to cancel — and read the part about plan cartridges stopping work before you do it.