True Cost Calculator
Enter your monthly print volume to see the real cost of each printer — sticker price plus ink over time.
Duration
Category
Cost = purchase price + (cost per page × 200 pages × 24 months). Paper and maintenance not included.
Why total cost of ownership matters more than sticker price
Most printer buyers focus on the upfront price tag and ignore the cost of ink, toner, paper, and maintenance — the supplies that quietly drain your budget month after month. A printer that costs $79 at checkout can easily cost $400 or more to operate over three years, while a $349 colour laser with a high-yield toner can cost less than $200 in supplies for the same workload. Total cost of ownership (TCO) flips that calculation on its head and shows you the real number you'll spend.
How we calculate cost per page
Cost per page is the price of a full ink or toner cartridge divided by its ISO/IEC 19752 (mono) or ISO/IEC 19798 (colour) yield rating. We always use the highest-yield cartridge a printer supports, because that's how a careful buyer would actually buy. For ink-tank printers (HP Smart Tank, Epson EcoTank), we use the bottle-refill cost instead. The calculator then multiplies that figure by your monthly page count and the time horizon you chose to project the supply spend across the life of the printer.
What's not included in this estimate
Paper, electricity, replacement maintenance kits (fuser units, drum kits, transfer belts), and extended warranty plans are excluded. For most home and small-office users these add 5–15% to the supply bill; for high-volume offices printing more than 5,000 pages per month they can double the projected total. Always check the printer glossary for definitions of duty cycle, recommended monthly volume, and supply yields if you're not sure what those numbers on a spec sheet mean.
Use the result alongside our buying guide
Once you've identified the two or three printers with the lowest projected cost, put them side-by-side in our comparison tool to weigh the rest of the spec sheet — print speed, paper handling, connectivity, and warranty length. Then read the relevant section of the 2026 printer buying guide for category-specific advice on home, office, photo, or wide-format models. Together those three steps give you a defensible, transparent purchase decision.