Ink Cost Calculator: Cartridge vs Supertank
Enter your printer price, ink cost and monthly pages. See your real cost per page, your two-year total, and when a bottle-fed supertank pays for itself.
Updated
The cheapest printer to buy is usually the most expensive one to own. A budget cartridge all-in-one wins at the till and loses at the ink shelf; a bottle-fed supertank does the opposite. Which one is cheaper for you depends entirely on how much you print — so put your own numbers in and let the math, not the sticker, decide. Everything is pre-filled with a typical budget machine; change any field and the answer updates instantly.
Your printer and habits
What it really costs
vs about 0.6¢ a page for a bottle-fed supertank — the gap that decides everything below.
At 40 pages a month, a supertank pays back in 22 months and saves about $20 over two years — a real but modest win. Print much more and the case becomes overwhelming; print much less and the cheap cartridge printer stays ahead.
How the math works
Cost per page is the only honest way to compare printers, and it is simple: divide what an ink set costs by how many pages it prints. A $45 cartridge set rated for 200 pages costs about 22.5 cents a page; a supertank's bottles work out near 0.6 cents. We multiply your cost per page by your monthly volume across 24 months, add each machine's purchase price, and find the month the two totals meet. It is the same cost-of-ownership model the independent labs use — see RTINGS' cost-per-print testing for inkjet printers and Consumer Reports' inkjet printer running-cost testing.
Two honest caveats the number cannot show. First, a supertank only earns its keep if you actually print — leave one idle for weeks and it wastes ink on cleaning cycles, erasing the savings, which is why our break-even assumes steady use. Second, real cartridge yields often trail the rated page count, so your true cost per page can run higher than the figure above. Treat the result as the optimistic case for the cartridge machine; reality usually pushes harder toward the tank.
Sources
Get Our Top 3 Picks
Get our top 3 picks for your budget — one email, then only updates.
Only when something changes. Unsubscribe anytime.