How To Calculate Printing Costs?

When it comes to buying a new printer, wondering where to purchase replacement ink cartridges used to be a strong consideration. In fact, sourcing replacement cartridges for a good price used to be such an arduous task that cartridge availability would generally dictate what kind of printer you would end up purchasing.

Thankfully, printer owners have been able to rest easy on this front with the help of CartridgesDirect, and other reputable online vendors. However, the new question to ask is ‘what are the printing costs?’, and trust us, this new question is far more important than the former.

As such, we have put together this little guide which explains how to calculate your printing costs. As you set yourselves up to purchase a new printer, be sure to consider your printing costs. put together a little guide to help you answer this question for yourself as you set out to purchase your next home or office printer.

Identify your cost per page

In order to calculate overall printing costs, you need to start by ascertaining the printing cost per page with your selected model. As you may imagine, this figure refers to how much it would cost you to print on a single page with your printer. You can calculate this number by measuring two things.

First, you’ll need to calculate what you’re spending on a single piece of paper, or simply your ‘cost per page’. You can calculate this by taking the total cost of your paper supply, and then dividing this by the number of sheets in that supply. Of course, measuring ink use per page isn’t going to be as simple as measuring the cost of a single piece of paper, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

What is page yield?

In order to get a gauge of your ink costs, you need to find the page yield of your cartridges, otherwise known as the number of pages that a cartridge can produce before it’s depleted.

Most cartridge and toner manufacturers will include the page yield of their products on their packaging, but if you can’t find it, a quick search online should reveal that info with ease. With your cost per page and page yield now available to you, it’s time to put the two together in order to calculate your printing cost per page, that is with consideration to both the sheet of paper as well as the ink on that sheet.

How to calculate printing costs? - The definitive formula

The formula for calculating your printing cost per page is as follows:

Cost of cartridge ÷ page yield + cost per paper = printing cost per page

For example, let’s say you’re using an Epson XP-2100 at home, which uses 212 ink cartridges. The Epson 212 ink cartridge value pack usually costs $56.99, with a page yield of 150 sheets. Your paper is $5.99 for a ream, which means your cost per page is 0.001198. 56.99 ÷ 150 + 0.001198 = 0.38. With the XP-2100, you’ll roughly be spending about 38 cents per sheet, if you’re printing in colour. To ascertain the costs of black-and-white printing, simply sub out the cost of the cartridges, to only the cost of your black cartridge.

How to save money printing

Now that you’ve got your formula for calculating your printing costs, you’ll be able to immediately save money printing by simply ensuring that your printer is cost-effective and suitable for your printing needs. If you would like to be more proactive about minimising your printing costs, you can also try printing mindfully and without excess.

From duplex printing to literally being mindful about what you print at home or at work, there are many ways to save money. In addition to this, should you use your printer infrequently, you will be likely to save more in the long term, that is if you’re using a printer with reasonably priced cartridges, or a laser printer, as inkjet cartridges will dry up if they’re used infrequently. If, however, your business or workplace utilises its printer at a high frequency and on a daily basis, it may be worthwhile looking for a printer with the lowest print cost per page that you can find. 

If you have any questions about finding the right printer for you and your business, be sure to contact us today! We’re always happy to help our customers find printing solutions that are perfectly suited to their needs. In the meantime, you may also be interested in the following articles: