See what each page really costs before you choose.
Put in your printing volume and the cartridges, and the calculator shows the yearly difference. It works for any brand — pick one of ours to start, or type the figures from any cartridge box.
Your printing
Start from a cartridge we stock, or type your own figures from any cartridge box.
What it costs you
Yields are the manufacturer’s ISO figures at 5% page coverage. Dense text, graphics and photos use more ink or toner, so real yields vary. Prices exclude VAT unless the product page says otherwise.
When standard still makes sense
High-capacity wins on cost per page almost every time. These are the three cases where the smaller cartridge is the better buy.
You print very little
Check how long the calculator says a high-capacity cartridge would last you. If it is more than about a year, the saving is slow to arrive and the cartridge spends most of its life on the shelf. On an inkjet that also risks dried ink and clogged nozzles; toner keeps better, but a sealed cartridge still has a shelf life.
The printer is on its way out
A cartridge only fits the printers it was made for. If the machine is being replaced within a few months, whatever is left in a big cartridge is money you cannot get back.
Cash matters more than cost per page
The saving is real but it arrives page by page over the life of the cartridge. If the budget this month is tight, the standard cartridge keeps more cash in hand now, and the yearly difference tells you what that costs.
How the numbers are worked out
Nothing clever, just the sums most people never get round to doing in the shop.
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Cost per page —
price ÷ page yield. This is the only number that matters when comparing two cartridges for the same printer. -
Yearly spend —
cost per page × pages a month × 12, done for each cartridge. The difference is your yearly saving. - Colour sets — every page uses the black cartridge; a colour page also uses a little of each of cyan, magenta and yellow. So the black cartridge is charged to all your pages and the three colour cartridges only to the colour pages.
- Page yield — the manufacturer’s figure measured under ISO/IEC 19752 (mono toner), 19798 (colour toner) or 24711 (ink). It assumes about 5% of the page is covered, roughly a short business letter.
Not sure which cartridge your printer takes?
Tell us the printer model and we will send the right standard and high-capacity options with current prices, usually within the hour on working days.