Why Is Printer Ink So Expensive? (And How to Pay Less)

A black cartridge for a typical home inkjet costs about as much as the cheapest printer that uses it, and it runs dry after a few hundred pages. That isn’t an accident or a supply problem. It’s how much of the printer industry makes its money. Here’s how the model works, what it costs you per page, and the simplest ways out.

The printer is the razor, the ink is the blade

The clearest evidence comes from HP’s own annual report. In its 2025 fiscal year, HP’s printing business brought in $16.7 billion. Of that, $10.9 billion came from supplies (ink, toner and paper), against $1.15 billion from consumer printers. Supplies earned roughly nine times as much as the home printers that use them.

HP says the quiet part in its risk factors: big-tank printers have a higher margin when you buy them, but they don’t produce the follow-on sales of high-margin cartridges, so they can earn less over the printer’s life. In other words, cartridge printers are priced to make their money later, through ink.

HP’s then-CEO Enrique Lores put it even more bluntly in a January 2024 interview, describing customers who don’t print enough or don’t buy HP supplies as a “bad investment” for the company.

What that means per page

The gap shows up most clearly in cost per page, using each maker’s rated page yield (pages at about 5% coverage, roughly a short text memo):

Ink	Price (October 2026)	Rated yield	Cost per black page
HP 67XL black cartridge	about $36–41 at retailers	240 pages	about 15–17¢
Canon PG-245XL black cartridge	about $42 at retailers	300 pages	about 14¢
Epson 522 black bottle (ink-tank)	$17.99 at Epson	4,500 pages	about 0.4¢
Epson 502 black bottle (ink-tank)	$24.99 at Epson	7,500 pages	about 0.3¢

That’s roughly a 40-fold difference between a cartridge printer and an ink-tank printer for the same black page. Bottled ink isn’t cheap in absolute terms either: a 65 ml Epson 522 bottle works out to about $1,000 a gallon. It’s just far cheaper than the alternative.

Real pages use more ink than the 5% test page, especially photos and graphics, so expect fewer pages than the rating in practice.

Why cartridges are locked down

Cheap printers only pay off if you keep buying the maker’s cartridges, so manufacturers work hard to keep compatible and refilled cartridges out.

Chips and firmware. HP’s printers check for an HP security chip on each cartridge, a system it calls Dynamic Security. HP says the goal is to stop cloned chips, and that refilled cartridges reusing an original chip still work. Firmware updates that suddenly rejected third-party cartridges have triggered lawsuits since 2016.
Regulators have pushed back. Italy’s competition authority fined HP €10 million in 2020 for not telling buyers that firmware would reject non-original cartridges.
The legal record is mixed. HP paid $1.5 million to settle a US class action over a 2016 firmware update in 2019, settled a 2025 LaserJet toner case without paying damages but agreed to let owners decline updates that add Dynamic Security, and funded a European consumer settlement in 2022. The most recent US class action over inkjet lockouts was dismissed in September 2026, according to trade publication The Recycler, and HP also won a Dutch Supreme Court ruling in June 2026.
Security as a reason. HP has argued that third-party cartridges could carry malware. Security researchers reported by Ars Technica and others were skeptical, since the evidence was a proof-of-concept rather than any real attack.

Subscriptions: paying for pages, not ink

HP’s Instant Ink and similar plans charge a monthly fee for a set number of pages and mail you cartridges as you need them. They can make sense if you print steadily, but read the fine print:

You pay per page, not per drop. A full-page photo counts the same as a one-line page. HP’s plans in October 2026 ranged from $1.99 for 10 pages a month (about 20¢ a page) to $32.99 for 700 pages (under 5¢ a page).
Cancel, and the cartridges stop. HP’s terms say Instant Ink cartridges stop working at the end of the billing period after you cancel, even with ink left in them.
HP+ printers need HP ink. Activating HP+ at setup requires an HP account and an internet connection, and HP says original HP ink is required to operate the printer. It’s a choice made once, at setup.

Cleaning cycles quietly use ink too

Not all the ink you buy reaches the page. Inkjets spend ink priming and cleaning their printheads, especially when they sit unused or get switched off and on. When Consumer Reports tested occasional printing, many all-in-ones put half or less of their ink on paper, and a few managed only 20 to 30 percent. In one pair of similarly priced printers, maintenance ink accounted for the whole difference in yearly ink cost. The testing dates from 2013 to 2018, but the mechanics haven’t changed: printing rarely costs more per page than printing regularly.

Are third-party cartridges worth it?

They can be, with some risk. In a Consumer Reports survey, about two-thirds of owners who’d tried third-party cartridges found them as good as the brand’s, but CR’s own testing found inconsistent results, from warning messages to clogged printheads.

Your warranty is safer than many people think. US warranty law (the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act) generally bars manufacturers from making coverage depend on using their own supplies. What they can do is refuse to cover damage that third-party ink actually caused. So using compatible ink doesn’t void your warranty by itself, but a clog it causes may not be covered. The exception is a printer you’ve activated with HP+, which needs HP ink to work at all.

How to pay less for ink

If you print more than a few pages a week, buy an ink-tank printer. It costs more upfront, but ink drops from cents to fractions of a cent per page. Our home printer guide covers the best ones.
If you mostly print black text, consider a laser. Toner doesn’t dry out and lasers don’t spend ink on cleaning cycles. See ink tank or laser for the trade-offs.
Sticking with cartridges? Buy XL and compare cost per page, not cartridge price.
Choose a subscription by your real page count, and remember the cartridges stop when you cancel.
Skip HP+ at setup if you might want third-party ink later.
Print regularly, leave the printer on, and don’t swap cartridges early. All three cut the ink spent on cleaning.
Use draft or grayscale mode for everyday pages, and save high quality for photos.