Annual home printing cost — paper plus ink per page times pages a year.

At 8p per page and 50 pages a month, printing costs 48 a year. Bump it to 15p per page (colour with name-brand ink) and 100 pages a month and you're at 180 annually — often more than the printer itself cost. That's why refillable ink tanks and subscription plans have become popular.

How to use it

Enter cost per page as a combined figure (paper + ink). Typical estimates: 3-8p for mono, 10-20p for colour with name-brand cartridges, 1-3p with a refillable ink tank printer. Then enter your monthly print volume.

What the result means

Primary is annual cost. Secondary rows show monthly cost, cost per 100 pages, and total pages a year. Compare these to: print-shop rates (typically 5-15p B&W, 25-50p colour) to decide whether home printing is worth the kit.

Hidden costs of home printing

The printer itself is rarely the biggest cost over 3-5 years. Ink is. Cartridge printers at 50 often cost 300+ in ink over their life; a 250 ink-tank printer may cost 20-30 in ink for the same period. Factor the printer purchase price on top of the annual figure to get a 5-year total.

Quick example

With cost per page of 0.08 and pages per month of 50, the result is 48.00. Change any figure and watch the output shift — it's often more useful to see the pattern than to memorise the formula.

Which inputs matter most

You enter Cost per Page and Pages per Month. Frequency and unit price pull the total in different directions. The biggest surprise for most people is how small recurring amounts compound into large annual figures — that's where this calculation earns its keep.

What's happening under the hood

Annual cost equals cost per page times monthly volume times 12. Cost per page is supplied by the user to avoid hardcoding ink or paper prices that vary and change. The formula is listed in full below. If the number looks off, you can retrace the calculation by hand — that's the point of showing the working.

What the bill doesn't show

Standing charges, discounts, and usage tiers all blur the effective rate. The calculation here backs out the total so you're comparing apples to apples across providers, regardless of how each one packages the price.

What this doesn't capture

Usage varies month-to-month; tariffs change; discounts come and go. The figure here is a clean baseline — your actual annual bill will fluctuate around it. Use the calculation to benchmark providers, not as a prediction of a specific bill.