How do I calculate the cost of printing a given page?

Solution 1:

This is very tricky when it comes to color printing, as there are even more variables involved.

I calculate the costs of printing one page as follows (similar to the suggestion of Daniel R Hicks)

pages per cartridge as claimed by the manufacturer / price per cartridge + average price for 1 blank sheet of paper.

This paper describes the procedure how manufacturers derive the pages per cartridge.

In the end you have to compare printers like cars. You have to separate price, quality, maintenance costs and average costs per unit (sheet or km) and weight them individually. The pages per cartridge is as good as average fuel consumption.

You can also calculate the costs after emptying a cartridge. You can either estimate the pages you have printed by counting the paper packages (1 package = 500 pages) you have used or use some kind of tool to get the exact number. Then you can easily divide it by the price for the cartridge and add the average price per blank page.

If you want to get really fancy you can also use the MTBF or your estimate on how long you are going to use your printer and how many pages you print per year. Lets say your printer costs 600€, you print 5000 pages per year and you want your printer to last about 5 years. You have to add 600 € / (5 * 5000) = 0.024 € to every sheet of paper you print.