How many pages a month justifies a tank printer?
Updated 2026-09-24
Far fewer than people assume — commonly under fifty pages a month. A cheap cartridge all-in-one and a mid-range tank printer can differ by well over a hundred and fifty dollars at purchase, and by roughly fourteen cents on every black page. At fifty pages a month the ink difference closes that gap inside two years; at two hundred, inside six months.
The arithmetic, plainly
Take the purchase price difference between the two printers and divide it by the cost-per-page difference. That gives the number of pages at which the expensive-to-buy printer becomes the cheaper one to have owned. Because the per-page gap between a tri-colour cartridge printer and a tank printer is enormous, that number is usually small.
Colour moves the break-even a lot
Mono pages differ by a few cents. Colour pages can differ by thirty. A household printing children's schoolwork, craft projects or anything with pictures in it hits the crossover far sooner than a household printing only black text, and the tank printer's advantage keeps compounding afterwards.
What the calculation does not capture
Two things. A tank printer that sits unused clogs, and cleaning cycles consume ink that the arithmetic assumes reaches paper — so at genuinely low volumes the real cost per page is worse than the published one. And a printer that is a nuisance to use gets used less, which is its own cost.
The honest recommendation
Under about twenty pages a month, buy on purchase price or buy a small laser, because the ink will dry out before you use it. Between twenty and a hundred, a tank printer is probably right and definitely right if any of it is colour. Above a hundred it is not close.