How Much Are You Really Spending on Ink & Toner?
The printer might be paid for. The cartridges definitely aren't.
Business ink and toner costs are one of those expenses that can quietly get out of hand. A cartridge gets ordered, then another one, then another department orders something different. Because it normally sits under stationery or office supplies, nobody ever really adds it all together.
The short version: the fact you've already bought the printer doesn't mean the decision is finished. If the machine is expensive to run, you keep paying for that original decision every time somebody orders another cartridge.
The cost nobody sees properly
Ink and Toner Can Get Lost in Stationery Costs
Ask a business what it paid for a printer and somebody can normally tell you. Ask what that same printer has cost in ink or toner over the last year and it is often a different story.
One Cartridge Doesn't Look That Expensive
Someone spends £60 or £80 and it doesn't look dramatic. But do it repeatedly, across several colours and several printers, and suddenly it is a proper annual cost.
Different Departments Buy Different Things
Accounts has one printer, reception has another, sales bought one because they needed colour. Before long you've got several makes, several cartridges and nobody looking at the total.
Nobody Thinks of It as a Print Cost
If every cartridge is coded to stationery, the business never really sees what each printer costs to run. That's normally where the surprise starts.
What cartridges actually cost
You Don't Need to Print Much Before It Starts Adding Up
There isn't one sensible “average cartridge price” because a small ink cartridge and a high-capacity business toner are completely different things. But current genuine toner prices show how quickly the numbers can move.
HP 207A Colour Set
£357.46At the manufacturer prices checked on 25 September 2026, one black and three colour HP 207A cartridges come to about £357.46 including VAT.
Canon 067 Colour Set
£336.46At the Canon UK prices checked on 25 September 2026, black, cyan, magenta and yellow come to about £336.46.
Those are examples, not an average for every printer in the UK. The point is simply this: one set of toner on a fairly normal office printer can already run into hundreds of pounds.
The bit people miss
“We've Already Bought the Printer” Is Exactly Why Nobody Looks at It
I hear this a lot. The printer is already owned, so people think the decision has been made and there is no point reviewing it.
The printer might be paid for, but the running cost isn't.
If you've bought the wrong machine for the amount you're printing, you can keep paying for that decision over and over again. Another black cartridge. Another set of colours. Another £100. Another £300.
That doesn't mean you should automatically throw the printer away. It means you should stop looking at the purchase price as if it was the whole cost.
A simple rule
If You're Spending More Than £30 a Month, Let Us Look at It
£30 isn't some magic number. It's just enough recurring spend to make a quick review worthwhile.
| Monthly spend | Annual spend | Why it is worth checking |
|---|---|---|
| £30 | £360 | Enough to ask whether the printer is really suited to the amount being printed. |
| £50 | £600 | That can already be more than some desktop printers cost to buy. |
| £100 | £1,200 | Now it is worth comparing the real cost per page. |
| £250 | £3,000 | At this point, look at the whole fleet, not just one cartridge. |
It gets worse with several printers
One Printer Is Easy to See. Ten Printers Hide the Cost
A lot of print fleets aren't really fleets at all. They're just a collection of printers people have bought over the years because somebody needed one.
Different Makes Means Different Everything
Different cartridges, different spare stock, different drivers and different faults. It isn't always wrong, but nobody planned it that way.
The Spend Gets Split Across the Business
If each department buys its own toner, the overall cost is easy to miss. Add it all together and the numbers can look very different.
If you've got several printers around the business, even if every one of them is already bought and paid for, send us the models. We'll show you what the setup could look like if it was planned around what people actually print.
The obvious answer isn't always the best answer
“We'll Just Buy Compatible Toner” Can Create Another Problem
Compatible cartridges can save money. Some are perfectly usable. Some aren't. The problem is treating every compatible as if it is the same product with a cheaper sticker on the box.
Cheaper Doesn't Always Mean Cheaper Per Page
Look at the yield. We've seen cheaper cartridges where the saving looked good until you compared how much usable toner or ink you were actually getting.
The Colour Can Change
Toner and ink are part of the print process. Change the formulation and you can change colour, density, gradients and consistency. If colour matters to the business, that matters.
We've Seen Them Cause Machine Problems
In our own service work we've seen poor third-party supplies associated with leaks, contamination, recognition problems and inconsistent toner transfer. That doesn't mean every compatible cartridge will cause a fault. It means the quality of the cartridge matters.
Think About How Long the Print Needs to Last
I have seen one extreme case involving archived accounting documents where the print had faded so badly that information was effectively lost when the documents were needed again. That doesn't prove every compatible cartridge will do this, but if you're printing documents that need to last for years, longevity should be part of the decision.
Stop fixing the symptom
Sometimes the Answer Is Simply the Right Printer
If you keep trying to find cheaper cartridges for an expensive-to-run printer, it may be worth asking a different question: is this actually the right machine for what we're doing?
Lower Running Cost
Equipment designed for higher business volumes can use very different consumables and cost structures to small desktop printers.
More Functionality
Better scanning, secure print, bigger paper capacity, finishing, cloud workflows and user controls can solve other problems at the same time.
Better Quality
The right machine should be chosen around what you actually print, not just whichever model looked cheap when somebody needed a printer.
A different way to buy printing
Managed Print Can Make the Cost Much Easier to See
Instead of somebody ordering another cartridge every time one runs out, a managed print arrangement can put agreed service and print costs into one clearer structure.
Depending on the agreement, that can include toner or ink, parts, labour, engineer support, meter monitoring and an agreed mono and colour cost per page.
It doesn't mean managed print is automatically the right answer for every printer. It means you can compare a known cost with what you're spending now.
What we actually need from you
A Proper Print-Cost Review Doesn't Need to Be Complicated
Start by sending us the printer models. If you know roughly what you're spending or how often you're buying cartridges, even better.
Tell Us What You Already Have
- printer and photocopier models;
- how many of each;
- who uses them;
- whether colour is important; and
- anything users wish the printers did better.
Then We Look at What You're Actually Spending
- ink and toner;
- cartridge yield;
- service and repair;
- print volume;
- waste and repeat printing; and
- whether a different setup would genuinely be better.
Sometimes we'll look at it and tell you to keep what you've got. That's fine. The point of the review is to find out, not to manufacture a reason to replace a printer.
Common questions
Ink and Toner Cost FAQs
How much does business toner cost?
Is £30 a month enough to worry about?
Why review a printer we've already bought?
Are compatible cartridges bad?
Do we have to replace our printers to save money?
What does managed print include?
Related Camelott® guides
Look at the Whole Print Setup
Spending More Than £30 a Month on Ink or Toner?
Send us the printer models. If you've got several printers, send all of them. If you know roughly what you're spending on cartridges, include that as well.
We'll show you what the current setup is costing and what the alternatives could look like. You may need different equipment. You may not. But at least you'll know.
Manufacturer cartridge examples were checked on 25 September 2026 and prices can change. Any saving depends on the equipment, volume, consumable yield, service requirement and alternative proposed. We do not assume replacing equipment is always the right answer.