Enter the price of the ink cartridge and the cartridge page yield into the calculator to determine the total printing cost per page.

Printing Cost Per Page Formula

The following formula is used to calculate the printing cost per page.

PCPP = CP / CY
  • Where PCPP is the printing cost per page ($/page)
  • CP is the total cost of a cartridge of ink ($)
  • CY is the cartridge page yield (pages)
    • This is the number of pages the cartridge will print before running out

To calculate the printing cost per page, divide the total cost of the cartridge by the cartridge yield.

Definition

What is the printing cost per page?

The printing cost per page is defined as the cost of ink per page printed. Sometimes the cost of the paper is also included in this calculation, but since the cost of the paper is typically less than $.01, it is negligible.

Example Problem

How to calculate printing cost per page?

The following example outlines the steps and information needed to calculate the total cost of printing one page of paper.

First, determine the cost of the cartridge. Sometimes the cost of the black and color cartridges are added together for this value, but in this case, only black is being printed. The total cost is found to be $100.00.

Next, determine the cartridge yield. The cartridge yield is the number of pages that will print before the ink runs out. This can be found on the side of the cartridge and for this example, it is 400 pages.

Finally, calculate the printing cost per page using the formula above:

PCPP = CP / CY

PCPP = $100 / 400

PCPP = $.25 / page