How Many Pages Will My Cartridge Print?
Article Updated 08/12/2022
If you do a lot of printing, you might feel as if you’re forever running out of ink cartridges and toner, constantly having to sort out ordering new supplies, and asking yourself the question “how many pages will my cartridge print?” or “how many pages per ink cartridge?”.
You might be questioning whether you’re getting value for money, especially if you think your cartridges should have lasted longer than they did.
There are things that you can do to maximise the amount of printing you can do before you run out of ink and toner but many want to know exactly how many pages the ink and toner cartridges will print before they purchase one.
Here’s what you’ll learn from this post:
So in this post, we’re going to outline the following:
- How printer manufacturers work out the ‘page yield/duty cycle’ of their cartridges
- Give you an idea of some things that will impact the number of pages you will get from one cartridge.
- Show you a quick and approximate way of figuring out how many pages a cartridge will print
- Give you a handy tool to calculate more accurately how much your ink or toner cartridge should print
- Show you how to work out for yourself how many pages your ink or toner cartridge will print using maths.
Take me to the page prints tool >
How long do printer ink cartridges or toner last?
If your wondering how long ink cartridges or toner lasts before they expire or ink dries up, ink cartridges are manufactured with a 2-year expiry date. When you get close to two years, the ink sponge inside the cartridge can start to dry up. More modern printers also recognise when a cartridge has passed 2 years old and will ask you to replace it.
For toner cartridges, there is no expiry date. Toner may degrade over time and the print results may not be as good as they were, but toner does not expire.
If an ink cartridge is unopened or not used, so long as it’s kept away from humid environments, it should last at least 2 years.
How many pages can be printed with one cartridge?
If you want to know how many pages your printer cartridge will print – You should be able to find an estimated number of prints listed against the product of the place where you bought the cartridge, but bear in mind:
Each printer is different and so each ink cartridge is different too. There are many factors that affect how many pages one cartridge can print. A simple way of looking at things is if you imagine you and a friend both have a drink of water. You aren’t thirsty, but your friend really needs a drink. How long will that drink last? It would be different for each of you because your friend is likely to drink much faster than you because they are thirsty.
It’s the same for printers. If you take 2 exact same printer models but one printer is old, and another is brand new. The new one will be much more efficient and so the ink will last longer. Also what is being printed can change the result. Photos use more ink and take longer to print than text so we need to take these factors into consideration.
How many pages per ink / toner – Quick calculation
Here’s a quick calculation you can do to get a rough idea of how many pages your cartridge will print. The manufacturer’s capacity is based on 5% of the page being covered in ink or toner, but if you are printing large shaded areas or more than 4 paragraphs of text, we generally print at more like 10 – 15% coverage.
So at 15% coverage, the calculation is, the new coverage value divided by the old coverage value (15 divided by 5). Then divide the stated manufacturer prints number (eg. TN2000 toner is 2500 pages), by the result of the last calculation.
ie.
15 / 5 = 3
2500 / 3 = 833.33 pages.
This will give you a more accurate value compared to the manufacturer’s stated amount. If you don’t know the manufacturer stated capacity, you can find out and get an even more accurate value using our calculator at the bottom of the page.
The calculator will give you a good guesstimate of how many days your cartridge will last.
What is page yield/duty cycle?
In short, page yield or duty cycle is the maximum number of pages your cartridge should be able to print before it runs out of ink or toner.
However, things aren’t actually that straightforward.
For years each major manufacturer had their own internal methods for calculating page yield and duty cycle. This caused problems. For example, how HP worked out that one of their black toner cartridges had a 2500-page yield / duty cycle would have been completely different to how Brother worked out that one of their equivalent cartridges had a 3000-page yield / duty cycle. This, as you can imagine, made things incredibly confusing for consumers.
There needed to be a standardised way of calculating this for all manufacturers. So over the course of two years between 2004 and 2006, the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) worked with the major printer manufacturers to come up with a singular way of calculating page yield/duty cycle. So now it’s consistent across all manufacturers and gives customers a rough guide as to how many pages they can print up to with a printer cartridge.
But it is still a pretty complicated thing.
Examples of page coverage:
The exact figure stated next to page yield / duty cycle on a cartridge’s product description will be based on ‘page coverage.’ A measurement enforced by the Office of Fair Trading, this is the amount of ink / toner used on a page, based on the type of text, images, borders, etc. Commonly page yield / duty cycle is based on 5% page coverage, but what does that look like? Here’s an example of different coverage types from the standard 5%, to a photograph which is more like 80% coverage:
Ink and toner page coverage examples
So this makes it incredibly difficult to put an exact number on the number of pages you can expect to print from one cartridge and answer the question “How many pages will my cartridge print?” An analogy we love and that we tell our customers to think about when it comes to this is that it’s like the miles per gallon (MPG) figure of the fuel economy of your car. The brochure your car came with might state that it can achieve 60 MPG, for example, but factors such as the distance you drive, how safely or erratically you drive, tire pressure, etc., and even how old your car is can all cause that figure to fluctuate widely.
So what things can impact the page yield/duty cycle of your cartridge?
What can affect your page yield/duty cycle
As mentioned, it is determined by page coverage. You might buy a cartridge that is capable of lasting 2000 pages at 5% page coverage but, if your average page coverage is higher than that, then you’re not going to achieve that amount.
Things such as the amount of text on the page, colour, images, etc. will all impact page coverage and, ultimately, the overall yield/cycle of the cartridge, too. But what else might prevent you from getting the stated page yield/duty cycle?
Humidity
We covered this in a post in May 2014 about how the humidity in your office can affect the performance of your printer. It might cause ink and toner to not print onto the page properly, meaning that you could be wasting a significant amount each time you print.
Age of your printer
Older printers are generally less efficient. Advancements in printing technology mean that modern printers will need to use less ink and toner per job than older machines. So if you’ve got a 10-year-old printer, it might be worth considering investing in a new printer.
Frequency of printing
If you leave your printer idle for long periods, it may have to use small amounts of ink to clean and clear print heads. Frequent printing means that this shouldn’t be an issue.
The mode your printer is set to
Are you printing in draft mode or best quality? Draft mode will use roughly half the amount of ink and toner compared to the best quality. Changing mode depending on the type of printing you’re doing can help you to save a bit more ink and toner.
Also, it is worth remembering that many printers have calibration devices in place that will use small amounts of ink and toner for routine maintenance, often whilst in sleep mode.
The size of your print job
If you’ve got a five-page document, printing all of the pages in separate print jobs, rather than in one singular job, will use more ink and toner, also your printer may heat up too much if it isn’t meant for large jobs, and print very inefficiently.
Shaking toner cartridges as they begin to run low
If you’re being alerted that your toner cartridge is running low, don’t replace it straight away. Giving the cartridge a shake will help spread the toner more evenly inside. It means that you can maximise the amount of toner you use before you throw the cartridge away. Your printer manual should outline the shaking process for you.
Image courtesy of http://www.hackworth.co/is-it-safe-to-extend-toner-cartridge-life-by-shaking-and-replacing/
Natural usage of the printer / ink cartridge
As the printer is preparing for a print, some ink is used in the process. Ink is also used during cleaning processes, and to service the print head and keep it in tip-top condition. Ink can even evaporate over time so if you leave a printer unused for long periods of time, you’re unlikely to get full use of the cartridge.
How many pages will my cartridge print – Handy tool
Here is a handy tool to help you work out approximately how many pages your ink or toner cartridge should print based on what you are currently printing. It will also give you an idea of how many days your cartridge should last. All you have to do is enter your ink or toner cartridge reference in the first box (eg. Q6000A), enter on average how many pages your print each day (this is optional and also doesn’t have to be exact), and finally from the examples decide what your page coverage is (how much print is covering the A4 page) and type its number in the last box depending on what you think your particular page coverage will be.
How to use the page prints calculator:
To use the calculator and to find out how many pages will my cartridge print, follow these simple instructions:
- Select your printer manufacturer from the first drop-down box.
- Then select your printer from the third drop-down box. To help you to find your printer model quickly you can type to narrow the results. (drop-down box 2 to select the printer family is optional and will help to narrow the results).
- Once you have selected your printer you can then select the cartridge.
- In the ‘your usage’ section, enter approximately how many pages you print per day, this will help calculate how long your cartridge will last (It only has to be approximate). You can also select per week or per month.
- Lastly, enter what percentage of coverage you are likely to print based on the examples below. So for example, if you often print heavy text or images then your coverage might be 20% (type 20 in the box), 30% (type 30 in the box), or 60% (type 60 in the box). Press enter and the calculation in green at the bottom of the tool will change.
Here are examples of pages coverage to choose from:
Can’t get the tool to work?
How to work out how many pages your ink / toner cartridge prints
If you’d prefer to work out how many pages an ink or toner cartridge prints yourself then here’s how…
- Firstly, you’re going to need to find out what the manufacturer says the capacity of your particular printer cartridge is. You can do that by doing a simple search on the TonerGiant website and visiting the product page (we show the page yield on 95% of all products we sell where the information was available to us from the printer manufacturer), you can use our tool above by entering the exact product code of the cartridge (the information will be shown in blue), or you can search for that info yourself on Google.
- Next, decide which page coverage matches your prints. Have a look at the examples of page coverage that we showed you above the tool and decide what sort of printouts you are going to print or regularly print. Manufacturers’ page yields are only 5% coverage of ink or toner on an A4 page which equates to a small number of text-only paragraphs. If you’re printing images or blocks of shaded areas and colour, your coverage will be much higher than 5%
- Now for the maths…
- Take your page coverage and divide it by 5 Â – e.g if your page coverage is 30% then you do 30 divided by 5 = 6
- Take the manufacturer-stated page yield and divide it by the number you calculated above – e.g the HP Q6000A Black Toner prints 2500 pages so 2500 divided by 6 = 416.6 pages
Therefore, if you were printing at 30% page coverage and the manufacturer says you can get a maximum of 2500 pages (at 5% coverage) then you will actually only be able to print a maximum of 416.6 pages!
In summary
It’s impossible to put a definite figure on the number of pages you’ll be able to print from one cartridge as you don’t always print the same things and how old or efficient a printer is can also affect the result!
The MPG analogy used before really is a great way of looking at your printing. Use the page yield/duty cycle figure as a guide only. Appreciate that differences in your printing behaviour will cause you to use more or less ink and toner each time.
Now you have an awesome way to figure out how long your ink or toner will last!…. You’re welcome! 🙂
Did you find this useful?
What do you do to try and make your cartridges last as long as possible? Do you need help working out how much your cartridge will print? Let us know in the comments below or tweet us @TonerGiant.
About Stuart DeavallI have been working in the printing industry with TonerGiant for over 16 years, and I'm the resident technical printer expert, helping people fix their printer problems for over 14 years. I have taken part in many training courses with HP, Samsung, Brother, Canon and Xerox to further my knowledge, and I'm also the Digital Marketing Manager at TonerGiant.co.uk (degree qualified).
is this the proper way of computing color print output considering that every print is consist of color level on an image, in graphic printing, they considered one image as multiple shades of color and CMYK distribution is based on color to achieved so the question is how do you come up with this cartridge yield measurement? where did you base this Fact?
You are correct technically in graphical printing some colours will be used more than others depending on the final output colour or shade achieved, but it is impossible to calculate exactly how many pages you will print as we just do not know exactly what a person is printing in every single print they are doing (for example someone may be printing 200 pages with a heavy amount of blue), therefore in the absence of absolutes, we are using averages and this tool / information is provided as only a guide to give you a better idea. So, all things being equal, it won’t be far wrong, but shouldn’t be taken as absolute fact, just something to help along the way.
Surely there should be an obligation on manufacturers to indicate the amount of ink or toner in the print cartridges which is a normal practice in commerce.
my question how many copy in one cartridge 78a black hp.
There are 2100 pages in a HP 78A toner (CE278A), the coverage level would need to remain at 5% to get the full amount of prints.
if 5% coverage print 2000 pages…. then total coverage will be 10000 point (2000 x 5)
now we will devide points with coverage…. then we will have count of how many pages will be print….
method is: 10000/coverage
e.g.
if coverage is 5%
then 10000 / 5 = 2000 pages
and if coverage is 80%
then 10000/80=125 pages
that’s all
Thanks for the alternative way to calculate.
Hi Stuart Thanks for putting this information out there. I think it’s very helpful. I have been trying to use this for the 3 Epson XP 960s I bought for our university with no luck. Not sure if I’m putting in the wrong code or they are not in your database. If you can let me know I’d appreciate it. Thanks again
Hi Anthony, they do exist but you need the codes that look something like ‘C13T24324010’ for it to work correctly. You can find the correct codes on the Epson XP960 page here
Just set 5 pages
Page One – All text only – COLOURED
Page Two – All coloured text with 50% text highlighted background – may be pink text with blue background
Page Three – All coloured text with some coloured pictorial
Page Four – An A4 sheet Full Pictorial coloured in Plain paper
Page Five – An A4 sheet Full Pictorial coloured in Glossy paper
All calculations should be on the basis of A4 SHEET
I NEED TO KNOW THE AMOUNT OF CARTRIDGE INK REQUIRED IN TERMS OF ML – MILILITRE PER A4 SHEET OF THE FIVE MENTIONED CRITERIA
DO NOT PROVIDE ME ANY PERCENTAGE USE
LET ME SITE ONE BRAND – CANNON – COLOURED PHOTOCOPIER CUM PRINTER – INDIAN PRICE RANGING FROM 10,000.00 ON-WARDS UP TO A MAXIMUM RANGE OF 75,000.00
Hi there, unfortunately there isn’t any chance this could be calculated accurately. You’ve described a wide combination of different coverage amounts and also asked for ml value. Not even Canon could answer that question I’m afraid!
So is a “page” A4?
That’s correct!
I bought my HP DESKJET 2752e All-In-one Printer back in November of last year. I don’t think I’ve made 25 copies and now it seems like my ink is dried up. I keep my printer in a cool area at all times. So……help???
Hi Ruthie, it really depends on what you’re printing. If your printing images it could well be an empty cartridge as the suggested print capacity is based on only 5% of each page being covered in ink which is 3 paragraphs of basic text.
Approximately, how many letter size pages will a HP664XL yield.
Thanks.
HP 664XL can print up to 480 A4 pages
Could you add the model: Canon Pixma MG3620
Hi there, unfortunately the Pixma MG3620 can’t be added as not even Canon provides the capacity data for us to set something.
Very helpful information. Thanks for making them available. Next thing I want to find out is How to compute actual page per minute based on the percent of page coverage. These information actually helps in assessing when to use coloree laser and inkjets in a classroom setting.
Thanks a lot 🙂
Very helpful information!
I just have a question: if the paper I use is not A4 (210mm x 297 mm), do I have to also change the yield for size of the page I use?
Like dividing the mm^2 of my print size by the mm^2 of the A4?
P.S: The usual print size is 910mm x 600mm.
Hi Celine, it really depends on your printer model. The figures I’ve given are based on A4 so it would be different for a wide format printer with the sizes you’ve suggested. Typically wide format cartridges don’t state page yields because the print sizes can differ greatly depending on what’s being printed. In the sizes you’ve suggested the paper is approx. 9 times the size of A4 so you’d have to work out the number of pages you can print using the tool (at the coverage level you’re printing) and then divide the final figure by 9 to get an approximate number of pages.
This doesn’t seem correct…”A quick calculation to get a rough idea of how many pages your cartridge will print is to take the manufacturer stated capacity or page yield and divide it by 100, then multiply by 15. As the manufacturer capacity is based on 5% of the page being covered in ink or toner and we generally print at more like 10 – 15% coverage, this will give you a more accurate value compared to the manufacturer stated amount”
3100 page yield / 100 = 31
31 x 10 = 310 page yield at 10%
31 x 15 = 465 page yield at 15%
this cannot be correct, as the page count goes up with increasing coverage? What am I missing or is the quote from the page incorrect?
You are correct! I most have been half asleep when I wrote this. The correct calculation is to divide your actual page coverage by 5 and then divide the manufacturer page yield by the resulting number.
Eg. at 15% page coverage: 15 / 5 = 3
2500 page cartridge: 2500 / 3 = 833.33 pages.
At 65% page coverage: 65 / 5 = 13
2500 / 13 = 192.3 pages.
Thanks for pointing out my mistake!
Stu
Does this calculation work if you have separate CMYK cartridges? Is it the combined total of the printing capacities of each cartridge, or is it assumed that you are using all 4 and capacity is inclusive of all 4?
Hi there, you have to treat the colour cartridges as one and assume all are printing evenly, so for example if they print 2000 pages each, the total number of pages would still be 2000 pages. If you were to print at 80% page coverage in mostly blue colour, assume all are printing at 80% page coverage.
As we don’t normally print evenly, and all cartridges are used to achieve different tones / colours, chances are some colours would run out sooner than others but there’s no exact way to calculate it that would give you a fair estimate.
Hi, I have the printer hp OfficeJet pro 6975 and the ink that goes with it is the 902XL which is not listed in the compatible inks listed. Can you please calculate the number of pages the ink will print.
the hp 902xl black prints 825 pages, but at a higher coverage such as 20%, it would only print 206 pages. At 80% coverage, you’d only get 51 pages.
Thanks for this fantastic information. I’m in U.S.A., but this info is so helpful. I’ve tried keeping track of how much I print out in a month, but I always forget….
Depending which manufacturer’s site you go to it can’t even be agreed what 5% is. Brother says 150 characters which is about 2 lines. In your example I’m guessing about 700 characters or 10 lines. Given this difference in what should be certainty and the ethics of ink and toner business people in general they may as well claim pages with 0% coverage counts as a page and put any number they want in their misleading ads
Hi Jack most (if not all) printers have a status page that can be printed and will tell you at what page coverage you have been printing (and all printers have a standardised page coverage). So if any company ever tells you you’ve printed at a higher coverage without asking you to show them a status page, they probably are misleading you.
I don’t understand how the page yield equates to the quantity of ink in the cartridge when comparing cartridge sizes.
For example canon 571 black:
7mls standard cartridge page yield is 376
11mls XL cartridge page yield is 895
Is it correct that a 57% increase of ink can produce a 138% increase in page yield??? Are XL cartridges somehow more efficient?
Hi Lily, you have a very good question there. I honestly don’t know the correct answer. I would imagine newer model cartridges are more efficient but also if you were to cut a cartridge open (I don’t suggest trying it because of the mess) there would be a large sponge inside it that holds the ink, I would imagine it has something to do with how well that sponge holds the ink as well as the size of the print head on a larger cartridge. I don’t completely understand the way the technology works but that’s my ‘guess’!
Why not just measure the amount of toner in a new (full) toner cartridge by weighing in when new and after it is empty?
My Canon image Class MF4370dn printer uses 104 cartridges. Over its lifetime since I purchased it in 2009 I have had to replace the toner cartridge 6 or 7 times. Using a small kitchen scale I weighed the 104 cartridges before and after. The amount of toner in each of them was always very close to 100 grams.
thank you so much sir for the stuff you shared with us and specially for the calculator provided. I have calculated for hp laser jet 1320n .
Regards.
From Pakistan.
If a laser printer has 3 toner cartridges, each with a yield of 1000 pages, will all 3 toner cartridges be empty after printing an “average” colour composition after 1000 sheets or after 3000 sheets
They will all print at different rates but to answer your question simply, 1000 pages.
Could I ask you to elaborate on the last answer. If my toner cartridges say they will print 2500 pages at 5% overage and I have cyan, magenta and yellow. How many pages at 5% can I print? If the colours were used in equal amounts and the prints were only 5% coverage I had assumed you would get 7500 pages?
If it’s only 2500 pages what does 5% coverage mean? 5% coverage with an average amount of each colour?
It’s 2500 pages as the colours all combine to make different shades of colour therefore print at the same time. You will get some colours running out before others, so for example if you often print a lot of blue things, the cyan toner would run out sooner, but you won’t get 7500 pages because they combine at the same time to make different colours and shades.
For color page count, what will be the calculation?
Cyan = 5000 pages (5%)
Megenta = 5000 pages (5%)
Yellow = 5000 pages (5%)
Black = 6000 pages (5%)
So Color will be 5000 or 15000 or 21000?
And with 35% page coverage I get 714 per Color toner and 857 per Black Toner, So what will be the color page count 714×3?
Unless printing in one solid pure cyan, magenta or yellow colour, all the colours get used at the same time in varying amounts so there’s no way of calculating perfectly but you will only get 5000 pages in total with some extra in black. At the 35% page coverage, 714 total for all 4 colours and 143 extra in black if printing full colour or 857 total if just printing in black.