Cheapest printer ink cartridges you can trust and where to buy them

Looking for the best, cheapest printer ink cartridges? Each year our survey of thousands of printer owners reveals top third-party ink brands are more highly rated by users than original printer manufacturer ink. Our research shows third-party ink is often by far the cheapest, too. 

Printer manufacturers would much rather you use their own-brand printer ink in their printers. However, our research shows you're better off spending less on your cartridges and opting for cheaper third-party printer ink. Our extensive research ensures we only recommend brands with excellent quality cartridges with good compatibility.

Provided, that is, you know which third-party brand to choose – which is why you need to read the results of our in-depth research.

As well as helping you save money on ink, we can save you money on your next printer and reduce your ink costs even more. See our expert pick of the best cheap printers to buy and run.

Cheapest printer ink cartridges – we reveal the best

Original ink is very expensive. Our lab tests discovered the following costs for general printing: 

• 11p per page - original Epson cartridge ink cost 
• 1p per page - for all our cheapest top-performing third-party ink

We asked thousands of Which? members who use third-party ink cartridges to rate their print quality, ease of use, value for money and overall satisfaction. We put the top four ink brands through our extra lab tests – three excelled and are our Which? Recommended Providers. You can use our results to buy cheap printer ink cartridges from a quality brand. 

Original ink - whether that's from HP, Canon, Epson or Brother – came near or at the bottom of our table, as rated by actual users. Showing most printer users in our survey are satisfied with switching to cheaper printer ink from third parties.

Only logged-in Which? members can see the ratings for each brand. If you're not yet a member, you'll see the brands in alphabetical order, but not the results. We link to each brand's website. You can get instant access to our best cheap printer ink results and all our reviews, ranging from printers to batteries to laptops, if you join Which?.

If you need a new printer, see our expert pick of the best home printers to discover which models impressed us in our independent lab tests.

Cheapest printer ink cartridges – why you can trust our recommendations

Our extensive survey of thousands of third-party ink cartridge users reveals which cheap printer ink actual users recommend. We also rigorously lab test the best-rated ink cartridges. 

We send ink cartridges from the top four rated brands in our survey to our lab, where we conduct comprehensive further checks with two typical printers, comparing quality for each ink directly against Epson original ink. 

We test the full gamut of printing, from black text to colour office graphics and album-worthy photos, on both matte and glossy photo paper. We also assess how many pages each cartridge will print. 

Every Which? Recommended Provider brand printed at least 171 more pages per cartridge than Epson's ink (which printed 1,012 pages), with the best printing 256 more pages and at only 6% of the cost. This shows you really do make a huge saving, and the print quality is great too. Our expert tests definitively show that, for most uses, the extra cost of original ink isn't worth the tiny difference in performance.

More on the cheapest printer ink brands

Refresh Cartridges

Refresh Cartridges sells a wide range of compatible and remanufactured cartridges and original cartridges. It offers free shipping and up to a three-year guarantee on ink and toner cartridges from the Refresh Cartridges website.

Stinkyink

Stinkyink stocks original and third-party inks for a wide range of printers. The Stinkyink website is easy to browse, and there’s a 12-month guarantee on all cartridges. It also promises to repair or replace your printer, if it's within warranty, in the unlikely event that its cartridges do cause irreparable damage.

Ink Factory

Ink Factory is was established in 1999 and is a family-run business. It offers a lifetime guarantee on all cartridges, and no quibble returns or replacements. Find it at the Ink Factory website.

First Call Inks

First Call Inks offers a wide range of compatible and remanufactured cartridges on its website Firstcallinks.co.uk. It offers a guarantee with all of is products and will fully refund unopened orders. 

Inkredible

Inkredible stocks multiple cartridges online, as well as its own brand of compatible ink, at the Inkredible online store. It offers a standard one-year guarantee against faults, defects and damage, and will offer a replacement or reward points if cartridges are deemed defective between 12 to 36 months after purchase.

Internet Ink

Internet Ink is a Nottingham-based store that also sells its compatible cartridges from the Internet Ink website. The delivery fee is included in the price of the inks and it offers a one-year guarantee on faulty products.

Colour Direct

We excluded Colour Direct from our lab test this year. Colour Direct mainly sells ink for older printers - you can search through the list of compatible models listed alongside each cartridge. The number of respondents to our survey using Colour Direct was also quite low, and declined compared to last year. Unlike many other third-party brands, Colour Direct doesn't have its own website but sells only through its store on Amazon. 

That said, if your printer is compatible and you love using Amazon, Colour Direct could be worth a look.

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Cheapest printer ink: best places to buy online

You get far more choice if you shop for ink cartridges online, rather than in-store. Many cheaper third-party ink cartridges are only available online.

This is why our survey of printer ink users is designed to let us rate online retailers. Amazon and eBay are popular online choices, but neither is the highest rated in our survey of thousands of Which? members. Yet again, original ink brand websites from printer manufacturers came bottom in the table – actual users don't rate them as the best place to buy original ink.

When we checked, we found ink 94% cheaper from the website of one of our Which? Recommended Providers than original ink. And that didn't even consider that website's option to save even more if you buy cheap printer ink in bulk.

We've rounded up the best online printer ink retailers, including ratings for how easy the website was to navigate, whether our members felt it was value for money and how good the customer service was. You can use our results even if you use your printer manufacturer's original ink, as third-party retailers usually sell it.

Only logged-in Which? members can see which retailers were rated the best. If you're not yet a member, you can get instant access to our results if you join Which? – you will also get access to all of our online reviews, from printers, to phones to electric cars.

More on the cheapest printer ink retailers

Cartridge Save 

Cartridge Save offers free next-day delivery on all products on its website Cartridgesave.co.uk. It offers a three-year warranty on its own-brand cartridges if you encounter a problem with the ink. Plus it will repair or replace your printer for free in the unlikely event that its cartridges cause any damage. 

First Call Inks

First Call Inks offers a wide range of remanufactured cartridges on its website, Firstcallinks.co.uk. It offers a guarantee with all of its products.

Ink Factory

Ink Factory claims the inks you buy at inkfactory.com 'won't void your warranty' on your printer, and offers free delivery on orders over £10.

Internet Ink

Internet Ink is a Nottingham-based store which also sells its compatible cartridges from the Internet Ink website. It doesn't add an additional delivery fee but includes it in the price of the ink and offers a one-year guarantee on faulty products.

Just Ink And Paper

This retailer sticks to its mission statement – it sells only ink and paper. The Just Ink And Paper website stocks ink from the big four printer brands: Brother, Canon, Epson and HP. These are all original inks, so you can expect to pay a premium compared to third-party inks.

Refresh Cartridges

Refresh Cartridges has a 'Cartridge Price Promise' you can take advantage of either before or after purchase (within 7 days) on the Refresh Cartridges website, if you find another supplier that beats it on price. It offers ink cartridges for an exceptionally wide range of printers, making it very easy to find compatible ink simply by searching for your printer model.

Stinkyink

Stinkyink stocks original and third-party inks for a wide range of printers. The Stinkyink website is easy to browse, and there’s a 12-month guarantee on all cartridges. It also promises to repair or replace your printer, if it's within warranty, in the unlikely event its cartridges cause irreparable damage.

Need a new printer with affordable print costs? Take a look at our Best cheap printers to buy and run.

Is it OK to use cheap ink cartridges?

Printer brands like HP, Canon and Epson would prefer you used their own inks. To encourage you to do so, they can use tactics ranging from nagging to warnings. 

HP even uses more aggressive strategies from its dynamic security limiting you to 'remanufactured' (refilled) third-party cartridges, and its opt-in HP+ service which blocks the use of third-party cartridges completely (and can't be reversed). 

But our expert tests show you shouldn't be put off lightly. 

Not only can you make enormous savings by switching to cheaper third-party ink, but our survey of buyers shows most are happier overall with third-party ink than the printer manufacturers' original ink. Plus our lab tests show that, for most uses, the difference in quality with the best third-party ink is difficult to notice.

When you insert a third-party ink into your printer, your printer model may try to put you off with messages like 'You have not installed genuine cartridges' – just accept the messages and usually the ink will work just fine.

Cheap ink cartridge myths

Here are some common myths our research debunks:

• 'Third-party ink cartridges don’t last as long' - This isn’t always the case and the difference isn’t meaningful. Out of the four third-party ink cartridge brands that topped our survey, when we lab tested how many pages they print until the ink runs out, all four printed at least at least 171 pages more than original ink, and the cheapest did so at a whopping 94% lower cost.
• 'I fear third-party ink won’t work in my printer' - Just type the model name of your printer into the website of a third-party provider and it will tell you which compatible ink cartridges it offers. Many websites offer money-back guarantees, in the unlikely event you run into a problem. All of our recommended Which? Recommended Providers are rated a full five stars out of five for ink cartridge installation in our survey.
• 'I’m worried third-party ink will leak' - Only 1% of third-party ink users we surveyed had experienced this over the 12 months prior to our survey.
• 'I’m worried it will invalidate my printer’s warranty' - This isn’t completely clear and will vary by brand. Some third-party brands, such as Stinkyink, are so confident that they promise to replace your printer if there’s an issue.

How to recycle your used ink cartridges

Every year, millions of ink cartridges are needlessly dumped into UK landfill. And while most of the big brands have freepost recycling schemes for their own cartridges, they often won’t accept third-party ones. 

However, some retailers, like Stinkyink, offer a recycling service for all the ink and toner cartridges they sell, including original and third-party cartridges.

Some larger supermarkets and office supply shops have dedicated recycling bins for printer cartridges – something to keep an eye out for when you’re out shopping. If all else fails, there’s a good chance your local recycling centre will take used cartridges.

Our independent, expert printer tests factor in running costs, so you can use our results to be sure you're not paying over-the-odds over time. See all of our printer reviews.