Brother toner, drum and ink compatibility chart which of the 61 Brother models in our catalogue takes which number, and what each one costs to run

Work out which numbers you need in about a minute

If the printer is in front of you, the parts are carrying the answer.

• Open the front cover on a laser and pull out the whole assembly. It comes out as one piece, and the number printed on the plastic frame is the DR drum.
• Press the green release lever on that frame and the toner drops out of it. The number on the toner is the TN, and it is the one you replace most often.
• On an inkjet there is a small door on the front right rather than a drum. The cartridges behind it are marked LC followed by a number and a colour letter.
• Nothing fitted, or nothing legible? Find the model on the front panel and read it off the chart below.

Write down both numbers on a laser before you order. The message on the panel tells you which of the two the printer wants, and our guide on resetting a Brother toner counter covers what each message means.

The chart, part one: mono laser toners and drums

25 of the 61 Brother machines in our catalogue are black and white lasers. Each takes one toner in one drum, and Brother offers the toner in two or three sizes that all fit the same slot. Cost per page is the price divided by the rated yield. The drum has no cost per page here because it is priced per drum and shared across every toner you put through it.

Where a row lists two or three toner numbers, they are the same cartridge in different sizes. Any of them fits, and the only thing that changes is how long it lasts and what a page costs.

The chart, part two: colour laser toner sets

The colour lasers, 16 models here, take four separate toners and one drum unit covering all four colours. Every colour is its own part number, so an empty magenta costs you a magenta rather than a set.

The cost of a page that uses all four is worth reading off these rows rather than the black figure alone. On the cheapest colour set here, the TN-436 tier, a four colour page costs 6.9c. On the dearest, the TN-223 tier, the same page costs 16.3c.

The chart, part three: LC ink for the inkjets

The 20 inkjets run a separate range with no drum in it. Brother sells four individual cartridges per machine, so you replace one colour at a time.

The families are not close to each other on running cost, which is the part worth knowing before you buy the printer rather than after.

The spread across Brother's own inkjet range is about 4.9 times. A page using all four LC-401 cartridges costs 23.0c, against 4.73c for the same page on LC-406. The cheap end is Brother's INKvestment Tank hardware, where the cartridges hold far more ink and feed an internal reservoir, and it is the reason the LC406BK at 0.83c a page and the LC401BK at 6.5c a page are both current Brother black ink.

How many toners each drum is rated to outlive

A drum is rated in pages, the same as a toner, so dividing one by the other tells you how many toner changes you get before the drum is due. Brother prints both figures on the boxes and leaves the division to you.

The third column is unusually consistent. In our Brother data, 6 of the 7 drum families are rated at exactly ten standard toners, and the DR-223CL at 12.9. That ratio only holds if you keep buying the smallest toner in the family.

The last column is the one that catches people out. Fit the largest toner the same machine accepts and the drum stops being a background cost, because a DR-820 is rated for only 2.5 of the TN-880 toners that fit alongside it. Your third one of those runs out somewhere past the drum's rated end. That does not make the big toner a mistake, because it still cuts the cost per page, but it does mean the drum arrives as a bill long before the ten changes people expect.

Two things skew the rated figure further. Brother quotes drum life on a basis of one page per job, so a machine that prints single pages all day wears its drum at close to the rated rate while one that prints long documents does better. Brother also lists paper type, temperature and humidity as factors, which is why an office printer in a warm room reaches Replace Drum early. A repeating mark or dot at a fixed interval down the page is the classic sign it has arrived, and no amount of new toner clears it.

Where the bigger toner earns its money, and where it does not

Brother sells most of these numbers in two or three sizes into the same slot. Across the 21 steps in our Brother data where a bigger tier fits the same machine, the gain runs from 48% down to 3%.

Moving from the TN-820 to the TN-850 takes a page from 2.7c to 1.4c, a 48% cut, which makes the standard tier on that family hard to justify unless you barely print.

At the other end of the table the TN-850 to TN-880 step is worth 3%, which is close enough to nothing that the larger box only wins if it is discounted or if you want the fewer changes. You are also paying up front for pages you may not print before the machine is replaced.

Third party toner in a Brother, and what the messages mean

Brother does not run a firmware programme that refuses to print with third party supplies. All 61 Brother models in our catalogue are listed as open on our firmware lockout tracker, and Brother has said so publicly rather than leaving it to be inferred. The detail is in our guide on whether Brother blocks third party ink.

What you will see instead is a notice. A compatible toner without a working chip, or a refilled original, usually leaves the printer reporting the old level or asking you to replace a cartridge you have just fitted. That is the counter rather than a block, and Brother lasers carry a Continue Mode that prints past it. Our guide on resetting the toner counter has the sequence per panel type, including the separate drum reset.

The drum works differently again. It is a mechanical part rather than a chemical one, compatible drums are widely sold, and the counter on it is a page count rather than any measurement of actual wear. A drum that still prints cleanly at its rated end will keep printing cleanly after a reset, which is why the drum reset is worth knowing before you buy a replacement you may not need yet.

Common questions

Keep reading

• How to reset a Brother toner counter and the separate drum reset
• Does Brother block third party ink? what the non-genuine notice does
• The same chart for HP including which HP models lock out third party ink
• The same chart for Canon PG and CL against PGI and CLI
• Cheapest printers to run, by cost per page
• Firmware lockout tracker every printer we track, by whether it blocks third party supplies
• What a page yield number really means what the page yield column on this chart is actually measuring.
• Drum unit vs toner what the DR number next to the TN number is, and what it adds per page.
• Is your cartridge number being discontinued? ten Brother machines in our catalogue sit on toner numbers nothing newer uses.
• Your cartridge is being discontinued: what to do about it why an orphaned Brother laser is the easiest case of all to solve.

Sources

1. Brother support, on the difference between the toner cartridge and the drum unit. support.brother.com
2. Brother support, drum unit yields quoted on a one page per job basis, with paper type, temperature and humidity listed as factors. support.brother.ca
3. Brother USA product page for the DR630 drum unit, approximate 12,000 page yield. brother-usa.com
4. Brother USA product page for the DR331CL drum unit, approximate 25,000 page yield. brother-usa.com
5. Brother USA, INKvestment Tank cartridges described as expanded capacity cartridges feeding an internal ink store. brother-usa.com
6. Toner yields quoted throughout are the manufacturer's ISO/IEC 19752 ratings as recorded in our own catalogue, and cost per page is that price divided by that yield. iso.org

Last updated 13 September 2026. This guide is general information, not a repair warranty. Printer menus and HP's model lists change, so confirm the exact steps for your model on the manufacturer's support site before you make changes.