HP ink cartridge compatibility chart which HP printers take which number, what each set costs to run, and which ones fight third-party ink

Find your cartridge number in about a minute

You do not need a model lookup for this. The printer is carrying the answer around with it.

• Open the cartridge access door, which is usually the front cover you lift to swap ink, and read the label beside the carriage. HP prints the number there in plain language, along the lines of Use HP 67 Ink or HP 910 series.
• Pull the cartridge that is already fitted and read the top or front face. The number is on the label with any XL suffix attached to it.
• On a model with a screen, open the Ink or Supplies menu, the one with the droplet icon, and look for cartridge information. It lists the black and the colour numbers separately.
• If the label has worn off, the serial number on the sticker at the back of the printer or inside the cartridge bay is enough for HP support to identify the machine.

Write down both numbers if your printer takes separate black and colour cartridges. Getting the family right and the colour split wrong still leaves you with ink you cannot use.

The chart: HP ink families and the printers that take them

These are the HP ink families in our catalogue that fit at least three printers, sorted by how many machines use them. Where a family ships as a black number plus a separate colour number, such as the 932 black with the 933 colours, the pair is listed together because they always go in the same printer. Cost per page is the cartridge price divided by its rated yield, and the cheapest black in each family is the one shown.

The laser families work the same way, with an A number for the standard toner and an X number for the high yield version of the same cartridge.

That is 71 of the 105 HP printers we track. If yours is missing, the number on the label inside the door is still the one to buy against, and the cartridge lookup on HP's own support site covers models we have not catalogued yet.

What XL actually buys you

XL is the same ink in a bigger shell, sold on the promise that the bigger shell is cheaper per page. Usually it is. In this catalogue it is not always, and the exceptions are worth knowing before you pay the upgrade.

The HP 67 family is the one that stings. The standard black works out at 15.0c per page and the XL black at 15.4c, so the larger cartridge costs marginally more for every page it prints at these prices. You are buying fewer trips to the shop, not cheaper printing.

The HP 65 family is the expensive corner of the chart. Its standard tri-color costs 23.0c a colour page, which is the dearest page of any cartridge we list, and even the XL tri-color at 13.3c sits above the 12.3c XL black, so colour costs more than black here whichever size you buy. Stay on the inkjet side of the chart and the spread is still wide: HP 950XL prints a black page for 1.8c against 15.0c for HP 67, so the dearest black page here costs about 8.3 times the cheapest. Both are HP ink off the same shelf. The cheapest colour page in the chart belongs to HP 933XL at 1.7c. The best toner here, HP 58X at 1.8c a page, only matches that cheapest ink family rather than beating it, which is not what most people expect from a laser.

The HP 962 family splits the decision. The XL black genuinely helps, 2.4c against 2.8c for the standard. The XL colour does not: cyan is 2.4c either way, so you are paying the larger price for the same cost per page and getting only the convenience of fewer swaps. Buy the XL black and the standard colours if you want the money to matter.

One caveat on all of this. Rated yields come from the ISO test page at five percent coverage, which is a light business document. If you print photos or dense graphics you will get through a cartridge faster than the table says, and the ranking between families still holds even though the absolute numbers will not.

Why the numbers do not cross over

HP cartridge families are physically and electronically distinct. The shells are keyed differently, the chips report different things, and a printer built around one family will not take another even when the cartridges look similar on the shelf. HP's own guidance says the same in blunter terms: do not mix series, because an HP 60 does not go in an HP 65 printer.

The straight mismatch is easy to spot. These are the ones that catch people out.

• Regional numbering. The same cartridge carries a different number depending on the market it was made for, and the chip is coded to match. North American and European sets run in pairs, so a printer set up in one region will report a mismatch when you fit the other region's number. HP's support community handles these as regional resets, and HP's own agents warn there that the reset procedure is model specific and can brick a printer if you run the steps meant for a different one. If you moved country with your printer, ask HP for the code rather than trying a service menu you found on a forum.
• Renumbering across generations. HP has relabelled families, and cartridges sold as a combined number such as 67 with 305 caused enough confusion that HP's own community board has threads from people whose replacements suddenly stopped matching their printer. HP runs a cartridge lookup tool for exactly this case, because some printers accept the older generation cartridge from a previous model and some do not.
• The ink that came in the box. Starter cartridges carry the same family number as the retail ones, so whatever is printed on the door label is still the number to reorder, even if the cartridge you pulled out ran dry sooner than you expected.

Compatible and remanufactured cartridges follow the same family rule. A third-party HP 902XL is built to the 902 shell and the 902 chip, and it will not fit a 962 printer any more than the original would.

Which of these printers will argue about third-party ink

Most compatibility charts stop at the number. Of the 73 printers in the chart, 40 carry HP Dynamic Security or HP+ enrolment on our firmware lockout tracker, which means a firmware update can stop the machine accepting non-HP cartridges. The other 33 have no lock recorded.

Two patterns fall out of that table. Every locked family is an inkjet, and every locked model is 2016 or newer, so the older ink families and both LaserJet toner families sit on the open side. The boundary is not clean, though. The HP 63 family runs to a 2018 model and is still open on our tracker, so age alone will not tell you. Dynamic Security has also been pushed by firmware onto machines that shipped without it, which is why we track it by model rather than by year.

If your printer is in the locked column and you want to use compatible ink, the order of operations matters. Decline the firmware update, turn off automatic updates, and check the cartridge you buy is current stock rather than an older chip revision. Our guide to declining HP firmware updates walks through it per model type. An HP+ model is a harder case, because enrolment is one time and irreversible, and it commits that printer to original HP supplies for its working life.

Right number, still rejected

Buying the correct number and getting an error anyway is common enough that it is worth separating the causes before you return anything.

• An error that changes or clears when you reseat the cartridge is a contact or seating fault. Take it out, check the orange tape is off, wipe the copper contacts with a dry lint-free cloth, and refit it until it clicks.
• An error naming one specific cartridge that never clears, on a model in the locked column above, on ink that worked until an update landed, is a firmware block rather than a fault.
• A cartridge protection message means the chip is locked to another printer or another HP account, which is a setting rather than a defect.
• A region mismatch message means the number is right for the cartridge and wrong for where the printer thinks it lives.

The HP cartridge not recognized guide covers the diagnosis in detail, including the exact HP wording for each case.

Common questions

Keep reading

• The firmware lockout tracker every printer we track, with its Dynamic Security status and the sources behind it.
• Does HP block third-party ink? how Dynamic Security works, what HP has said about it, and what the settlements covered.
• HP cartridge not recognized telling a seating fault apart from a firmware block, with the exact HP wording for each.
• Which printers are cheapest to run the same cost per page maths applied across every brand in the catalogue.
• OEM vs compatible vs remanufactured what you actually give up by buying the third-party version of these numbers.
• What a page yield number really means what the page yield column on this chart is actually measuring.
• HP LaserJet toner compatibility chart the same cross-reference for HP LaserJet toner, with the firmware column.
• Is your cartridge number being discontinued? which HP numbers have had no new host printer since 2014.
• Your cartridge is being discontinued: what to do about it what to do if your HP number has had no new host printer since 2014.
• Is the XL cartridge actually cheaper? once you know your HP number, this is what the XL version of it is worth.

Sources

1. HP Tech Takes, How to Find What Ink Cartridge Your HP Printer Uses, the access door label, the cartridge face, the supplies menu, and the advice not to mix cartridge series. www.hp.com
2. HP Support, HP Printer Cartridge Lookup, the tool for printers that can use the older generation cartridge from a previous model, and where the serial number is found. support.hp.com
3. HP Support Community, Using European ink cartridge in an American printer, HP staff on the regional reset being model specific and able to brick the device. h30434.www3.hp.com
4. HP Support Community, 67/305 isn't the same as the original, an owner whose renumbered cartridges stopped matching a DeskJet Plus 4155. h30434.www3.hp.com
5. CompAndSave, HP printer says cartridge incompatible, on checking the number, the region, the orange tape and the contacts before assuming a fault. www.compandsave.com

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.