Is the XL cartridge actually cheaper? yes on all 31 pairs we priced, but the saving runs from 7.1% to 54.4%, and the weakest one asks 86% more at the till
Every guide to buying ink tells you the XL is cheaper per page. Most of them stop there, and the part they skip is the part worth knowing. On one printer the XL black barely moves the cost of a page while the XL colour takes a third off it, and the two cartridges sit next to each other on the same shelf.
The short answer, and the range it hides
We took 9 cartridge families and read both sizes off the maker's own store: the list price, and the ISO page yield the maker publishes for the printer that takes them. That gives 31 standard against high capacity pairs across Epson and HP. The high capacity cartridge came out cheaper per page on every single one.
So the advice is right. What the advice leaves out is the size of the win. The median pair saves 34.1%. The best, the Epson 802 in black, saves 54.4%. The weakest, the Epson 410 in black, saves 7.1% and charges 86% more at the till to do it. That is a spread of roughly 8 to one between two decisions that get the same three word answer.
The other thing a percentage hides is the level. The cheapest page in the table comes from the Epson 802XL in black at 2.23c. The dearest comes from the HP 67XL in tri-colour at 18.50c, about 8 times as much. Both of those are the high capacity option. Picking the right size inside a family is worth tens of percent. The family your printer takes is worth several hundred, and you chose that when you bought the machine.
All 31 pairs, sorted by how little the XL saves
Prices are the maker's own list price on the day we read them, and yields are the maker's own ISO figure for the printer that takes the cartridge. Both numbers come from the same party, which is the only way this comparison means anything. The colour rows are one cartridge, not a set. Cyan, magenta and yellow are priced identically in every family here, so one row stands for all three.
| Family and slot | Standard | Per page | High capacity | Per page | XL saves |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Epson 410 black | 250p at $15.39 | 6.16c | 500p at $28.59 | 5.72c | 7.1% |
| Epson 273 black | 250p at $15.39 | 6.16c | 500p at $27.49 | 5.50c | 10.7% |
| Epson 302 black | 250p at $15.39 | 6.16c | 550p at $29.69 | 5.40c | 12.3% |
| HP 67 black | 120p at $22.99 | 19.16c | 240p at $35.99 | 15.00c | 21.7% |
| HP 67 tri-colour | 100p at $23.99 | 23.99c | 200p at $36.99 | 18.50c | 22.9% |
| HP 962 black | 1,000p at $43.99 | 4.40c | 2,000p at $63.99 | 3.20c | 27.3% |
| HP 962 each colour | 700p at $30.99 | 4.43c | 1,600p at $49.99 | 3.12c | 29.4% |
| Epson 273 each colour | 300p at $15.39 | 5.13c | 650p at $21.99 | 3.38c | 34.1% |
| Epson 302 each colour | 300p at $15.39 | 5.13c | 650p at $21.99 | 3.38c | 34.1% |
| Epson 410 each colour | 300p at $15.39 | 5.13c | 650p at $21.99 | 3.38c | 34.1% |
| Epson 812 black | 350p at $23.99 | 6.85c | 1,100p at $47.99 | 4.36c | 36.4% |
| Epson 822 black | 350p at $23.99 | 6.85c | 1,100p at $47.99 | 4.36c | 36.4% |
| Epson 232 black | 150p at $22.99 | 15.33c | 380p at $36.99 | 9.73c | 36.5% |
| Epson 812 each colour | 300p at $15.99 | 5.33c | 1,100p at $36.99 | 3.36c | 36.9% |
| Epson 822 each colour | 240p at $14.49 | 6.04c | 1,100p at $36.99 | 3.36c | 44.3% |
| Epson 802 each colour | 650p at $30.99 | 4.77c | 1,900p at $45.99 | 2.42c | 49.2% |
| Epson 802 black | 900p at $43.99 | 4.89c | 2,600p at $57.99 | 2.23c | 54.4% |
Read the bottom of that table first. The four weakest pairs are all black cartridges on Epson's home photo lines, and they are the ones where the usual advice is close to worthless.
On the same printer, black and colour give different answers
This is the finding that surprised us. Take the Epson XP-7100. Its Epson 410 black and its Epson 410 colour are the same family on the same shelf. The XL colour takes 34.1% off the cost of a page. The XL black takes 7.1%.
| Family | XL saves on black | XL saves on each colour | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Epson 410 | 7.1% | 34.1% | 26.9 points |
| Epson 302 | 12.3% | 34.1% | 21.7 points |
| Epson 273 | 10.7% | 34.1% | 23.4 points |
The pattern holds across all three of Epson's home photo families, and it comes from how the XL is priced rather than from how much ink is in it. Both sizes roughly double the yield. Going up to the XL colour adds 43% to the price. Going up to the XL black adds between 79% and 93%.
On an XP-6100, XP-7100 or XP-820, then, buy the XL colours without thinking about it and treat the XL black as a convenience purchase rather than a saving. The discount on the black is up to 27 percentage points smaller than the discount on the colour sitting beside it.
Where XL actually pays: the office machines
The WorkForce and OfficeJet Pro families sit at the other end of the table. The Epson 802 black saves 54.4%, worth $26.57 per thousand pages, and its colours save 49.2%. The HP 962 black saves 27.3%.
The machines at this end of the range are the ones sold on running cost rather than on sticker price, and their high capacity option is priced accordingly. We cannot tell you why a maker prices a cartridge the way it does. What we can say is that the four office families here save between 27.3% and 54.4% whichever slot you look at, while on the three home photo families the black slot alone falls to between 7.1% and 12.3%.
Filling one from empty, all four slots at list, costs $136.96 in standards or $195.96 in XLs on the Epson 802 family. On the HP 962 it is $136.96 against $213.96. The two standard sets landing on the same figure is a coincidence, not a typo. Those are large enough numbers that the percentage turns into real cash, which is not true further up the table.
What you hand over at the till against what you get back
Cost per page is the right measure once the cartridge is empty. It is not the number you are looking at in the shop. Ranked by how much extra the XL asks for at the counter per point of saving it gives back, these are the ones that ask for most.
| Family and slot | Extra at the till | Saved per page | Saved per 1,000 pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Epson 410 black | $15.39 to $28.59, up 86% | 7.1% | $4.38 |
| Epson 302 black | $15.39 to $29.69, up 93% | 12.3% | $7.58 |
| Epson 273 black | $15.39 to $27.49, up 79% | 10.7% | $6.58 |
| Epson 812 each colour | $15.99 to $36.99, up 131% | 36.9% | $19.67 |
| Epson 822 each colour | $14.49 to $36.99, up 155% | 44.3% | $26.75 |
The Epson 410 black is the clearest case. It costs 86% more and returns 7.1%, which is $4.38 back per thousand pages. If you print a few hundred pages a year you will not reach that, and you will have tied up the extra cash in a cartridge that is ageing on the shelf.
The mirror image is the Epson 802 black: 32% more at the till for 54.4% off every page, $26.57 per thousand. That one pays for itself inside the first cartridge.
Find your printer in this list
These nine families cover 23 of the machines in our catalogue. If yours is here, the row tells you how much the size choice is worth on it before you buy anything.
| Family | XL saving, black to colour | Machines here that take it |
|---|---|---|
| Epson 410 | 7.1% to 34.1% | Expression Premium XP-7100 |
| Epson 273 | 10.7% to 34.1% | Expression Premium XP-820 |
| Epson 302 | 12.3% to 34.1% | Expression Premium XP-6100 |
| HP 67 | 21.7% to 22.9% | DeskJet 1255, DeskJet 2742e, DeskJet 2755e, DeskJet 4155e, and 3 more |
| HP 962 | 27.3% to 29.4% | OfficeJet Pro 9015, OfficeJet Pro 9015e, OfficeJet Pro 9018e, OfficeJet Pro 9025, and 1 more |
| Epson 812 | 36.4% to 36.9% | WorkForce Pro WF-7820, WorkForce Pro WF-7840 |
| Epson 822 | 36.4% to 44.3% | WorkForce Pro WF-3820 |
| Epson 232 | 36.5% | Expression Home XP-4200, WorkForce WF-2930, WorkForce WF-2950 |
| Epson 802 | 49.2% to 54.4% | WorkForce Pro WF-4720, WorkForce Pro WF-4740 |
Where a row shows a range, the low end is the black cartridge and the high end is each colour, which is the split covered above. A single figure means black and colour land in the same place. If your machine is not listed, its own page carries the cartridges it takes with their yields and list prices, and the division in the section below takes about a minute.
Two families where there is no decision to make
The Epson 232 is sold in a high capacity black and nothing else. Epson's own family page and the ink list for the XP-4200 both show black only, so the colour slot is fixed at 6.64c a page whatever you do. Half of the buying decision is not offered to you. We had three colour rows for this family in our own catalogue and removed them on 2026-09-03 for exactly that reason.
The HP 67 is the other one, for a different reason. Its XL is a real saving, 21.7% on black. It is also still the most expensive page in this table at 15.00c for black, and the tri-colour XL is 18.50c. Of the 34 plain standard capacity cartridges we priced, 31 cost less per page than the HP 67XL black does, high capacity and all. Buying the XL is still the right call on that machine, and it will not rescue you. Running cost is a property of the printer far more than of the cartridge size you pick for it.
If that is the machine you own, the size question is the small one. The cost per page ranking is the page that answers the bigger one.
How to check your own family in about a minute
The method is simple enough to redo, and worth redoing because prices move.
- Find your cartridge number, then open the maker's own store page for both the plain number and the XL. Not a marketplace listing, not a comparison site. The maker publishes a list price and it is the only price both sizes are quoted at on the same basis.
- Get the ISO page yield from the maker too. Epson puts it in the Replacement Ink block on the printer's product page, not on the cartridge page. HP prints it at the top of the cartridge page as PAGE YIELD. Canon publishes ink volume in millilitres on its cartridge pages instead, so a Canon comparison needs the yield from the printer's support pages.
- Divide price by yield for each size. Multiply by 100 for cents per page.
- Compare the two, then look at the cash difference instead of the percentage, and ask how long the bigger cartridge will take you to finish.
Two things throw this comparison off. Combo packs are not comparable to singles, because the pack usually mixes a high capacity black with standard colours and quotes one price. And a sale price on one size and a list price on the other tells you about this week, not about the cartridge.
What this page does not settle
Cost per page assumes you use the whole cartridge. That assumption is doing a lot of work at the top of the table, where the XL asks for most of its money up front. Ink is a liquid with a shelf life and a printhead that clogs when it sits, so a cartridge you take two years to finish is not delivering 2.23c a page in any real sense. Our guides on cartridge shelf life and dried ink and clogged printheads cover where that line sits.
These are also list prices from the makers, which is the honest basis for comparing two sizes of the same thing and is not what most people pay. Street prices discount the two sizes by different amounts, which can move a marginal pair either way. Third-party and remanufactured cartridges are a separate question again, covered in OEM against compatible against remanufactured.
And the yields themselves are a standardised test rather than a promise. What ISO 24711 actually measures explains why your own figure will be lower, and why that does not break the comparison as long as both sizes are measured the same way.
Common questions
Is the XL cartridge always cheaper per page?
On the 31 pairs we priced off the makers' own stores, yes, every time. The amount is what varies: from 7.1% on the Epson 410 black to 54.4% on the Epson 802 black.
How much does XL actually save me?
Per thousand pages, between $4.38 and $55.92 depending on the family. Work out roughly how many pages you print in a year before deciding whether that is worth the extra outlay.
Why is the XL black barely cheaper on my Epson XP printer?
Because Epson prices it that way. On the Epson 410 family the XL black doubles the yield and adds 86% to the price, so the cost per page only falls 7.1%. The XL colour in the same family adds far less proportionally and saves 34.1%.
Should I buy XL if I hardly print?
Usually not. The saving only arrives if you finish the cartridge, and an opened cartridge has a limited life. If you print occasionally, the standard size costs less up front and is more likely to be used before the ink degrades.
Is there an XL version of every cartridge?
No. The Epson 232 is sold in a high capacity black only, so its colours are fixed at 6.64c a page. Check the maker's own family page before assuming an XL exists in your colour.
What about XXL cartridges?
Some WorkForce families add an extra high capacity black above the XL. Run the same check on it: price divided by the maker's ISO yield, compared against the XL and not against the standard, because the step from XL to XXL is usually much smaller than the step from standard to XL.
Does an XL cartridge fit the same printer?
Yes. Within a family the standard and the XL are the same physical fit and the same ink; the XL simply holds more. Nothing on the printer needs changing.
Are these the prices I will pay in a shop?
No. These are the makers' own list prices, used because they are the only figures quoted on the same basis for both sizes. Retail prices are usually lower and discount the two sizes unevenly, so redo the division with the two prices actually in front of you.
Which of these families is cheapest to run?
Of the ones here, the Epson 802XL at 2.23c a page. The dearest is the HP 67XL at 18.50c, about 8 times as much, and both of those are the XL. The printer you own matters far more than the cartridge size you choose for it.
Where did these numbers come from?
Prices and yields were read on 2026-09-03 from Epson's Ink Finder and product specification pages and from HP's US store product pages, then stored against each cartridge in our catalogue with the source recorded. Cost per page is list price divided by the maker's published ISO yield.
Keep reading
- Page yield explained: what ISO 24711 measures why the rated yield and your yield are different numbers, and why the comparison still holds.
- Which printers are cheapest to run, ranked the bigger lever: the machine sets the running cost, the cartridge size only trims it.
- OEM against compatible against remanufactured the other way to cut cost per page, with its own trade-offs.
- Do ink and toner cartridges expire? the shelf life that decides whether a big cartridge is a saving or a write-off.
- Setup cartridges and what the first refill really costs why the cartridge in the box runs out so fast, and what replacing it costs.
- Preventing dried ink and clogged printheads how to make sure you finish the cartridge you paid extra for.
Sources
- Epson US, Ink Finder for the Expression Premium XP-6100, cartridge list prices epson.com
- Epson US, Expression Premium XP-6100 product page, Replacement Ink yields epson.com
- Epson US, Ink Finder for the Expression Premium XP-7100 epson.com
- Epson US, Expression Premium XP-7100 product page, Replacement Ink yields epson.com
- Epson US, Ink Finder for the Expression Premium XP-820 epson.com
- Epson US, Ink Finder and product page for the Expression Home XP-4200 epson.com
- Epson US, Ink Finder for the WorkForce Pro WF-4720 epson.com
- Epson US, WorkForce Pro WF-4720 product page, Replacement Ink yields epson.com
- Epson US, Ink Finder and product page for the WorkForce Pro WF-7820 epson.com
- Epson US, Ink Finder for the WorkForce Pro WF-3820 epson.com
- Epson US, Claria 232XL ink cartridges, high capacity offered in black only epson.com
- Epson US, Ink Yields, how Epson measures cartridge yield epson.com
- HP Store, HP 67 and 67XL ink cartridges, MSRP and page yield hp.com
- HP Store, HP 962XL High Yield Black Original Ink Cartridge, MSRP and page yield hp.com
- MyCartridgeFinder catalogue. Every price and yield above was read from the maker's own page on 2026-09-03 and stored against the cartridge with its source, replacing our earlier figures. Cost per page is list price divided by the maker's published ISO yield. mycartridgefinder.com
Last updated . 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.