What does a laser printer cost to run?

Run the numbers on your own use

Change any of these and the figures update. The defaults are the typical case described above; your rate is the input that moves the answer most.

Why this is lower than the number you will see elsewhere

Almost every published answer to this question multiplies the rating on the label by the hours the appliance is switched on. For a laser printer that gives 18 kWh a year, or $3.30.

Full draw only while the fuser is hot and pages are moving — a matter of seconds per page.

The arithmetic, step by step

Nothing here is hidden, so you can check it or change it. Working in the order the formula runs:

1. 600 W — what it draws while it is actually drawing. This is the rating on the plate.
2. × 100% — the share of its in-service time it is really pulling that. Full draw only while the fuser is hot and pages are moving — a matter of seconds per page.
   That gives 600 W averaged across the hours it is on.
3. × 0.12 hours a day × 250 days — A small office printer, a few pages most working days.
   600 × 0.12 × 250 ÷ 1,000 = 18 kWh a year.
4. + standby — 6 W for the other 23.9 hours a day, which is 36 kWh a year. People leave this out and it is not always small.
5. × 18.34¢ — the US average residential rate for June 2026.
   54 kWh × 18.34¢ = $9.87 a year.

Change any assumption in the calculator above and every figure on this page moves with it. The two that matter most are your rate, which varies 4× across the country, and the hours — the duty cycle is a property of the appliance, but the hours are a property of you.

How sensitive is that number?

A single figure invites more confidence than it deserves. Here is the same appliance under assumptions either side of the default, so you can see how much of the answer is the appliance and how much is the guess about how you use it.

Everything else held at the default. The spread here is the honest error bar on the headline figure.

What it costs per hour, day and month

At 18.34¢ per kWh, the US residential average for June 2026.

The thing worth knowing

The fuser has to reach around 200°C to bond toner to paper, which is why the peak draw is so high. But it does that for seconds at a time, so printing is nearly free and the standby is what actually accumulates. A laser printer left on around the clock spends far more keeping itself ready than it ever spends printing.

Against desktop computer

Enable deep sleep and let it take ten seconds to wake. An inkjet has no fuser and draws a fraction as much, at the cost of slower printing and more expensive consumables. In numbers: a laser printer costs $9.87 a year on these assumptions, and desktop computer doing a comparable job costs $38 — a difference of $28 a year, or $283 over ten years at today’s rate.

Both at 18.34¢/kWh, each on its own standard usage assumption. Ten years is roughly the service life of either.

What it costs in your state

The appliance is the same everywhere; the rate is not. Running this laser printer costs $28 a year in Hawaii and $7.06 in Nevada — a difference of 4×.

Cost of running one laser printer for a year, by state. Residential average price, EIA June 2026.

Other electronics and computing costs

• Gaming PC

  $111 a year

  Four hours of gaming a day on a mid-to-high-end build.

• UPS battery backup

  $40 a year

  A mid-size unit protecting a computer or a network rack.

• Games console

  $39 a year

  Three hours of play a day.

• Desktop computer

  $38 a year

  A working day, five days a week.

• OLED television

  $38 a year

  A 65-inch OLED, five hours a day, mixed content.

• LED television

  $31 a year

  A 55-inch 4K set, five hours a day, out-of-the-box brightness.

Questions

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A, June 2026. U.S. Government work, public domain.

How every figure on this page is computed · Where the data comes from