If you've owned an inkjet printer for more than five minutes, you already know the punchline: the printer is cheap, the ink is not. I've been running an HP ENVY 7640 for years now, and I finally got tired of the "oh no, I'm out of cyan again" routine, so I signed up for HP Instant Ink. A few months in, I'm ready to give you the full breakdown — the good, the bad, and yes, a ridiculous price comparison you didn't ask for.

Quick backstory on why I came back
I actually had Instant Ink once before. Used it for a few years, then canceled because I talked myself into believing I could find a better deal buying ink outright at the store. I went to the local office supply store and picked up the HP 62XL/62 Black High Yield & Tri-Color High Yield 2-pack for the ENVY 7640 — $129.95. With sales tax and I walked out having paid $139.05 for ink. Regular use around the house, nothing crazy, and those cartridges were tapped out in under a month. That settled the experiment — I signed back up for Instant Ink, and I haven't looked back since.

Here's the part I didn't fully account for when I talked myself into leaving: the Instant Ink cartridges HP ships for my specific printer are at least twice the size of the retail cartridges I was buying at Staples. So on Instant Ink I'm swapping cartridges way less often, which is probably exactly why I convinced myself store-bought ink would save me money in the first place — I wasn't comparing like for like. Turns out I was very wrong.

What I'm actually paying
I landed on the 50-page plan, which runs $5.99/mo. A few things about how the plan works that I didn't fully appreciate until I was using it:
- All pages cost the same whether they're black and white, color, or photos. No surcharge for actually using your color printer like a color printer.
- If I don't use my full 50 pages in a month, up to 150 unused pages roll over, so a slow month isn't wasted.
- If I do blow through my allotment, HP auto-bills me for another set of 10 pages at $2.00 instead of just cutting me off mid-print.
- The printer stays connected over the internet and HP's servers watch my ink levels. When I'm getting low, new cartridges just show up — not necessarily every month, only when I actually need them. I have genuinely stopped thinking about ink as a thing I need to shop for.
- When a cartridge is spent, HP recycles it for free through their Planet Partners program, so I'm not tossing plastic cartridges in the trash either. You also have the option to recycle at physical stores like staples which will give you a store credit for each cartridge you recycle.

So instead of $139.05 for a set of XL cartridges that lasted under a month, I'm spending about $6.00 a month for reliable output and zero store runs.

I'm on the Occasional tier (50 pages/mo) ink-only plan, and it's been the right fit for how much I print. But HP offers a few different sizes depending on how much your household or office actually churns through, plus a version that throws paper into the subscription too. Here's the full lineup at the moment of this writing:

Ink only:
- Light: 10 pages/month — $1.99/mo
- Occasional (my plan): 50 pages/month — $5.99/mo
- Moderate: 100 pages/month — $8.49/mo
- Frequent: 300 pages/month — $16.99/mo
- Business: 700 pages/month — $32.99/mo

Ink + paper:
- Light: 10 pages/month — $2.98/mo
- Occasional: 50 pages/month — $8.48/mo
- Moderate: 100 pages/month — $12.98/mo
- Frequent: 300 pages/month — $23.98/mo
- Business: 700 pages/month — $45.98/mo


I went ink-only since I already keep paper around the house and didn't see the point in paying extra to have HP ship it to me. That said, I haven't actually sat down and run the math on whether the paper add-on beats buying a ream at the store — if you're the type who's always scrambling for paper along with ink, it might be worth pricing that out before you rule it out like I did.

Let's talk about how absurd ink pricing actually is
I wanted to see how ink stacks up against something everyone already agrees is expensive: gas. Regular unleaded nearby is running about $3.80 a gallon right now. Printer ink, according to testing by Consumer Reports, runs anywhere from $13 to $95 an ounce depending on the cartridge — which works out to as much as $12,000+ a gallon. Do the math and that's enough gas money to fill up your tank more than 2,000 times over. So next time the "low ink" light comes on, just know it's asking you to refill with something a lot pricier per gallon than whatever's at the pump.

So no, "ink costs more than gas" isn't just a grumpy exaggeration on my part — it's not even close. Instant Ink doesn't change the cost of the ink itself, but it does change the math from "buy it by the tiny expensive cartridge" to "pay a flat few bucks a month and let HP worry about it."

The printer itself
My ENVY 7640 has held up well. It's not a new model, and yeah, HP's current lineup probably edges it out a bit on print speed and photo quality, but for everyday documents, school forms, and the occasional photo print, it's done right by me. If Instant Ink is the thing that makes owning an inkjet tolerable, the ENVY 7640 is the thing that made me want to keep it around this long.


Referring friends actually pays off
One thing worth mentioning: I referred a family member to Instant Ink, and HP kicked back a free month of service to both of us once they signed up. There's no cap on how many people you can refer or how many free months you can rack up. If you sign up through my Instant Ink referral link, you'll get set up on the plan and I'll get a free month tacked onto mine — full transparency there, that's exactly what's happening. Once you're in, HP gives you your own referral link too, so you can pass the savings along to whoever you're tired of hearing complain about ink prices.


The Good
- Real savings if you print regularly — I went from $139.05 for a month of ink to about $6.00/mo
- Rollover of up to 150 unused pages means a light month isn't wasted
- Automatic monitoring means I've genuinely stopped thinking about buying ink
- Free cartridge recycling through HP Planet Partners
- Referral program pays out real free months, no cap


The Bad
- You're still locked into HP's ecosystem — cancel and pull your printer off Instant Ink, and any cartridges in the tray get locked out
- If you barely print, the flat monthly fee can end up costing more than just buying a cartridge once a year
- Overage pages ($2.00 per 10) can sneak up on you during a busy printing month
- Doesn't fix the underlying issue that HP ink is priced like a luxury good


Instant Ink vs. the new eco-tank / refillable printers
It's worth addressing the elephant in the room: printers like Epson's EcoTank or HP's own Smart Tank lines let you refill bottles of ink for pennies per page, no subscription required. On pure cost-per-page, they win, no contest. But the trade-off shows up in print quality. Cartridge-based inkjets like my ENVY 7640 use thicker, more pigment-dense inks designed for sharper text and richer photo output, especially on glossy or photo paper. Tank printers use thinner, dye-based inks that keep costs down but tend to look a little more washed out on photos and can be more prone to banding on high-detail prints. If print quality is the priority — especially for photos — a cartridge printer on Instant Ink still has an edge. If you mostly print black-and-white text and don't care about that last bit of photo pop, an eco-tank printer will save you more money long-term.


Who should actually get this
- Households or home offices that print regularly and want to stop thinking about ink entirely
- Anyone who's been burned buying $139 XL cartridges that die in a few weeks
- People who care about photo and document print quality and aren't ready to switch to a tank printer
- Not a great fit if you print maybe a page a week — you'll likely spend more than you would just buying a cartridge when you actually need one
Sign up for HP Instant Ink here