Many organizations assess copier and printer lease proposals the wrong way.

Instead of focusing on the total cost of printing, many buyers break down quotes into individual components, machine price, monthly lease, cost per page, or toner costs and evaluate each in isolation.

The problem? Those numbers alone don't tell the full story.

Take this common scenario:

One vendor offers a printer for $50/month, another for $70/month. At first glance, the cheaper option would seem like the obvious choice.

But the lease payment is only one piece of the puzzle.

The metric that actually matters is blended cost per page.

Blended cost is the most effective way to evaluate a print agreement because it captures the entire cost structure, hardware, service, and supplies, in a single, comparable number.

Here’s how to calculate it (assuming service is included):

Lease model: (Monthly Lease Cost + Total Monthly Click Charges) ÷ Total Monthly Pages

Purchase model: ((Purchase Price ÷ Service Cycle) + Total Monthly Supply Costs) ÷ Total Monthly Pages

When you apply this, the real economics become clear.

Example: An office prints 5,000 pages/month (80% black, 20% color)

Lease Cost: $68/month

Black Cost: 2.5¢/print | Color Cost: 10¢/print

Black Printing: 4000 pages x $0.025 = $100

Color Printing: 1000 pages x $0.100 = $100

Lease: $68

Total monthly cost: $268

Blended Cost: 5.4¢ per page

($268 ÷ 5,000 pages)

Now you have a single, meaningful number to compare.

Across most SMB environments:

A good Monochrome Deal: ~3 to 5¢ blended cost per page depending on volume

A good Mixed Color Deal: ~5 to 10¢ blended cost per page depending on volume

If your blended cost is higher than these ranges, it’s often a sign of inefficiencies, over-sized equipment, inflated supply costs, or an unnecessarily expensive service model.

The advantage of using the blended cost per print deal evaluation method is simple: it cuts through the noise. 

Vendors can structure pricing in many ways, but this metric reveals the true cost.

At the end of the day, the printer itself isn’t the investment.

The real investment is every page your organization prints and blended cost tells you exactly what those pages are worth.