The cheapest places to print digital photos

1675. That’s the number of photos I have on my phone right now – with even more saved onto my computer. And I know I’m not alone, my social media feeds are filled with photos of my friends’ children, pets and even their food.

Admittedly, most of us don’t want to print every single picture we take of the cat pulling a face, but if you’re like me then you do want to print some. I still use photo albums to capture events, years, day trips and my children – not to mention posting shots to relatives or slipping them inside thank you cards for the children’s presents.

All-too-often I end up using a printing machine in the supermarket that simply links to my smartphone and prints off a fairly poor quality picture at a cost of 30p each.

So I decided to get organised and find out where you can get good quality prints at the best prices, this is what I found:
 
Photobox: One of the larger online printing services is Photobox, which promises “award-winning quality”. Customers can create books, presents and cards, but standard photo printing costs 12p a picture for up to 199 6x4s, and as little as 5p a print for more than 500.

I tend to print about 50 6x4 pictures at a time, which here would cost me £6 plus £2.99 for postage and packaging. Total cost: £8.99.

ASDA Photo: Next up is supermarket ASDA. I frequently use its in-store instant photo-printer and there’s a wide-range of choices, including collection in-store. Prints start at 5p a print for more than 200 pictures, but for fewer than 99 it’s 15p a print.

So my 50 pictures would cost me £7.50 plus £1.50 for delivery – a total cost of £9.

Truprint: Over to Truprint, where the first 49 6x4 standard prints cost 11p each, then 9p each for 50-249. If you print more than 250 then the price falls to 8p a print.

Postage for that number would be £1.99, meaning a total price of £6.49 – the cheapest so far.

Tesco Photos: At Tesco, the prices are the same; 11p each for up to 49, then 9p each if you order 50 or more. So that’s a total cost of £4.50 for the prints, plus £1.99 for postage, meaning Tesco and Truprint are neck and neck at £6.49 for 50 prints.

Snapfish: At the Snapfish website, 6x4s will cost 11p each or 9p each for more than 50. It’s pricier if you want to order larger prints, with 7x5s costing 19p each for up to 249, or 18p for 250 or more.

Postage for up to 49 prints would be £1.49 or £1.99 for 50 or more so, again, it’s £6.49 for 50. That is £2.50 less than the first two deals I looked at.

FreePrints: Then I found the FreePrints app on my iPhone. This claimed that I could get up to 45 individual 6x4s a month for free and just pay postage. The freebies are capped at 500 a year and I found this by far the easiest app to work.

I ordered 35 prints from this company and only paid postage. If I wanted 50 then I’d pay 45p for the additional pictures and £3.99 for delivery, bring my total cost to £4.44.

Although I was sceptical about the quality, the prints arrived just a couple of days later and were perfectly well printed.

For small numbers of pictures it’s by far the cheapest place to print standard photos. However, if you’re printing large numbers or bigger prints then the other websites could be cheaper, particularly as some offer free postage on more than 250 pictures.

Other freebies

It’s worth mentioning that many sites offer free prints to new customers, either through their main websites or with a voucher code. It’s worth searching the web to look for deals from reputable companies and seeing how much you can save.

Don’t forget that the best way to save money on prints is to get a large number done at once, that can bring the price down as low as four or five pence each.

Compare cheapest printing deals

Even looking at all the numbers here it can be hard to work out where will be cheapest for your photo needs. After all, the cost can vary hugely depending on the number and size you order.

The good news is that there are some online price comparison tools, like this one on Moneysavingexpert.com. Just tell it the number, size and type, and you can compare deals.