How much does instax film cost?

The result that surprises people

instax SQUARE costs more per shot than instax WIDE — about $1.15 against $1.10 — for a considerably smaller print. A SQUARE picture is 2.4 x 2.4 inches; a WIDE picture is 3.9 x 2.4 inches, about 1.6 times the area.

So if you are choosing a format on value rather than shape, WIDE is better value than SQUARE and mini is better value than either. The square format is a preference you pay a small premium for, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do as long as you know.

On that measure WIDE is nearly twice the value of either smaller format. It is also 616 grams of camera and four AA batteries, which is why most people still buy mini.

Pack sizes and what they actually mean

All three instax formats are sold as twin packs: two cartridges of 10 exposures, 20 shots in total. That is the standard unit and the one every price on this page is based on.

• •Twenty exposures is a lot compared with Polaroid's eight. A single instax pack lasts an evening; a single Polaroid pack can be gone in an hour.
• •You cannot buy a single cartridge separately in most places, so 20 is the minimum practical purchase.
• •Larger multipacks exist (four, six and ten cartridges) and the per-shot saving is usually modest. Worth it for an event, not worth stockpiling — film expires.

A second price check on the same film

Because this is the single most important figure on the site, we checked instax mini film at a second retailer. ProCam listed the same 20-exposure twin pack at $18.99, which works out at about 95 cents a shot, and confirms the film is ISO 800 with a 2.4 x 1.8 inch glossy image area.

So the honest range for instax mini is roughly 85 to 95 cents a shot depending on where you buy, and we use the lower figure throughout because it was the cheaper verified listing. That spread is also the reason every buy button on this site says "Check price on Amazon" rather than printing a number.

What the film actually is

All three are ISO 800, which is why instax cameras cope reasonably with indoor light, and all three develop in about 90 seconds — considerably faster than Polaroid's 10 to 15 minutes.

How to pay less

1. 1.Buy the twin pack, not a single cartridge. Single 10-exposure cartridges are often priced close to a twin pack where they are sold at all.
2. 2.Buy mini rather than SQUARE if the format does not matter to you. It is 30 cents a shot cheaper and the prints are a similar size.
3. 3.Buy a hybrid camera. An instax mini Evo lets you choose which frames to print. At a realistic 50% keeper rate that halves the effective cost per photograph you wanted — the single biggest saving available in this category.
4. 4.Buy a printer instead of a camera. A Kodak 4PASS print is about 42 cents and a Canon 4 x 6 about 39 cents. Both are less than half the cheapest instant film.
5. 5.Do not stockpile. Film carries an expiry date and results drift either side of it. Buy what will be shot within a year.

What this means for a gift

A camera without film is a gift that needs a shopping trip before it does anything. A 20-exposure pack is about $17 and turns the gift into something usable the same afternoon — it is the single best thing to add.

At a hundred photographs a year, instax mini film costs more than the camera. That is the fact this whole site is built around, and it is why we put the per-shot figure next to every pick.

How instax compares with everything else

instax sits in the middle: more than twice the cost of the cheapest printer media, and roughly a third of the cost of full-size Polaroid film. For an instant-film camera it is the cheapest option there is.