Paper Towel Cost Calculator

Pack A: 6 rolls of 120 sheets for $9.49. Pack B: 12 rolls of 85 sheets for $15.99. Pack A has 720 sheets, about $0.0132 per sheet. Pack B has 1,020 sheets, about $0.0157 per sheet.

The smaller pack is about 16% cheaper per sheet, despite having half as many rolls.

Paper towel rolls come in “big”, “huge” and “triple” sizes that mean different things for each brand. The sheet count on the pack is comparable; the roll count is not. It is the same trap as with toilet paper.

Many towels have tear-off half sheets, and the pack counts each small sheet. A half-sheet roll with 150 sheets isn’t necessarily more paper than a full-sheet roll with 100. If sheet sizes differ a lot, divide each price by the total area printed on the pack instead.

Enter the price, the sheets per roll as the size, and the number of rolls in the × field. The calculator works out the total number of sheets and the cost per sheet, and the bars show the gap at a glance.

What really matters is how many sheets each job takes. Say towel A costs $0.010 per sheet and you use 3 sheets per spill, while towel B costs $0.016 per sheet but one and a half sheets do the same job. That is 3¢ per spill for A and 2.4¢ for B — the “expensive” towel is about 20% cheaper per use.

Value packs and store brands are often, but not always, cheaper per sheet. They may also have smaller or thinner sheets. If you would use two thin sheets where one thick sheet would do, halve the thin towel’s sheet count before comparing — that makes the comparison about what you actually use.