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Printing a PDF without a printer: options and costs

The contract arrived as a PDF, but your printer is broken or you don't have one? There are several ways to get a PDF printed — from the copy shop around the corner to online dispatch straight to the recipient. Here are the options with their typical costs.

Updated August 2026 · 5 minutes read

Laptop showing a PDF document, beside it a printer with printed pages and coins

The four options at a glance

  1. Copy shop: USB stick or email, printout in minutes. Typical prices: around 5–20 cents per black-and-white page, colour much more. Ideal when it has to be fast.
  2. Drugstores and photo stations: Many dm and Rossmann branches print documents via a terminal. Cheap, but usually only for small quantities.
  3. Online print shop: Upload, delivered by post. Worth it for larger quantities or bindings — often too slow for a single letter.
  4. Online letter dispatch: The PDF is printed, enveloped, franked and sent straight to the recipient. Saves printing, envelope, stamp and the trip to the postbox.
Copy shop counter with a large printer and a stack of freshly printed pages
At the copy shop you get the printout immediately — for single letters, online dispatch is often cheaper than travel plus printing costs.

What does printing cost?

The range is wide. Guide values for one black-and-white A4 page:

  • Copy shop: approx. €0.05–0.20 per page,
  • Drugstore terminal: approx. €0.10–0.30 per page,
  • Own printer: approx. €0.02–0.08 per page (paper and ink),
  • Online letter dispatch: one total price including printing, envelope, postage and posting — with zero effort.

For a one-page letter the copy shop is often dearer than expected: travel, waiting time and the per-page price quickly add up to more than a fully dispatched letter.

Tips for printing

  • Bring a PDF, not Word: Fonts and line breaks stay intact — a Word document can shift on a foreign computer.
  • Check the preview: Review margins and page numbers before uploading. Tips in Printing PDFs: tips for letters.
  • Choose black and white: Letters and contracts don't need colour — grayscale often halves the price.

The fastest way: don't print at all

If the PDF is going by post anyway, you can skip printing entirely: in the letter editor you paste the text or upload the document — printing, enveloping and posting are done for you. The postage calculator shows the postage for comparison.

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