What It Costs to Print a Poster, by Size, Paper and Quantity
Real 2026 prices for one poster, for fifty, and for the mounted and framed versions in between, plus the five choices on the order form that move the total.
A single 11" x 17" poster costs $25 at 4OVER4.COM, and a set of fifty at the same size costs $108.75, about $2.18 each. That gap is not a discount, it is two different machines: wide format prints one sheet at a time and charges by finished area, while standard posters run on a sheet press in sets of 50 where the per poster price keeps dropping toward a run of 25,000. Material, lamination, rigid backing and turnaround move the number from there, and mounted boards start at $39.99 while a framed giclee is $87.86.
Quick answer
One poster is $25, fifty posters are $108.75
Poster pricing splits along one line: are you buying a print or a run. A single 11" x 17" wide format poster is $25 and scales with finished area up to 48" x 96". Fifty 11" x 17" standard posters are $108.75, roughly $2.18 apiece, and the unit price keeps falling toward 25,000. The crossover between the two lands just past four copies, which is far earlier than most people guess, and it is the reason a run of fifty often costs less than five singles.
What Actually Decides the Price of a Poster
Five choices carry almost the whole quote, and the first one quietly sets the ceiling on the other four.
One, which press prints it. Wide format handles one sheet at a time and charges by finished square inch. A sheet press prints a stack at once and charges by the run. Same artwork, two entirely different price curves, and picking the wrong one is the most common way people overpay.
Two, the finished size. On the wide format side this is close to linear with area, which is why large format posters start at $25 for an 11" x 17" and climb steadily toward the 48" x 96" end of the range. Doubling both dimensions quadruples the surface, and the price follows the surface.
Three, the material. Uncoated paper is the floor. Semi gloss and hi gloss photo stock sit above it, canvas above that, and the weatherproof options, blockout vinyl, adhesive vinyl, backlit film and polypropylene, sit at the top.
Four, the finishing. Lamination, High-Gloss UV coating, a foam core backing, a frame, printing the second side. Each is a real pass through a real machine and each one shows up in the total.
Five, the turnaround. Standard is 5 business days on standard posters and 2 on wide format, and every rung down that ladder costs more. The full range sits on posters printing if you want to see the options next to each other before you price anything.
What Each Kind of Poster Starts At
These are catalog starting prices, which means the lowest configuration of each product rather than an average. Read the second and third columns together, because a $25 starting price on one line and a $108.75 starting price on another are not describing the same quantity.
| Poster | Starts at | What that price buys | Where it belongs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Large Format Posters | $25 | One 11" x 17" print, priced by finished area, 13 sizes to 48" x 96" | Single prints, shop windows, booth backdrops, backlit signs |
| Matte Posters | $25 | One 11" x 17" on bright white uncoated, 14 sizes, 10 materials | Type-heavy posters that have to stay readable under store lights |
| Standard Posters | $108.75 | A set of 50, six sizes from 11" x 17" to 22" x 28", 9 stocks | Events, campaigns, anything where you hand out a stack |
| Mounted Posters | $39.99 | One 8" x 10" bonded to 3/16" foam core, 14 sizes to 40" x 60" | Counter signs and easel boards that stand without a frame |
| Foam Core Posters | $49.99 | One 16" x 20" printed and mounted, white or black board | Trade show boards and reception displays you reuse |
| Framed Posters | $87.86 | One 16" x 24" giclee, matte black frame included, ships assembled | Wall art that goes up the minute the box is opened |
The pattern in that table is worth naming. Everything priced for a single copy sits between $25 and $88 depending on how much hardware comes with it. The one product that looks expensive, at $108.75, is the only one selling you fifty posters. Material choice moves each line from there, and the material breakdown guide covers which stock survives which environment.
Where Quantity Flips the Whole Calculation
Here is the arithmetic that decides most poster orders. A single 11" x 17" wide format print is $25. Five of them, at that starting price, come to $125. A set of fifty standard posters at the same 11" x 17" size is $108.75 in total, about $2.18 each.
So the crossover lands just past four copies. Need one poster for a lobby, buy the single. Need five for five storefronts, price the set of fifty first, because it costs less and leaves you with spares for the next event. It feels wasteful to order fifty when you wanted five. It is cheaper anyway, and that is the part people get wrong.
Past that point the curve keeps working in your favor. Standard posters price all the way to a run of 25,000, and the per poster figure keeps dropping as the press amortizes its setup over more sheets. How bulk price breaks work explains the mechanism, and the bulk poster guide walks the specific tiers.
The limit runs the other direction too. Wide format products take quantities up to 100 per run, so a 500 poster campaign is a sheet press job whether you planned it that way or not. If you are somewhere between 10 and 100 and undecided, run both numbers in the configurator before you choose. Two minutes there beats a guess. If you want the cheapest possible route on a small run, printing posters cheaply covers the trims that do not hurt the finished piece.
Finishing, Rush, and the Costs That Sneak In
The base price gets you a printed sheet. Everything that happens after the ink lands is priced separately, and about half of it is optional in ways that are not obvious on the order form.
- Lamination. Three mil gloss on one side or both, offered across five options on laminated posters. It seals the ink against scuffs, moisture and fading. A poster hanging indoors for a two week promotion does not need it. A poster taped inside a sunlit window, handled daily, or wiped down in a kitchen does.
- UV coating. Standard posters can finish plain or with a High-Gloss UV coating. It deepens color and adds shine, and it also adds glare, which is the wrong trade on a poster carrying a paragraph of text.
- The second side. Standard posters print full color on the front with a blank back, or full color both sides. Both sides only earns the money when the poster hangs in open air and gets read from behind, in a window or hanging from a ceiling. On a wall it is ink you paid for and nobody sees.
- Rigid backing and frames. A 3/16" foam core board or a matte black frame turns a print into something that stands or hangs on its own. Printing a mounted poster covers when the board is worth it, and canvas against paper covers the other upgrade path.
- The proof. A free online proof ships with wide format orders, or you can pick Straight To Production and skip it. The proof costs nothing but a step. Skipping it is fine on a file you have printed before and a bad idea on artwork you built last night.
The most expensive line item on a poster job is never any of these. It is the reprint, and reprints almost always trace back to a file supplied at the wrong scale or resolution. Build the artwork at final size, check it against the poster resolution guide, and start from a correctly sized layout in the blank template library if you are not sure where the bleed goes.
Wally prices a poster
One print, or fifty, and the line where they cross
Wally will sell you one poster for $25. It comes off the wide format printer, priced by how much surface it covers, so an 11 by 17 is cheap and a 48 by 96 is not. Ask him for fifty of the same 11 by 17 and he walks to the sheet press instead, where fifty cost $108.75 together, about $2.18 each. Five singles would have been $125. Once you need more than four, the stack of fifty is the cheaper stack, spares and all.
Price a set of standard posters →Specs and pricing
Sizes, stocks and live starting prices
Configure the three poster types side by side. Every size, stock and turnaround updates the total live, straight from the 4OVER4.COM configurator, so you can watch each choice move the price before you order.
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Common Questions
Your poster cost questions, answered
How much does it cost to print one poster?
A single 11" x 17" poster is $25 at 4OVER4.COM on bright white uncoated stock. That price comes from the wide format side of the shop, where each poster is priced by finished area rather than by quantity tier, so an 18" x 24" costs more than an 11" x 17" and a 48" x 96" costs a great deal more. There are 13 stock sizes up to 48" x 96", plus an Any Size option that goes to 59.5" wide and 100" tall. If you only need one poster, this is the cheapest honest way to buy it.
Is it cheaper to print 50 posters than 5?
Yes, and the crossover comes earlier than most people expect. Standard posters sell as a set of 50 for $108.75, which is roughly $2.18 a poster. Five single wide format prints at the $25 starting price come to $125. So once you need more than four copies of the same 11" x 17" design, the set of 50 costs less in total and leaves you 45 spares. Wide format runs also cap at 100 per order, so a campaign that needs 500 posters is a standard poster job by default.
What is the cheapest poster material?
Uncoated paper. On standard posters that is the 70# uncoated text, and on the wide format side it is the bright white uncoated stock that the $25 starting price is built on. Uncoated is also the right pick more often than people assume, because it kills glare under store lighting and takes a marker or a price sticker. It fails in exactly two places: outdoors, and in a sunlit window. For those, move to weatherproof polypropylene or blockout vinyl and expect the price to rise with the material.
Does mounting or framing cost more than the print itself?
It changes the product rather than adding a fee. A mounted poster starts at $39.99 for an 8" x 10" bonded to 3/16" foam core, and a foam core poster is $49.99 at 16" x 20". A framed poster is $87.86 for a 16" x 24" giclee that ships assembled in a matte black frame, with no glass and no framing step at your end. Compare those totals against a paper print plus whatever you would spend on a frame, not against the paper print alone.
How much does rush poster printing add?
The configurator prices it live per size and stock, so the total updates before you commit rather than showing up later. What is fixed is the schedule you are compressing. Standard posters run 5 business days, with 4-day, 3-day, 2-day, Next-Day and Same-Day rush above that. Wide format posters run 2 business days standard, with Next-Day and Same-Day available. The expensive part of a deadline is rarely the rush fee anyway, it is the reprint when a file is approved in a hurry.
Why does changing the paper change the price so much?
Because you are not buying a coating, you are buying a different substrate that runs at a different speed. Standard posters offer 9 stocks, from 70# uncoated text up through 14pt covers and 8mil and 15pt synthetic plastic, and the synthetics cost several times what the lightest text weight does per sheet. Heavier and coated stocks also run slower and need more drying time before finishing. Pick the stock for where the poster lives, then read the price, rather than the other way around.
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Legal Disclaimer
Gold Standard guarantees apply to all standard orders placed through 4over4.com. Price match requires verifiable proof of a competitor's published price for an equivalent product with matching specifications and turnaround time. Satisfaction guarantee covers manufacturing defects and print quality issues. Contact support with order number and documentation. On-time delivery rate based on tracked orders 1999 to 2026. Individual results may vary based on shipping carrier performance.
