How to print your own checks at home

If you have ever run out of checks the week a payment was due, or looked at a reorder form for a book you will use twice, you have probably wondered whether you can just print them yourself.

You can. In the United States, printing your own checks on blank paper is legal and ordinary, and businesses have done it for decades. What matters is not who printed the check but whether it draws on an account you own and whether a bank can read it.

Here is what you need, how the process actually goes, and when ordering from your bank is still the better call.

Printing your own checks is legal in the US

A check is a written instruction telling your bank to pay a named person or business a set amount from your account. The commercial law behind checks is broadly similar from state to state, and it concerns itself with what the check says: who it pays, how much, which account it draws on, whose signature is on it. It says nothing about where the paper came from.

Banks themselves generally hand check printing to outside printers rather than doing it in house. Businesses have printed their own from accounting software for decades, and many payroll departments still print checks alongside direct deposit.

The line that matters is ownership. A check must draw on an account you own or are authorized to sign for. Printing one against someone else's account is against the law, whether the paper came from a home printer or a bank.

The three things you need

There are only three, plus your own bank details.

You will also need your routing number, the number that identifies your bank, and your account number. Both appear on any check you already have. Many banks show them in online banking too, but some banks use more than one routing number, one for paper checks and another for electronic transfers, so for printing checks use the one that appears on a check you already have, or ask your bank which one to use. There is a guide on finding them at Where to find your routing number and account number.

• Blank check stock. Paper sold with no bank details on it, usually with security features built in: microprinting that blurs when photocopied, a watermark, a panel that reacts to heat or solvents. It comes in a business format with detachable record stubs and a personal format with several checks to a page. Office suppliers and online sellers carry it, and buying by the box brings the cost per check down; how far depends on the format and the quantity. There is a separate guide on choosing it at Blank check stock: what to buy.
• A printer. An ordinary inkjet or laser is enough. There is no such thing as a required check printer for home use.
• Something that lays the check out. Whatever you use has to place every field correctly and produce the line of numbers along the bottom of the check, the one identifying the institution, the account and the check itself, in a form a bank's equipment can read. Accounting software does it; so does a dedicated tool such as Print A Checks, which fills the check in your browser and prints onto blank stock. Laying one out by eye in a word processor is not worth attempting, because that line of numbers has to be produced in a specific machine-readable form.

How the process goes, start to finish

Once it is set up, writing a check takes about a minute.

1. Enter your bank details once: routing number, account number, and the account holder name and address as your bank has them.
2. Fill in the check: date, payee (the person or business being paid), amount in figures, the same amount written out in words, an optional memo, and a check number.
3. Use a new check number every time, continuing from where your last book ended. Reusing a number can trip a bank's duplicate-payment checks, though whether that happens varies by bank, and it makes your own records hard to match up later.
4. Print a test on plain paper and hold it against a blank sheet of check stock up to a light to see whether the fields land where they should.
5. Nudge the alignment if it is off. Printers differ in how they pull paper through, and a small offset on a first run is normal. Print A Checks prints a free calibration sheet you can hold against a real check.
6. Print onto the stock at actual size, then sign by hand in ink. An unsigned check is not payable.
7. Record the number, date, payee and amount so your records match your bank statement later.

Printing on an ordinary inkjet or laser printer

Both work. Laser is better if you have one: toner is fused into the paper, so it does not smear if the check gets wet and it is harder to lift or alter. Inkjet is more vulnerable on both counts. If inkjet is what you have, let each sheet dry before handling it.

A few settings matter. Print at actual size, because fit to page and shrink to fit move everything. Turn off draft or economy mode, since the line of numbers along the bottom needs to come out solid black and crisp. Feed the stock the same way every time so pages do not come out reversed.

Then there is magnetic ink. The line of numbers along the bottom of a check is specified to be printed in magnetic ink, and that expectation has not gone away; bank-ordered checks use a magnetic toner or ink. In practice many checks printed with ordinary laser toner are accepted, because checks now move between banks as images and that line can also be read optically. But equipment at the receiving bank may still read it magnetically, and whether a check it cannot read is accepted, handled by hand, or returned varies by bank and by processor. Some banks charge a fee for manual handling. Magnetic toner cartridges exist for some laser printers and cost more. Whether one is worth buying depends on how many checks you write and what your bank expects, so it is worth asking your bank before you spend the money.

What makes a printed check acceptable

It comes down to the right information, readable printing, and matching what your bank has on file.

The information is not mysterious: your name and usually your address, your bank's name, the date, the payee, the amount in figures, the same amount in words, a signature, and the line of numbers identifying the bank, the account and the check. If figures and words disagree, the words generally govern. The guide at How to fill out a check, step by step walks through filling each of those in.

Readability is where home printing usually goes wrong: faded toner, a smear across the numbers, a page printed scaled down, stock fed through crooked. That often means a check is handled by hand rather than rejected, which is slower, and some banks charge for it. How much tolerance there is varies by bank.

The rest varies too. A payee or a teller may look twice at a check design they do not recognize, and deposit hold times differ by bank and by relationship. The first check you hand someone is the one most likely to draw questions; the rest are usually routine.

When ordering from your bank still makes more sense

Printing your own is not automatically the right answer.

If you write two or three checks a year, the setup is not worth the trouble. If your account type includes free checks, you are not saving anything. If your business or insurer requires a specific security feature, order stock or checks that carry it.

Control can matter more than cost. Some businesses keep check stock locked up and numbered by someone other than the person writing checks, and a home printer cuts against that. If you would rather not keep bank details on a computer at all, pre-printed checks avoid the question.

A middle path is an option: keep a small book of bank-ordered checks for the rare occasion and print the rest as you go.

Last updated 2026-09-16. General information about how checks and US bank payments usually work — not legal, tax or financial advice.