Short answer: in 2026, buying a new fax machine only makes sense in four situations — a need for immediate paper output on receipt without reliable IT, an industry requirement imposing a physical acknowledgement of receipt, an isolated site with poor Internet but a copper line that is still live, or an emergency replacement for a failed machine within a fleet that is already written off. In every other case, the smartest spend is not a fax machine: it is a decent scanner plus an online sending and receiving service. And if you buy one anyway, two criteria outrank price: compatibility with a SIP / T.38 gateway and the presence of ECM error correction.
About MondialFax. This article is an independent buying guide: we sell no hardware and are affiliated with no manufacturer. MondialFax sends faxes free of charge and without registration to seven destinations (France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Canada). It does not assign a number and does not handle inbound faxes: the receiving scenarios described here assume a third-party provider. See receiving a fax and our fax-to-email guide.
It is a question we get asked more often than you might think: "our fax machine has died, should we buy another one?" It comes from a nursing practice, from a village council of 900 residents, from a haulier, from a notary. And the honest answer is never "no, fax is over." It always starts with another question: what was the machine actually doing for you?
Because a fax machine, inside an organisation, almost never just sends faxes. It scans, it photocopies, it prints, it acts as an inbox for incoming mail, it produces a paper trail that someone can staple to a file. Buying "a fax machine" again without listing those uses is the surest way to spend €400 on a function you will use three times a year.
The context that changes everything: the line, not the machine
An analogue fax machine needs only one thing to work: a copper pair carrying a dial tone. And that is precisely the resource that is disappearing.
Orange stopped selling new PSTN lines back in November 2018, then began shutting down the switched network technically, region by region, under the supervision of Arcep. Since then, the process has been compounded by the gradual shutdown of the copper network itself — the one that also carries ADSL — with a timetable revised several times and batches of municipalities announced year after year, including recently in Essonne and other départements.
The practical consequence: the wall socket in your premises will not last forever. Depending on your address, it may stay live for a few more years, or it may already have been switched over to an ATA adapter supplied with your router. In the latter case, your brand-new fax machine is no longer talking to an analogue line but to voice over IP, with all the compression, jitter and packet-loss hazards that entails.
So before you even look at a catalogue, ask yourself three questions:
- Is my fax line still a genuine PSTN line, or already an FXS port on a router?
- If it is already VoIP, does my operator support T.38 or does it impose G.711 pass-through?
- Do I need to receive, or only to send?
That last question is the most decisive. Sending requires no machine at all: an online service is enough, and it is free to several destinations. Receiving, on the other hand, requires an assigned number — hence an operator, a subscription, and an architecture choice. We cover this point in our article on keeping your fax number after the PSTN shutdown.
The four profiles for whom buying is still defensible
1. Immediate paper output, without reliable IT
There are still environments where the document must come out on paper by itself, without a human opening a mailbox. An on-call room, a reception desk staffed 24/7, an emergency duty service. Fax-to-email loses its advantage there: nobody has time to check an inbox, whereas a network printer does not wake anyone up either — but the page is physically there.
In that specific case, a laser multifunction device with a fax module remains relevant — provided you accept one constraint: someone has to keep an eye on paper and toner levels. A stock of compatible laser toner in the cupboard prevents the Friday-evening failure, the one where the fax receives perfectly but prints blank pages.
2. Industry or contractual requirements
Some sectors still mandate fax in their internal procedures: logistics and freight forwarding, construction insurance, dealings with certain foreign administrations. Fax is not compulsory in law — the legal weight of a fax is a matter for the judge's assessment, as we explain in our analysis of the legal value of fax — but it can be imposed by contract or by a client's habit. As long as the client pays and demands a fax, the technical argument carries little weight.
3. The isolated site
Not-spot areas, warehouses, farms, building sites with a flaky 4G link: when Internet access is unstable but copper still holds up, analogue fax remains, paradoxically, more reliable than email. It is a residual case, destined to disappear with the copper shutdown, but it still exists.
4. Emergency replacement within a written-off fleet
You have three identical machines, a stock of consumables, a written procedure, and one of them gives up. Buying the same model again often costs less than rethinking the whole set-up under pressure. It is a continuity decision, not an architecture decision — but it is legitimate.
The technical criteria that really matter
Product sheets highlight meaningless figures — 33.6 kbit/s modem speed, 500-page memory — and stay silent about the ones that determine whether the machine will survive your installation. Here is the hierarchy to follow.
| Criterion | Why it is decisive | What to aim for |
|---|---|---|
| ECM (Error Correction Mode) | Retransmits corrupted blocks instead of leaving a black band | Available and enabled by default |
| Speed fallback | Allows stepping down to 14.4 then 9.6 kbit/s on a degraded line | Manual setting accessible |
| Duplex automatic document feeder (ADF) | The real day-to-day time saver | 35 pages minimum |
| Receive memory | Stores pages when paper or toner runs out | ≥ 200 pages |
| Cost per page | The dominant item over 5 years | High-capacity toner available |
| Scan to email / SMB | Lets you move away from paper gradually | Essential |
Note that T.38 is not a tick-box on the fax machine: it is a protocol handled by the gateway or the operator, not by the analogue device. What you are looking for is a tolerant fax machine: one that can start slowly, fall back in speed, and not hang up at the first silence. If your set-up runs over VoIP, budget for a VoIP telephone adapter (ATA) from a recognised brand rather than the FXS port on a consumer router: jitter buffer and codec settings are accessible there, which is often the difference between 20% and 90% of faxes going through. We detail those settings in Fax over VoIP: why T.38 fails.
Laser or inkjet?
For fax use, the question settles itself quickly. Inkjet dries out: a machine receiving four faxes a month will see its nozzles clog between uses, and automatic cleaning will consume more ink than the printing itself. Monochrome laser is the default choice for a fax station: consumables that keep over time, low cost per page, printing unaffected by humidity.
The calculation nobody does: the real cost over five years
Let us take a concrete case, with orders of magnitude observed on the French market in 2026 — check with your reseller, prices move.
| Item | Laser fax multifunction | Online fax service |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware | €250 to €500 up front | €0 (scanner already on site) |
| Dedicated line | ~€15 to €25/month | €0 |
| Consumables | €60 to €120/year | €0 |
| Service subscription | — | €5 to €15/month depending on volume |
| Maintenance / breakdown | variable | included |
| Over 5 years | ≈ €1,500 to €2,500 | ≈ €300 to €900 |
The gap does not come from the hardware: it comes from the dedicated line subscription. That is the invisible item, the one that has been on the operator's invoice for twelve years without anyone matching it against actual usage. Before buying anything, pull out the bill and count the faxes genuinely sent and received over the last twelve months. Many organisations discover on that occasion that they are paying for a line to send six faxes a year.
The equal-budget alternative: scanner + online service
If your need is mostly sending, the best investment is not a fax machine but a good document scanner with an automatic feeder. It digitises your documents cleanly, in black and white at 200 or 300 dpi — exactly what the fax channel expects, as we explain in Unreadable fax: fixing your scan settings — and it serves every other purpose too: archiving, filing supporting documents, responding to a tender.
Paired with an online sending service, it covers most use cases for a fraction of the cost. And for the rare inbound fax, a fax-to-email number from a third-party provider costs less than an analogue line.
Two accessories make a real difference in this set-up: a spare feed roller kit for the feeder (a wear part that causes double feeds after a few thousand pages), and, if you handle sensitive documents, a cross-cut shredder for the paper originals once they are scanned — the GDPR cares as much about the fate of the paper as about the file, as noted in our guide on fax confidentiality.
New, refurbished or second-hand?
The market for new fax machines has narrowed to a handful of professional multifunction devices from the long-established manufacturers. Alongside it, the second-hand market is plentiful and cheap: companies are getting rid of their machines as the PSTN shuts down.
- New: warranty, maintained drivers, available consumables. Justified if the machine is in daily production use.
- Professionally refurbished: a good compromise, with a warranty and a known page count. Always ask for the counter reading: a machine at 300,000 pages is at the end of its life whatever it looks like.
- Private second-hand sale: risky. The fax module can be faulty with nothing to show for it, and consumables for a discontinued model become impossible to find or wildly expensive.
In every case, check toner availability before you buy, not after. It is the number one reason machines are scrapped prematurely.
What to do with the machine you replace
A multifunction fax device contains non-volatile memory that retains the last pages received, the log of dialled numbers, sometimes a complete address book. Before any resale, donation or disposal, perform a factory reset from the administration menu — not merely a deletion of the visible log. Manufacturers document this procedure under various headings ("reset network settings and user data", "memory erase").
As for disposal, a fax machine is WEEE (waste electrical and electronic equipment): it falls under "one for one" take-back at the retailer or an approved collection point, overseen by state-accredited eco-organisations. Throwing it out with bulky waste is an offence. We covered this subject in detail in End of life for the fax machine.
Frequently asked questions
Can you still buy a new fax machine in 2026?
Yes. The major office equipment manufacturers still include a fax module in some of their professional laser multifunction devices. Standalone fax machines, however, have all but vanished from the consumer market.
Will my new fax machine work with my Internet router?
Sometimes, and rarely first time. Plugged into a router's phone port, the fax communicates over VoIP: you often have to force the codec to G.711, disable silence suppression and comfort noise, and lower the transmission speed to 14,400 bit/s. Some operators simply do not guarantee fax service on their plans.
Do you need a dedicated line for fax?
It is not compulsory: an "automatic detection" mode lets you share the line between voice and fax. But sharing degrades reliability, and a dedicated line is expensive for residual usage. That is often the clinching argument in favour of an online solution.
Does a refurbished fax machine carry a data leak risk?
Yes, if the seller has not wiped the memory. Insist on a certificate of erasure, and perform a factory reset yourself on delivery. The same reasoning applies when you dispose of your own.
How long will the analogue line remain available?
That depends entirely on your address. Shutdowns proceed in batches of municipalities announced in advance by Orange under Arcep's supervision. Ask your operator about the timetable applicable to your connection point before committing to a five-year purchase.
In summary
- The hardware is no longer the issue: the line is. First check whether your connection is still analogue or already VoIP.
- Four profiles still justify a purchase: immediate paper output, contractual requirement, isolated site, emergency replacement within a written-off fleet.
- The criteria that count are ECM, speed fallback, receive memory and cost per page — not the modem's theoretical speed.
- Monochrome laser wins over inkjet for a station used irregularly.
- Over five years, the dedicated line subscription weighs more than the machine. Count your actual faxes over twelve months before deciding.
- For sending only, a scanner with a feeder plus an online service costs considerably less — and MondialFax lets you send a fax free of charge to seven destinations, with no registration.
- Wipe the memory of the old machine and hand it over to a WEEE channel.
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