Brother built a whole workgroup color platform on the TN431 cartridge family — seven machines, four toner tiers (TN431, TN433, TN436, TN439) and two different drum units. What makes this family different from a simple good-better-best ladder is that the tiers are locked to machines: the two flagship printers accept only the top two tiers, two base models are closed to TN436, and the standard TN431 tier is sold on our shelf as genuine Brother only, with no compatible version you can actually order. This guide prices the three buyable compatible tiers cartridge by cartridge, states the machine split before it sells you anything, and gives the standard tier and both drums their honest, card-free treatment.
The short answer: owners of the five base machines should start with the TN433 4-color set at $65.31 — about 16,500 pages across the box and $48.25 under the four singles. Owners of the HL-L9310CDW or MFC-L9570CDW skip straight to the TN436 and TN439 sections: Brother does not list TN431 or TN433 for your machines at all, whatever our category pages suggest. And if you came looking for a compatible TN431 cartridge, there is none to buy here — that tier is genuine-only on this shelf, and the TN431 section below explains the position plainly.
Match the tier to the machine first, then shop inside it. Base-machine owners: the TN433 4-color set at $65.31 is the default buy, at roughly 1.59¢ for a full-color page against 2.76¢ from singles. Flagship owners: the TN439 set at $79.02 is your longest-lived box (about 36,000 pages) and the TN436 set at $67.69 your lower-spend route into the same two machines. Standard-tier owners: TN431 itself is genuine Brother only here — singles at $111.72 (black) and $114.61 (colors) — or, on the base machines, step up to TN433 compatibles and pay less for more pages. Both drum units are genuine-only and machine-specific; the drum section below separates them.
Seven machines, four tiers, two drums
Brother's platform list starts with five base machines: the HL-L8260CDW, HL-L8360CDW, HL-L8360CDWT, MFC-L8610CDW, MFC-L8900CDW. Brother lists the standard TN431 and the high-yield TN433 for all five, and the super-high-yield TN436 for three of them — the HL-L8360CDW, HL-L8360CDWT and MFC-L8900CDW. Two base models, the HL-L8260CDW and the MFC-L8610CDW, are not on Brother's TN436 list at all, and no base machine takes TN439. The refreshed MFC-L8895CDW and MFC-L8905CDW also belong to this platform — Brother lists the base tiers and TN436 for them, plus a TN437 tier we do not stock — but our toner listings are not shelved under those two models, so this guide names them here rather than pretending a shelf exists.
At the top sit the two flagship printers, the HL-L9310CDW and MFC-L9570CDW, which the store also sells in tray variants (HL-L9310CDWT, HL-L9310CDWTT, MFC-L9570CDWT). Brother's reference guide for these machines lists exactly two toner tiers — TN436 and TN439 — and nothing smaller. That makes the flagship pair the one place in this family where buying the familiar cartridge is simply buying the wrong cartridge: a TN433 box, however genuine its discount, is not listed by Brother for these machines.
A warning this page is obliged to print, because our own store gets it wrong: every TN431 and TN433 listing in our catalog is currently shelved under the flagship machines' categories as well as the base five, a quarter of them are titled with the flagship model names, and the MFC-L9570CDW category page itself advertises all four tiers. Brother's lists say otherwise, and an order should follow Brother. Wherever TN431 or TN433 appears on this page, it is addressed to the base machines only; the flagship categories are linked from the TN436, TN439 and DR433CL passages, where they belong.
Neighboring platforms, for orientation: the compact color family one size down has its own guide, Best Brother TN229 Toner Cartridges; the heavier monochrome workgroup platform is covered in Best Brother TN920 Toner Cartridges, and its mid-weight sibling in Best Brother TN850 Toner Cartridges. Cartridges never cross between Brother families — the model check is always the first step, here as everywhere.
The four tiers, one table
All yields below are Brother's own published ratings, measured to ISO/IEC 19798. The TN433, TN436 and TN439 rows are our compatible shelf; the TN431 row is genuine Brother, because no compatible TN431 can be ordered here — it is printed so the standard tier's real cost is visible next to the tiers that can actually be bought. The final column totals what the four singles charge, together, for one fully colored page. Bought as a set rather than four singles, the compatible tiers' effective figures fall to about 1.59¢ (TN433), about 1.04¢ (TN436) and about 0.88¢ (TN439).
| Tier | Black yield | Color yield | Black single price | Per-page | Color single price | Per-page | 4-color set price | One full-color page, from singles |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TN431 (standard — genuine Brother only) | About 3,000 | About 1,800 each | $111.72 | About 3.72¢ | $114.61 | About 6.37¢ | $390.74 | About 22.83¢ |
| TN433 (high yield — 5 base machines) | About 4,500 | About 4,000 each | $28.39 | About 0.63¢ | $28.39 | About 0.71¢ | $65.31 | About 2.76¢ |
| TN436 (super high yield — 7 machines) | About 6,500 | About 6,500 each | $27.55 | About 0.42¢ | $29.46 | About 0.45¢ | $67.69 | About 1.78¢ |
| TN439 (ultra high yield — flagship pair only) | About 9,000 | About 9,000 each | $29.49 | About 0.33¢ | $32.59 | About 0.36¢ | $79.02 | About 1.41¢ |
Against the genuine shelf: a genuine TN433 black works out to about 2.51¢ a page on our OEM shelf and each genuine color to about 4.16¢, against 0.63¢ and 0.71¢ for the compatibles carded below. On the top tiers our genuine prices sit above Brother's own store prices where those were captured — the genuine TN436 black is $199.99 here against Brother's $108.29 (about 3.08¢ a page against about 1.67¢), and the genuine TN439 black is $140.65 here against Brother's $111.49 — so a buyer set on genuine toner for a flagship machine should price both shelves before ordering. Everywhere on this page, a genuine price is our shelf's price, quoted as ours — never dressed as Brother's.
TN433: the first tier you can actually buy
Because the standard TN431 exists here only as genuine Brother, the high-yield TN433 is where compatible buying on this platform begins — and Brother rates it generously: black at about 4,500 pages, each color at about 4,000, half again the standard tier's life. Every base machine accepts it, which no other compatible tier on this page can claim. Each slot has its own cartridge and its own suffix — TN433BK for black, TN433C for cyan, TN433M for magenta, TN433Y for yellow — and the cards below give each its own price, because colors empty one at a time. What TN433 must never be bought for is a flagship machine: the HL-L9310CDW and MFC-L9570CDW are not on Brother's TN433 list, and no listing title in our catalog changes that.
The set is this platform's sensible default: one box refreshes all four slots on any base machine, at $48.25 less than the $113.56 its four cartridges total when bought singly. A genuine Brother TN433 4-color set is $542.49 on our OEM shelf — eight of these compatible sets together cost less than one genuine set.
View the TN433 4-Color Set →
Heavier pack sizes sit on the same shelf at the same per-cartridge logic: a 3-black pack at $53.00, a 5-black pack at $77.62, a CMY 3-color set (no black) at $53.00, a 6-color set at $89.93 and an 8-color set at $114.54. One further listing is titled “5 Color Set” at $77.62; its title names the same four codes as the set carded above, so this guide quotes its price without claiming a fifth cartridge's identity. Many TN433 offers also exist as duplicate listings — model-named and second-generation pages at identical prices; the cards above use one verified listing per offer.
TN436: one tier across both halves of the platform
Brother rates every TN436 cartridge, black and colors alike, at about 6,500 pages — the tier where color stops being the short-lived half of the box. Its black single holds a small shelf oddity worth printing plainly: at $27.55 it is the cheapest black single in the whole family, undercutting even the TN433 black at $28.39, before its longer life is counted at all. The four singles carry the codes TN436BK, TN436C, TN436M and TN436Y, and the cards below link each color to its own listing.
TN436 is the only tier that serves both halves of this platform, and the set is its natural form: all four slots renewed for $48.24 under the four singles ($115.93). A genuine Brother TN436 4-color set is $712.49 on our OEM shelf — one genuine set costs more than ten of these.
View the TN436 4-Color Set →
The extended shelf mirrors the TN433 pattern: a 3-black pack at $50.50, a 5-black pack at $73.45, a CMY 3-color set at $56.22, a “5 Color Set” at $79.17 (titled with the same four codes as the set above; no fifth cartridge is claimed for it), a 6-color set at $82.98 and an 8-color set at $119.31.
TN439: the flagship pair's own tier
Every TN439 cartridge is rated at about 9,000 pages, black and colors alike — double the TN433 black's life and five times the standard tier's colors. That rating is what the flagship machines were built around: departmental volume, long intervals between orders, and the family's lowest per-page costs (about 0.33¢ for black, about 0.36¢ for each color). The singles carry the codes TN439BK, TN439C, TN439M and TN439Y. Of the three compatible tiers, this is also the only one whose shelf is exactly what it seems — twelve listings, twelve offers, no duplicates.
For the two flagship printers this is the destination tier: the longest-rated box on the platform at $48.24 under its own four singles ($127.26). Genuine Brother TN439 singles run to $140.65 (black) and $241.72 (each color) on our OEM shelf, with no genuine set offered — the compatible set is the only set-shaped way to renew these machines here.
View the TN439 4-Color Set →
Extended sizes for heavy flagship duty: a 3-black pack at $56.31, a 5-black pack at $83.13, a CMY 3-color set at $65.61, a “5 Color Set” at $92.43 (again titled with the same four codes as the set carded above), a 6-color set at $115.14 and an 8-color set at $141.96.
TN431: the standard tier, sold here as genuine Brother only
TN431 is the cartridge these machines shipped with: Brother rates the black at about 3,000 pages and each color at about 1,800, and for the five base machines it remains a perfectly valid reorder. The honest position on our shelf, though, is that there is no compatible TN431 cartridge you can buy. A series of twelve compatible TN431 listings exists in the catalog with prices on their pages, but every one of them is set to not-purchasable — the pages render, the order button does not work — so this guide gives the tier no cards and no links rather than dress up listings that cannot be ordered. Those pages also repeat the TN433 tier's 4,500 / 4,000 page figures in their own text and fields; TN431's real Brother ratings are the 3,000 / 1,800 printed here, and any comparison should use them.
The TN431 you can buy from us is genuine Brother, at genuine prices: the black single (TN431BK) at $111.72, each color single (TN431C, TN431M, TN431Y) at $114.61, a black 2-pack at $210.11, a CMY 3-color set at $317.17 and the full 4-color set at $390.74. At Brother's ratings that is about 3.72¢ a page for black and about 6.37¢ for each color — which is why most base-machine owners are better served one tier up: a compatible TN433 single costs $28.39, lasts half again as long, and fits the same five machines. TN431 genuine makes sense where a purchasing policy requires original cartridges, or where the standard tier's smaller box is genuinely all the machine will ever need.
If the compatible TN431 series is ever made purchasable, this section will be revisited — a tier is only carded on this page when a reader can actually buy what the card shows.
Two drums, two machine groups — both genuine only
This platform runs on two drum units, and they divide along the same line as the toner tiers. The DR431CL serves the seven non-flagship machines — the five base models plus the MFC-L8895CDW and MFC-L8905CDW. The DR433CL serves the flagship pair only, the HL-L9310CDW, MFC-L9570CDW and their tray variants. Neither drum fits the other group, and no compatible version of either exists on our shelf, so neither carries a card here: the DR431CL is $222.55 as a genuine Brother part, and the DR433CL is $232.47. Each unit is a single drum that all four toner cartridges sit in — one part serving every color, replaced as one piece. Both listings are titled with the word “Black”; that word belongs to the template, not the part.
One comparison our own listings make badly, corrected here: the DR431CL listing headlines 30,000 pages while the DR433CL listing headlines 50,000, which reads as though the flagship drum outlasts the base drum five-to-three. Brother rates the two units identically — about 30,000 pages when jobs average a single page, or about 50,000 when they average three, since a drum's wear counts jobs as well as pages. Each listing simply chose a different end of the same rating. At the genuine prices above, drum cost works out to roughly 0.74¢ a page for the DR431CL and roughly 0.77¢ for the DR433CL at the one-page-per-job rating — near enough the same running cost, on machines that were never interchangeable. Buy the drum named for your machine group when the printer asks for it; its usual warning signs are streaks and repeating marks that survive a toner change.
How to reset the drum counter after a change, machine by machine, is covered on the Brother color reference linked just below.
Chips and firmware — the narrow claim this family supports
This page claims no fitted chip for any cartridge on the platform, and the restraint is documentary. Read all 141 listings and the word “firmware” never appears; “chip” appears only within a single sentence repeated across the first-generation listings, which describes the cartridges as built from new parts — “including OPC drums, wiper blades, a smart chip and other internal parts.” Naming a component is not promising recognition behavior, the later listing generations dropped even that sentence, and this page will not promote a parts list into a claim. What the record supports is exactly that sentence, and nothing larger.
Brother's own published stance covers the wider question: the company states that firmware updates are not used to block third-party cartridges. What owners actually meet day to day on this generation — recognition prompts, toner-level reporting, the drum counter and its reset — is gathered on our Brother Color Toner & Drum Compatibility page. Fit and arithmetic are this page's whole brief.
Before you order: the TN431 platform checklist
Frequently asked questions
Fit first, volume second. The five base machines (HL-L8260CDW, HL-L8360CDW, HL-L8360CDWT, MFC-L8610CDW, MFC-L8900CDW) take TN431 and TN433, and all but the HL-L8260CDW and MFC-L8610CDW also take TN436. The flagship pair (HL-L9310CDW, MFC-L9570CDW) takes TN436 and TN439 only. Inside your machine's allowed tiers, heavier printing argues for the longer-lived tier; occasional printing for the shorter one.
Because the compatible TN431 series in our catalog is set to not-purchasable — its twelve listings show prices but cannot be ordered — and this guide does not card products a reader cannot buy. The standard tier is therefore sold here as genuine Brother only. On the five base machines, the practical alternative is the compatible TN433: it fits the same printers, is rated for more pages (about 4,500 black / 4,000 colors against TN431's 3,000 / 1,800) and costs less per cartridge than genuine TN431.
Brother does not list it for those machines. Its reference guide for the flagship pair names TN436 and TN439 as the only toner tiers, and the drum changes too — those machines use the DR433CL, not the DR431CL. Our catalog currently shelves TN433 listings under the flagship categories and titles some of them with the flagship model names; that is our shelving, and it does not change Brother's list. Order TN436 or TN439 for those printers.
The DR431CL serves the seven non-flagship machines: the five base models plus the MFC-L8895CDW and MFC-L8905CDW. The DR433CL serves the HL-L9310CDW and MFC-L9570CDW family only. Each is a single drum unit that all four toner cartridges sit in — not a black-only part, whatever the listing titles say — and the two are not interchangeable.
Because each listing headlines a different end of the same Brother rating. Brother rates both drums at about 30,000 pages when jobs average one page, and about 50,000 pages when jobs average three pages — a drum wears per job as well as per page. The DR431CL listing prints the first figure and the DR433CL listing the second; the units' rated lives are identical.
On this shelf, yes — the TN436 black single is $27.55 against $28.39 for the TN433 black, and it is rated for about 6,500 pages against 4,500, so it wins on both price and life wherever Brother lists it for your machine. The colors and sets ladder the expected way (TN433 below TN436 below TN439); the black single is the one inverted rung, printed here as it stands.
None is claimed here. Firmware is mentioned in none of the family's 141 listings, and the sole chip reference is one parts-list sentence in the first-generation listings (“a smart chip” among new components) — too thin a record to build a claim on. Brother's published stance is that firmware updates are not used to block third-party cartridges; recognition messages and drum-counter resets for this generation live on our Brother Color Toner & Drum Compatibility page.
Every compatible cartridge carded above carries our own 1-year warranty, and the return window is the same full year — if a cartridge is not right, it comes back to us. Genuine Brother items sit under the manufacturer's warranty instead, and OEM returns run 30 days. Parcels leave whichever of our Illinois, Pennsylvania, Georgia or California warehouses is closest, and the support desk answers Monday through Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM Central.