The Best Pens Under $10 Will Make Your Handwriting Legible

I have terrible handwriting. Just awful. Less legible than your doctor’s tossed-off chicken scratch, more erratic than your first-grader’s exercise book scribble. At worst, my penmanship vaguely resembles a Premier League passing map, or if someone filled a broken sprinkler with ink and let it loose on a legal pad. It brings literal shame upon my family; my mom once pre-apologized to a close friend to whom I’d mailed a thank-you card. To people I meet, this is either somewhat surprising—words are my living, after all—or extremely not, because I’m a millennial. Mavis Beacon ruined us all.

As such, I’ve spent a disproportionate chunk of my life thinking about pens. Unlike cooking or golf, where all the expensive equipment in the world won’t mask an inherent lack of skill, the right pen can make all the difference with your longhand. In my case, I’ve discovered that rollerballs with especially wet ink have the effect of transforming my unseemly scrawl into something approaching adequate. “Artsy” is how some people have described it, which is miles better than “ransom-note-esque”—an actual thing someone once said to me.

Over the years, I experimented with dozens of pens of varying point sizes, grips and inks—shouts to my college girlfriend, the Pilot G2—before stumbling upon my one true love. The Stabilo Worker+ looks like something dreamed up by Apollo-era NASA, bulbous and oblong but still somehow attractively aerodynamic. The entire length of the pen is coated in a blaze of orange rubber that is comfortable to grip and will elicit compliments, without fail, the moment you pull it out of your breast pocket. But the real draw for me is the way it writes: silkier than a Klay Thompson catch-and-shoot, with a liquid ink that’s precisely the correct weight and depth to coax the best out of my limited calligraphic skillset. The price certainly doesn’t hurt, either; at $8 a pop it’s not quite BIC cheap, but still affordable enough for me to buy a few at a time. These pens are my Excalibur, the Ariana Grande to my Pete Davidson—when the match is right, you know it immediately.

Stabilo Worker+ rollerball pen

$8

Amazon

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I’m aware, however, that the Worker+ is not right for everybody. That’s fair. We all write differently. The ink can take a little too long to dry for some, or maybe you just don’t like things that are orange. (I can understand that.) With that in mind, I made my local Staples very happy by testing out a considerable selection of sub-$10 pens to nail down a few irrefutably great models that’ll work for a variety of needs. Here are the best of the rest.

Five More Great Cheap Pens

For the Speed Demon

Uni Jetstream SX-217 ballpoint pen

$4

JetPens

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This is the pen Maverick from Top Gun would use. Not only does it kind of look like a fighter jet, but it’s meant for people who write mach-speed fast. The ink dries quickly and is smear-resistant—making it a good option for lefties—and actually has the effect of encouraging you to move across the page quicker. Great for note-taking in class or meetings.

For the Aesthete

Zebra F-701 ballpoint stainless steel retractable pen

$5

Amazon

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Crafted from gleaming stainless steel, the F-701 looks and feels like a much more expensive pen. It has a nice weight to it, and makes a very satisfying click when you extend or retract the fine point tip. Fancy enough, at least appearance-wise, to use when signing important documents, like job contracts or marriage licenses.

For the Compulsive Doodler

Sakura Pigma Micron PN pens (set of three)

$9

Amazon

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Art school kids swear by the Pigma Micron for its super crisp, clean lines delivered in waterproof archival ink that won’t bleed or fade. The PN version is meant for everyday writing, so it’s equipped with a slightly more durable nib than its fine-art counterparts, but will still deliver a smooth, marker-like writing experience.

For the Fountain Head

Pilot Varsity disposable fountain pens (set of three)

$8

Amazon

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Several GQ staffers swear by these fountain pens. I cannot personally vouch for them, because I have enough trouble writing with normal pens to attempt using an archaic technology, but fountain tips in general require less pressure to use and are supposedly better for your wrist. The Varsity, according to its many fans, is both highly responsive and long-lasting.

For the Budget-Conscious

Muji gel-ink ballpoint pen

$2

Muji

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Looking to upgrade from a basic BIC, but don’t want to spend too much? You’d be hard-pressed to find a better pen for the price than Muji’s ballpoint. They have a simple, elegant Japanese design, come loaded with smooth-writing gel ink, and when you buy ‘em in bulk they drop to just a dollar a pop.