Should I spend on dust collection or a respirator first?

This is the most common version of the question in woodworking forums, and the honest answer costs us a sale often enough that it is worth saying plainly.

Collection is upstream. Air you never contaminate does not need filtering, and it protects everyone in the building - you, whoever walks in, whoever uses the space after you. A respirator does none of that. It protects one person, for exactly as long as it is on their face, and the moment they take it off to check a cut they are breathing the room.

Start where the fine dust is made. Sanders and routers, not the table saw. Big chips are the visible mess but they fall out of the air on their own. The particles that stay suspended for hours come off abrasives, and those are the ones worth capturing at the source.

Where a respirator earns its place is the gap collection cannot close. No hood on a sander catches everything, hand sanding has no port at all, and sweeping up puts settled dust straight back into the air. That is the work a respirator is for.

So the order that makes sense for most people: collection at the worst machines, then something to wear for the rest, then ambient filtration last, because an air cleaner is the only one of the three that does nothing at the moment the dust is created.

We sell respirators, not dust collectors. That is a reason to weigh this answer accordingly, and also why we have no interest in telling you the wearable comes first.