Loading Car Lease vs Buy Comparison…
Comparing two monthly payments settles nothing. A lease payment is lower because it rents the car’s depreciation instead of buying the car; at the end of one you own nothing, and at the end of a purchase you own an asset. This page compares the total cost over the same months net of what you still hold, and shows both halves separately so you can disagree with either.
Usually the lease term. Both sides are measured across exactly this period.
Optional. Nothing is converted; it only labels the figures.
The deposit or the multiple of the monthly payment taken at the start.
Excess mileage, damage recharges, a return or disposal fee.
May run longer than the comparison. Anything still owed is subtracted at the end.
The lease quote states a guaranteed future value for the same car — that figure is a good one to use here.
1,693 apart
Over 4 years, or 35 a month.
The single figure this turns on is the end value. Buying wins here only while the car is worth more than 13,693 after 4 years; below that, leasing does. Anyone confident about which side of that line the car will land on is guessing, so treat the gap as a range rather than a result.
Some things are outside this comparison because they are not the same for everybody: servicing and tyres, which a lease sometimes includes; insurance, which can be dearer on a leased car; the mileage limit and what going over it costs; and the tax treatment of a car used for business, which in some countries reverses the answer on its own.
The buyer’s credit is equity rather than value, because a car with money still secured against it cannot be turned into cash for its full price. Where the loan runs longer than the comparison, payments stop at the end of the term and whatever remains outstanding is subtracted from the car — the only honest way to compare a four-year lease with a seven-year loan.
The conversation almost always ends at the payment: one figure is smaller than the other, so it must be the better deal. That comparison is not merely rough, it is structurally broken. A lease instalment is lower for a reason — it rents the fall in value rather than buying the vehicle — and when the agreement ends you hand the keys over and hold nothing at all. Finish a purchase and you hold an asset, often worth a substantial fraction of everything spent.
Setting those two payments side by side compares a cost against a cost bundled with a purchase, and the purchase is invisible in the comparison. This page fixes that by measuring both routes across the same months and subtracting what you still hold at the end, with the two halves shown separately so you can argue with either one.
Lease at 2,000 up front and 250 a month for 48 months and 14,000 has left your account. Nothing comes back, so the net cost is 14,000 exactly.
Buy the same car at 26,000 with 4,000 down and the remaining 22,000 borrowed interest-free across the same 48 months. That is 26,000 out of the account. If the car is worth 12,000 at the end and the loan is finished, you hold 12,000, so the net cost is 14,000 as well. The two are level, and the page says so rather than manufacturing a winner from a rounding difference.
Notice what decides it. The end value is the single number the whole thing turns on: at 13,000 buying wins by a thousand, at 11,000 leasing does. Anyone claiming certainty about which side of that line a car will land on four years from now is guessing.
What a buyer holds at the end is the vehicle minus whatever debt is still secured against it. Those are rarely the same thing. Stretch the borrowing over seven years while comparing across four and the payments look wonderfully cheap, but a large balance remains outstanding on the day the comparison stops, and it is subtracted from the car before anything is credited back.
That subtraction can go negative, and the page says so plainly when it does. A buyer in that position could not sell and clear the debt — the sale would leave a shortfall to settle in cash. Comparing a four-year lease against a seven-year loan without accounting for the balance still owed is the most flattering and least honest arrangement of these numbers available.
Servicing and tyres, which some agreements include and some do not. Insurance, which can be dearer on a leased vehicle where the finance house dictates the cover. The distance allowance and what exceeding it costs, which is where an otherwise sensible lease turns expensive. And the tax treatment of a car used for work, which in some countries is large enough to reverse the answer by itself.
None of them are missing by accident. Each varies so much between readers that a built-in assumption would do more harm than a blank, and each is straightforward to fold in: put the extra alongside whichever side carries it and run the comparison again.
Off the lease paperwork. A quote on the same vehicle over the same period contains a guaranteed future value, and that is a leasing company backing an estimate with its own money on exactly the car you are asking about. It is very likely the best-informed figure you will find without paying for one.
Substantially, and the page handles it — enter zero for the rate. Subsidised borrowing removes the largest disadvantage purchasing carries, and offers of that kind usually appear on models the maker needs to move, which are often the same models whose values are falling fastest. Both effects deserve checking together.
As money out, which is how both sides here treat it. Cash handed over is unavailable for anything else, and pretending otherwise flatters whichever option demands more of it. Purists would add the return that cash could have earned elsewhere; on a car over a few years that adjustment is real but small next to the uncertainty in the end value.
Then the arithmetic has genuinely finished and the decision belongs to everything it does not cover: whether you want to own the thing, how predictable you need your outgoings to be, how far you drive, and how much you dislike the prospect of selling a car yourself. A draw is a real answer.