What we do
Lease or Buy Calculator is a free online tool that settles one of the most common car-buying questions: is it cheaper to lease or to buy? Instead of comparing two monthly payments that mean different things, it compares the net cost of each option over the same period — and credits buying for the resale value you keep at the end.
Enter the price, down payment, rate, and resale value on the buy side, and the monthly payment and amount due at signing on the lease side, and it tells you which is cheaper and by how much.
Why we built it
Dealers love comparing a low lease payment to a higher loan payment, because it makes leasing look like the obvious deal. But a loan payment builds toward owning an asset, while a lease payment buys you nothing at the end. We built this tool to make a genuinely fair, apples-to-apples comparison — the kind that's hard to do in your head on a showroom floor.
How our numbers work
For buying, we total your down payment and the loan payments during the comparison period, add any remaining loan balance, then subtract the car's resale value to get your true net cost. For leasing, we total the amount due at signing plus all lease payments over the same term. We use the standard amortization and remaining-balance formulas. Results are estimates; taxes, insurance, fees, and mileage penalties are not included and vary by deal and state.
Free and ad-supported
This tool is completely free. We keep it that way through advertising and never charge for calculations or hide features behind a paywall. We do not require an account and we do not sell your information — see our Privacy Policy for details. Questions or feedback? Visit our Contact page.