How it works
lease vs buy calculator — the short version
If you want a lease vs buy calculator without the sales pitch, the Car Lease vs Buy Calculator keeps the maths honest and the steps visible, the way a spreadsheet would if you'd built it yourself.
We built Car Lease vs Buy Calculator because the other tools for this job either cost a subscription or came with a consent banner the size of a small novel.
Dealerships bury totals in fine print — bringing your own numbers changes the conversation. Have the actual fuel price from last fill-up, not a guess — then work it out and the rest of this page explains what the answer means.
Leasing has lower monthly outgoings and bundles warranty, but you never own the asset. PCP splits the difference with a balloon. Buying outright wins on total cost if you keep a car 6+ years.
On this page you will see RAC Foundation, motoring and Vehicles & Motoring treated as first-class terms — each one is linked to the calculators and references that use it, so you can follow the thread without retyping queries into a search bar.
If it helps, jump straight to the Vehicles hub or compare with the Car Finance Calculator (HP/PCP) and the UK Road Tax (VED) Calculator — those two calcs are the ones readers usually open right after this page.
From inputs to answer, in full
Consider a realistic scenario and follow it through:
Leasing has lower monthly outgoings and bundles warranty, but you never own the asset. PCP splits the difference with a balloon. Buying outright wins on total cost if you keep a car 6+ years.
Moments this tool earns its keep
Car Lease vs Buy Calculator is aimed at people arriving with questions like these:
- "Lease vs buy car uk"
- "Car ownership cost"
- "Pcp vs pch"
- "What is lease vs buy calculator"
- "How to calculate lease vs buy calculator"
- "Lease vs buy calculator formula"
Where the number stops being useful
Every tool has an edge where it stops being the right answer. Car Lease vs Buy Calculator is no exception:
- For legally binding tax or medical decisions — cross-check with HMRC, NHS or a qualified professional.
- For very large or very small extremes the rounding error outgrows the useful precision.
- When the underlying rate or threshold has changed since the page was last reviewed — always verify with the primary source.
- When the input you have is already a derived figure (net of something) — feeding it in as "gross" will double-subtract.
Watch-outs before you trust the number
Every time you work it out for a new scenario, one of these creeps in — it's worth knowing them ahead of time.
- Misreading the unit in the label — 'per year', 'per month' and 'per day' versions of the same figure differ by 12× or 365×.
- Taking a ratio and multiplying it by the wrong side of the inputs — always write the ratio as A/B with labels before running.
- Trusting a screenshot of someone else’s calculation — rerun it yourself with the same inputs, numbers drift.
- Assuming percentages add up. 10% off then 10% more is not the original price — it is 99% of it.
- Not refreshing the page when thresholds are date-sensitive. If the page was cached yesterday, bank rates may already be yesterday’s.
The sources behind the numbers
Where the maths needs an external authority, we cross-check against:
- GOV.UK
- MoneyHelper
- RAC Foundation
Works well alongside
If this question keeps coming up for you, the same cluster of tools usually comes next:
- Car Finance Calculator (HP/PCP) — Compare Hire Purchase (HP) and Personal Contract Purchase (PCP) payments, balloon and total cost.
- UK Road Tax (VED) Calculator — Estimate UK VED (vehicle excise duty) from fuel type, CO₂ emissions and list price — including the £40k premium supplement.
- Fuel Cost Calculator — Work out fuel cost for any journey from distance, pence-per-litre and MPG — with a UK-average benchmark for comparison.
How we keep this accurate
Our calculadoras run on pure, unit-tested functions — the same logic lives in the browser and in the CI test suite. When tax rates, thresholds or official figures move, the update lands within 24 hours of the announcement. You can read the editorial policy and corrections policy.
Found an out-of-date number on Car Lease vs Buy Calculator or anywhere else in the Vehicles toolkit? Send it to the editorial desk and we'll patch it. Or browse the full calculadora directory for the next tool you need.