FREE TOOL · AUTO SALES
Buy vs. Lease vs. Finance Calculator
All three side by side: what you pay a month, what you pay in total, and what you own at the end.
Buy vs. Lease vs. Finance Calculator
Real numbers, side by side. Edit anything below — the comparison updates as you type.
Advanced: sales tax, resale value, fees
These are already set to reasonable defaults. Only change them if you know your real numbers.
Finance
$405/mo
You own it, but still owe $9,061 across 24 more payments.
Lease
$246/mo
Lease ends here. No more payments, but no car to keep.
Cash
Paid in full
You own it outright.
Cheapest to most expensive over 3 years
Cost counts everything you pay over 3 years, plus anything you still owe, minus what the car is still worth to you. A lease leaves you nothing, so its cost is everything you paid.
Over 3 years leasing costs $497 less, but you hand the car back at the end. Financing costs more and leaves you owning it.
Estimates only, for comparison. Your actual terms come from the lender or dealer. Lease tax rules vary by state — this uses one flat rate across all three columns.
See how these numbers are calculated
Built by shouldibuildai.com· Free tools for small businessesWhy the lowest monthly payment can cost the most
A lease almost always shows the smallest monthly number. That is exactly why the other two rows are there.
- Monthly payment, the number everyone quotes.
- Total paid, what it actually costs you.
- What you own at the end, the part that decides it.
What it does not guess
Sales tax and lease resale value change by state and by car, so both are yours to edit instead of buried. Your dealer knows the exact resale number for the car in front of you.
Put this calculator on your site
Free, no account, no monthly fee. Paste one line wherever you want it and it fits the space.
<iframe src="https://shouldibuildai.com/tools/car-lease-vs-buy-calculator/embed"
width="100%" height="880" style="border:0" loading="lazy"
allow="clipboard-write"></iframe>It does not push anyone toward buying, leasing, or financing. Dealers earn on all three. What costs a sale is a customer who leaves unsure.
Common questions
What is a money factor?
A money factor is a lease's interest rate written in a different unit. Multiply it by 2400 and you get the APR -- so a money factor of .00290 is the same as roughly 7% APR. Dealers quote money factor because it looks smaller, not because it means something different. This calculator asks for the APR you already know and does that conversion for you.
Why do I have to guess the resale value?
Because it genuinely varies by make, model, and term, and only your dealer knows the exact number for the specific car in front of you. Most 36-month leases land the resale value between 45% and 60% of the price, with strong-resale brands running higher and fast-depreciating models running lower. This tool defaults to 55%, the middle of that range, and you can edit it the moment your dealer gives you a real number.
Is the sales tax number exact?
No, and it says so on purpose. Lease tax rules differ by state, and they change: Illinois recently changed how it taxes leases, and Michigan's trade-in tax credit is capped at an amount that rises every year through 2029. A calculator that hardcoded those rules would be confidently wrong on a regular basis. This one uses a single, visible, editable tax rate instead of pretending to know your state's exact rule.
Does leasing always cost less per month than financing?
Usually, but not always -- it depends on the interest rate, the residual value, and how much you put down. This tool computes both from your actual numbers instead of assuming, and the verdict line at the bottom states plainly which one wins for your deal, not a rule of thumb.
Can I put this calculator on my own website?
Yes, free, with one line of code -- see the embed section on this page. It runs the exact same math you see here, with no email capture and nothing added later.
How exactly is each number calculated?
All three are measured over the same window, your lease length, since that's the one point where we actually know what the car is worth (your resale-value guess). Cash: price minus trade-in, plus tax and fees, minus what the car is worth to you then. Finance: your down payment, plus every payment made in that window, plus whatever's still owed if your loan runs longer than the window, minus what the car is worth. Lease: your down payment plus every lease payment in that window, nothing subtracted, since you hand the car back with nothing to show for it.
Why it is free
We like making small tools that are useful to a lot of people, and giving the simple ones away is part of how we work. This one has no catch: no email, no signup, nothing sold to you afterward. If a business would find it useful for their own customers, they are welcome to put it on their site too, free, but that is a bonus, not the reason we built it.
It is also the same judgment we sell: sometimes the answer is build it, and sometimes the answer is that you do not need to build anything at all.
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