Short Term Car Leasing vs Buying a Car (Pros & Cons)

Is it better to lease or buy a car? It isn’t a two-way choice

Every comparison you’ll read sets buying against leasing as though there were two options. There are three, and the third one is the reason most of these articles are quietly misleading.

Buying — cash, PCP or HP. You carry the asset and the depreciation, and eventually you own something.

A conventional lease — three or four years, fixed, with a settlement fee if you get out early. This is what “leasing” means on almost every other site, because it’s what almost every other site sells.

Short term leasing — one to eighteen months, ending cleanly. This is what we do, and we don’t sell the three year contract at all.

That matters because the honest answer changes depending on which two you’re comparing. Set buying against a four year lease and it’s a question about capital and depreciation. Set it against a six month agreement and it’s a question about how much certainty you actually have. Most people arrive here asking the first question when the second one is the one that applies to them.

The words people use, and what they actually mean

Half the confusion in this comparison comes from four products being called “leasing” and “buying” interchangeably. They behave very differently at the end.

PCP is the one that trips people up. It is sold as buying and it feels like buying, but until the final payment lands you own nothing — and that payment is usually the largest single sum in the agreement. If you were going to hand the car back anyway, you have paid PCP prices for a lease.

The honest way to compare any two of these is total cost over the period you’ll actually keep the car, including what you’d get back if you sold it. Not the monthly.

Is it cheaper to lease or buy a car? Start with what owning one costs

The purchase price is the number people compare on. It’s rarely the number that decides anything.

The RAC’s 2025 Report on Motoring put average annual running costs at around £3,407 — and that figure excludes finance and depreciation. Insurance, fuel, servicing, tyres, road tax and MOT, before you’ve paid for the car itself.

Add depreciation and the picture changes shape entirely. For a typical family car the true annual cost of ownership lands somewhere between £5,000 and £8,000 once the value lost is counted. Depreciation is the largest single cost of owning a car and the only one that never appears on a bank statement, which is exactly why it gets left out of the comparison.

A lease doesn’t make that cost disappear. It prices it in and fixes it, and the provider carries the risk of getting the estimate wrong.

Lease vs buy a car: the three-way comparison

Where buying genuinely wins

We’d rather set this out properly than pretend otherwise.

You’ll keep the car a long time. Ownership costs fall off a cliff once the finance clears. If you’ll run the same car for six or seven years, nothing beats buying it.

Your mileage is high or unpredictable. No cap, no excess charges. For anyone doing serious motorway miles this alone decides it.

You want to modify it. Tow bar, roof rack, livery that stays on, anything permanent.

You want the asset. A lease builds no equity. If that bothers you, it should — it’s a real difference, not a technicality.

Where a conventional three or four year lease wins

We don’t offer one, so take this as it’s meant.

If your workload is settled, your mileage is predictable and you’re confident about the next four years, the long contract will cost you less per month than anything we can do. The trade is that you’ve committed, and leaving early carries a settlement fee. Lease rates have softened roughly 6–8% over the past year as supply has steadied, so the gap is currently narrower than it has been — but it’s still there, and it’s real.

If that describes you, take it. We’d rather tell you now than have you six months into the wrong agreement.

Where short term leasing wins

You don’t know. New contract, a business that might look different in a year, a role you’re not certain about, a house move pending. Certainty has a price, and so does committing without it.

You need the car now. Everything we lease is already on the fleet, so delivery runs 10–14 days rather than the months a factory order takes.

You want to try before committing. Particularly for electric. Battery technology, charging infrastructure and residual values are all still moving. Six months in an EV tells you more than any amount of reading, and you carry none of the resale risk. Our guide to the benefits of an electric car subscription goes into it.

You want one bill. Servicing, maintenance, road tax, MOT and breakdown cover sit inside the monthly figure. Insurance and fuel are yours. Nothing else lands unexpectedly.

The need has an end date. A project, a contract, maternity cover, a gap between company cars. Match the term to the job: we run one, three, six, nine and twelve to eighteen months.

The business case, which most comparisons skip

If you’re buying through a company rather than personally, three things change the arithmetic and none of them appear in a consumer comparison.

VAT. On a car available for private use, VAT recovery on lease payments is generally restricted to 50%. On a purchase, you normally recover nothing at all unless the car is used exclusively for business, which is a high bar. That’s a point about conventional long term leases, which often itemise. Ours don’t — the whole cost arrives as one monthly payment, so the comparison isn’t like for like. Vans are treated differently again — generally full recovery on business use. Our guide to VAT on lease cars covers it properly.

Benefit-in-Kind. If an employee or director drives the car personally, they pay tax on it. For 2026/27 the rate on a fully electric car is 4%, rising to 5% in 2027/28, 7% in 2028/29 and 9% in 2029/30. Petrol and diesel equivalents sit far higher. On a car someone will actually drive home, that gap usually outweighs any difference in the monthly rate — which is why the electric question and the lease question tend to get answered together.

Cash and the balance sheet. Buying converts working capital into a depreciating asset. Leasing keeps the cash in the business and turns the cost into a predictable monthly line. For a business that would rather spend its capital on stock, staff or equipment, that’s often the whole argument.

We’re not accountants. Check your own position with yours before committing — and note that BiK rates change every April.

The question that usually decides it: mileage

More comparisons founder on mileage than on price.

Our allowances start at 1,000 miles a month on terms under a year, and 833 a month — 10,000 across the year — from twelve months up, with higher bands available when you book. Excess runs at 65p per mile plus VAT on one and three month agreements, and 40p plus VAT on longer terms.

Work out your real annual mileage before you compare anything. Not your estimate — check last year’s MOT certificates, which record it. If the honest number is well above the allowance, buy the car, and we’ll have saved you a year of excess charges. If it’s comfortably inside, the comparison is genuinely about flexibility and cash rather than cost per mile.

Frequently asked questions

So should I lease or buy a car?

If you’ll keep the car for years, your mileage is high, or you want to own something at the end — buy it.

If you can forecast four years confidently and want the lowest monthly — take a conventional lease, from someone who sells them.

If you can’t forecast that far, need the car soon, or want the whole cost in one predictable figure — that’s what we do.

See current offers, browse the range by manufacturer, or talk to us and we’ll tell you honestly whether it’s the right fit.

Your questions, answered

And if you're wondering who's behind all this: Drive Subscribe is an ACL Automotive brand — the team that runs short-term leasing for some of the biggest names in the business. The car's short-term. We're not.