A car loses value every day you own it, and that loss is the biggest cost of driving. Bigger than fuel. Bigger than interest. Every way of paying is a different answer to one question: who pays for that lost value, and what do they charge for the favour?
The four routes
You buy it, you own it, you sell it. All the depreciation is yours, but nothing else. The one subtle catch: money sitting in a car can't earn a return elsewhere, and that cost is real.
A loan wearing a car badge. Deposit, fixed monthlies, then it's yours. You pay all the depreciation plus interest. Simple and honest. Rarely the cheapest.
Lower monthlies, because a big slice of the price sits in an optional final balloon payment. You mostly finance the depreciation. Good or bad comes down to the APR and where the balloon is set.
You rent the car and hand it back, paying the depreciation the leasing company expects plus their margin. When a manufacturer subsidises that expectation, a lease can beat buying. The calculator spots it when you enter a real quote.
The data
Each model's value curve is fitted from a July 2026 snapshot of around 33,000 live UK asking prices, the same car observed at every age. We validated the curves against the residual forecasts manufacturers publish inside their own PCP offers, and they line up sensibly. The comparison converts every cash flow to today's money, so options with different payment shapes meet on level ground.
These are estimates built by hand from public listings, not an industry feed. Nothing here is a quote, a valuation, or financial advice. Reliability and repair costs aren't covered yet, and EVs are mostly absent because their used values are moving too fast to forecast honestly. Tell us what to fix via the feedback form.