Every few years the copier in the corner comes up for renewal and someone asks the reasonable question: wouldn't it be cheaper to just buy the thing? Sometimes yes, often no. It depends on four things — your cashflow, how much you actually print, how long you'll keep the machine, and what the service contract underneath it looks like.
What leasing actually gets you
A lease is a finance agreement. A funder buys the machine, you pay them in instalments — usually quarterly, sometimes monthly — over a fixed term. In return you get three real benefits.
You spread the cost. No lump sum leaves the bank account, so the copier isn't competing with payroll or rent for the same money. Service is usually bundled in, or at least presented alongside, so you get one predictable arrangement covering the box, the engineer and often the toner. And upgrading is easier: when the term ends you hand it back and take a newer machine, without owning an ageing asset nobody wants to buy.
The trade-offs are equally real. A lease is normally non-cancellable. If you move office, halve your headcount or stop printing, the payments continue — ending early means a settlement figure. And the funder isn't lending for free: interest is baked into the payment, usually invisibly, because you're quoted a payment rather than a rate. That's not a scandal, it's how finance works — it's just worth knowing it's in there.
What buying outright gets you
Buy the machine and you own an asset. There's no finance interest, no non-cancellable term, and if the service you're getting is poor you can take your maintenance contract elsewhere without asking anyone's permission. That freedom is worth more than people expect: on a lease, the people servicing your machine know you're not going anywhere.
The cost is capital. A decent multifunction device is a meaningful cheque for a small business, and that money is then tied up in something that depreciates. You carry the risk too: if your needs change in year two, you own a copier you no longer need. And buying doesn't make the running costs disappear.
The bit most people miss: how you paid for the box is a separate question from how it's serviced
Buying outright does not free you from per-copy charges. You still need a maintenance and consumables agreement — toner, parts, engineer visits — and that's almost always billed per page printed, with separate rates for mono and colour. A large share of what you spend on printing sits in that agreement, not in the price of the hardware. Two businesses can buy the identical machine and pay very differently over its life.
Tax and accounting: the high-level version
This is general information, not financial, accounting or tax advice — please check your own position with your accountant before deciding anything. At a high level, three things tend to differ:
- Lease payments are typically treated as an operating expense and written off against profits as they're incurred, depending on how the agreement is structured.
- A purchase is capital expenditure, so capital allowances — potentially including the Annual Investment Allowance — may apply instead. Whether they do, and to what extent, depends on your business.
- VAT treatment differs between the two, both in timing and in how it's recovered.
We've deliberately not quoted thresholds, rates or allowances, because they change and because the right answer depends on your accounts, not on an article. Your accountant will settle it quickly, and it's the cheapest professional advice you'll buy all year.
Comparing the right two numbers
The classic mistake is putting a monthly lease payment next to a purchase price and deciding which "feels" cheaper. Those aren't comparable numbers: one recurs, one doesn't, and neither includes the service and consumables both options need.
Work out total cost of ownership over a realistic term instead — roughly the period you'd actually keep the machine, often something like three to five years. For each option, add up:
- All finance payments across the term, or the purchase price
- Service and consumables: realistic monthly volume multiplied by the mono and colour rates, across the term
- Any annual uplift clause in the service agreement, which quietly compounds
- What happens at the end — return, settle, buy out, or an owned machine with some residual value
Do that for both routes and the gap is usually smaller than either sales pitch suggests — and the deciding factor turns out to be the per-copy rates and the uplift clause, not the price of the hardware.
Leasing vs buying at a glance
| Leasing | Buying outright | |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost | Little or none; cost spread across the term | Full price of the machine, paid now |
| Ownership | The funder owns it; you have use of it | You own the asset from day one |
| Service included? | Often bundled or sold alongside — but still a separate agreement | No — you arrange maintenance and consumables yourself |
| Flexibility | Low mid-term; easy to upgrade at the end | High — change provider, sell, or keep it running |
| Cashflow | Predictable, smooth, includes interest | One hit now, lower running cost after |
| End of term | Return, upgrade, or settle — check auto-renewal wording | Keep it, sell it, or retire it on your own timetable |
Which one is likely to suit you
Considerations, not rules — plenty of sensible businesses do the opposite, for good reasons.
Steady volume, capital available, no plans to move
Buying tends to look better. You know what you print, you'll keep the machine a long time, and you'd rather negotiate a lean service contract you can walk away from than lock into a finance term.
Tight cashflow, growing team, uncertain space
Leasing tends to earn its keep. Preserving cash for hiring matters more than saving the interest, and a growing business genuinely doesn't know what it'll need in three years. If you're a young company in London where the office itself might change, flexibility at the end of the term is worth paying for.
Somewhere in between
Most people are. In that case, stop agonising over the finance route and negotiate the service contract instead — that's where the money moves. Ricoh, Canon, Konica Minolta, Sharp, Xerox: they all make good machines. You're unlikely to be undone by the box, and far more likely to be undone by the paperwork around it.
Related guides
- How photocopier leases actually work (and where the money goes)
- 5 signs you're overpaying on your printer contract
Before you decide either way, it helps to know what your current setup costs per year — finance and service added together. The calculator on our homepage works that out in about a minute, on your own device, so you have a real number to compare any quote against.