Questions and answers
The questions people ask most, answered in plain words.
What does all-in mean?
All-in is the full monthly cost of the car in one number. It is the payment after tax and fees, plus the cost of the miles you drive, plus an estimate for insurance, plus an estimate for fuel or electricity. If a seller offers you cash, we subtract it.
Why is the payment shown by a seller not the whole cost?
The advertised payment leaves out the cash due at signing, the tax, the fee for extra miles, insurance and fuel. Two leases with the same payment can cost very different amounts a month once those are added. We add them for you and show each part on the row.
What is the difference between a new lease and a take-over?
A new lease is a fresh contract with a dealer. A take-over is someone else's lease that you take over for the months they have left. A take-over payment is fixed by their contract, so we also price the transfer fee and the miles left.
Are the insurance and fuel numbers real quotes?
No. They are estimates, and the page says so. For insurance we use a monthly range for the model, adjusted for your state. For fuel we use your state's average price and the car's rated fuel economy. If you type your own insurance or fuel price, we use yours.
Does the site show all the leases in America?
No. It shows the leases and take-overs we can read, from the sources named on the sources page. A source we could not read is reported as not read, never as zero.
How often is the data refreshed?
We read most sources once or twice a day. Every row shows the date we read it, and the Updates page shows when each source was last read. A listing that drops out of its source drops out of the table.
Is the site free, and how does it make money?
It is free. It earns money only from labelled partner links beside a lease, and from tips if you choose to leave one. The links never sit inside the ranking.
Do you sell the ranking?
Never. Nobody can pay to move a lease up the table or to change a score. A partner link never changes the order.
Can I trust a listing?
Every row names its source and the date we read it, and links to the original. If a listing disagrees with the seller's own words, or we cannot confirm it, we mark it Unverified and rank it on the worse number. Check the seller's page before you act, because a listing can change after we read it.
How do I remove or correct a listing?
Write to takedown@realleasecost.com with the page address and what is wrong. The row goes in the next build, and we tell you when it is done.
What do you store about me?
There are no cookies and no accounts. We count visits with a cookieless counter on our own server. The answers you give to the questions stay in your browser. If you join the newsletter, we keep your email address and the optional answers you give. The privacy page lists everything.
See also: How we score · Sources and coverage · Updates · Privacy · Takedown and corrections · Ask us or report a problem.
Questions page version 30 October 2026, 23:32 UTC.