Lease End Review – Online Lease Buyouts That Cost You Nothing to Arrange

Just the Tip:

If your lease is ending and the car is worth more than the payoff, get a Lease End quote before you set foot in the dealership. The service costs you nothing, and its average buyout rates undercut typical used car loan rates at every comparable tier. Compare it against your own credit union.

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The dealership handling your lease buyout paperwork is the same business that would rather sell you a new lease, and it sets its own price and fees for processing the old one. That conflict is why buying out a car you already drive can cost hundreds more than the payoff figure suggests, and why the paperwork is worth taking somewhere else.

Lease End moves that transaction online. You provide the lease details and it does the rest. It shops your loan across a bank network that includes Ally, Capital One, Chase, Santander, PNC, and TD, pays off your leasing company, transfers the title, and mails you new plates. The company started in Burley, Idaho, in 2021 and now employs more than 250 people across three offices in Idaho and Utah. It holds an A+ rating from the BBB and reports over 65,000 completed buyouts in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.

How Lease End Works

Lease End is essentially a broker, not a lender, and that shapes everything else. You enter your plate number or VIN, answer questions about your lease and finances, and the platform runs a hard credit pull to source your loan options. (To start with a soft pull before formally applying, use the platform’s monthly payment estimator.) Lease End then presents the offers it sources, prepares documents for e-signature, settles with the leasing company, and files your title and registration.

You pay Lease End nothing for the service. There is no doc fee and no origination charge, and a lender pays it a referral commission when you choose a loan. You do pay a processing fee for the title and registration work, which the company says it passes through at-cost. Its other revenue is the optional coverage it sells alongside the loan, the vehicle service contract and GAP insurance, which is the one part of the offer worth shopping elsewhere if you have the time.

Key Features

Three parts do the work. The financing sets the cost, the paperwork removes the DMV trip, and the coverage is the one real decision.

Financing and Rates

The rate is the part you live with for years. As of its August 3, 2026 update, Lease End reports these average APRs, the yearly cost of borrowing including fees, for its own customers:

• Above 800: 6.24%
• 740 to 799: 6.67%
• 670 to 739: 8.11%
• 580 to 669: 11.28%
• Below 580: 15.51%

The blended average is 9.15%. Lease End’s other August 2026 averages, each reported separately, are $31,993.52 financed, a 72.8 month term, and a $580.05 monthly payment. The stated minimum credit score is 520.

Experian’s Q1 2026 State of the Automotive Finance Market report puts the average used car loan at 11.43%, with 6.30% for super prime borrowers, 8.77% for prime, 14.03% for near prime, and 19.42% for subprime. Lease End lands lower at every comparable tier, and the gap widens as credit weakens. Experian’s bands are VantageScore 4.0 ranges and Lease End’s are not, so they do not line up exactly. A lease buyout is also a lower-risk loan than a general used car purchase, since the lender knows the exact vehicle and its payoff. Part of the spread belongs to the loan type, not the broker.

Titling, Registration, and Plates

Handling the title work yourself is not free either. A title transfer fee runs $15 to $100, registration $50 to $300 depending on your state and vehicle, and DMV processing fees $8 to $50 in some states. Those fees are yours either way. What Lease End absorbs is the labor. Most states give you 30 days to transfer title, and a mail-in filing takes four to six weeks.

GAP and Vehicle Service Contracts

Lease End sells two optional add-ons alongside the loan. GAP coverage pays the difference if your car is totaled and you owe more than it is worth. A vehicle service contract is an extended warranty covering repairs once the factory coverage ends. Both get financed into the monthly payment rather than paid up front, and the company publishes pricing for neither in advance. Price each against your own auto insurer and an independent service contract before you decide. GAP is often cheaper through the carrier that already writes your policy, and a service contract on a car still under factory powertrain coverage often does not earn its cost.

What It Costs

Lease End’s own price is zero. The buyout is not. Take the company’s published example, a $22,000 residual on a car worth $26,500. You finance the $22,000, then add state sales tax plus title and registration. In a 6% tax state that is $1,320 plus roughly $250, or about $23,570 all in. The $4,500 of equity is real, but only selling the car turns it into money. Across Lease End’s ten most common buyout models, its 2026 report puts average positive equity at $5,500 and estimates the average buyout runs about $100 a month cheaper than signing a new lease.

Two of the costs you avoid come from buying out at all, not from using Lease End. A disposition fee of $300 to $500 applies when you hand the car back and disappears the moment you buy it instead, and over-mileage charges of $.10 to $.30 per mile go the same way. Only one saving traces specifically to Lease End. The company puts typical dealer end-of-lease costs at $500 to $2,000 and charges none of them.

Lease End reports that drivers saved $73 million in 2025 across the 19,287 transactions it analyzed, roughly $3,785 per buyout by our own arithmetic. The company’s 2024 report spells out the method. That version credits fees avoided “by retaining vehicle equity and avoiding lease buyout fees.” More than $26 million of that year’s $75.7 million total was avoided over-mileage charges, and the remainder combines retained equity with other avoided fees. (The number measures buying out versus handing the keys back, not Lease End versus any other route to the same buyout.)

Customer Experience and Ratings

Across more than 65,000 buyouts, Lease End’s BBB file records 71 complaints closed in the past three years, 29 of them in the past twelve months. That is about one complaint for every 915 buyouts, by our own arithmetic. Customers report hard credit inquiries they say they did not authorize, difficulty reaching anyone once the transaction closed, and lease payoffs that reached the leasing company late, which one customer said left them exposed to a late payment mark. The first theme sits alongside a stated policy of consent before any hard pull, and both can be true at once. Someone who moved through the application without reading the consent language can still be surprised by the inquiry.

By Lease End’s own count, its Trustpilot rating averages 4.7 across more than 2,000 reviews. Support runs through buyout advisors in the company’s Utah and Idaho offices, reachable by phone. The application takes about 12 minutes, loan funding typically comes through within 48 hours, and the company puts the full process at 30-60 days depending on your state and leasing company. Payoff quotes from leasing companies are often valid for only 10 to 15 days, which is the tightest deadline in the process.

Pros

• No fee for the service. No doc fee or origination charge. Processing fee only for title and registration work.
• Rates that beat the used car average. Its tier averages run below Experian’s published used car rates at every comparable credit band.
• One application, several lenders. Ally, Capital One, Chase, Santander, PNC, and TD compete for the loan.
• Soft pull for a payment estimate. The platform’s monthly payment estimator runs on a soft inquiry, before any hard pull at application.
• Almost never a DMV trip. Lease End files the title and registration and mails new plates, in all 50 states and D.C. When a wet signature is required, Lease End overnights the docs to you.
• A low credit floor. The stated minimum is a 520 score, well under what most banks want on an auto loan.
• A real track record. Operating since 2021, SOC 2 compliant, BBB accredited with an A+ rating, and 65,000-plus buyouts completed.

Cons

• Terms run long by default. The August 2026 average is 72.8 months on a car coming off a three-year lease, so the last payments land on a nine-year-old vehicle. Ask for a shorter term if the payment works.
• Coverage is optional, but its price comes with the offer. GAP and service contract costs appear inside your personalized quote, and financing them into the monthly payment makes them easy to overlook.
• Credit inquiries generate recurring complaints. Customers who expected only a soft pull have filed BBB complaints about hard inquiries, so read the disclosure before you submit the application.
• Follow-up after closing draws complaints. Unanswered messages and late lease payoffs are two of the recurring themes in the BBB file, so confirm your payoff posted before the leasing company’s next due date. Lease End does provide a customer dashboard where the driver can keep track of their deal’s progress.
• Equity is not cash in hand. Positive equity is value you already hold, not money the buyout saved you, and you realize it only by selling the car. Read any savings headline with that distinction in mind.
• Selling for the equity takes an extra step. Honda, Toyota, and Kia commonly restrict third-party buyouts, so reaching the equity means buying the car yourself, paying the tax and title fees, then selling it. Where your leasing company does allow a third-party sale, Lease End’s Marketplace lets you sell to vetted buyers instead. Tesla itself does not allow lease buyouts in Iowa or Louisiana.

Final Word

Lease End does one thing, and it does it well. If your lease is ending, the car is worth more than the payoff, and/or you want to keep it without letting a dealer price the paperwork, the service runs the whole transaction for nothing and its rates hold up against the used car market at every tier. The referral commission paid by banks, not drivers, is why it can be free, and Lease End earns the same whether your APR lands at 6% or 12%.

It is not for everyone. Start with whether buying out beats returning the car if that is still an open question. Anyone who banks at a credit union that finances lease buyouts should get its quote first, because a member rate can beat a brokered one. If you are comfortable at the DMV, Lease End is saving you legwork rather than money. Set the term length and the coverage add-ons deliberately rather than accepting whatever the offer defaults to.

For everyone else, and especially drivers in the middle credit tiers where the rate spread is widest, Lease End is worth a quote before you talk to the dealership.

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Editorial & Advertiser Disclosure: The editorial content on this page is not provided, commissioned, reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any advertiser. Opinions expressed here are ours alone, not those of any advertiser. The offers that appear on this site are from companies that compensate us. That compensation may influence which products we cover and where and how they appear on a page – including the order in which they appear – but it does not influence our evaluations, ratings, or opinions. We do not include every company or offer available in the marketplace.

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