THE CAR EXPERTCar finance and buying advice

Leasing a new car was once limited to business motorists and large fleets, but for consumers it has become an increasingly popular alternative to traditional car finance in recent years.

Walk into a new car showroom and you’ll find them offering PCH (personal contract hire) deals alongside the longer-established PCP (personal contract purchase) schemes. Additionally, there are hundreds of independent brokers, including many major business-lease players, all offering tempting deals.

Leasing can offer several advantages, particularly in terms of cashflow. Depending on the sort of car you’re looking at, you will often pay less to lease a new car rather than buying it using a finance product like a PCP or hire purchase.

Most leasing products these days also include the option to include servicing and maintenance in the monthly payments, which removes the risk of big bills when you take the car for its annual service.

We won’t go into detail about the pros and cons of car leasing here, but if you’re keen to know more then check out our guide to personal contract hire.

So if you’ve added up the sums and decided leasing is for you, you’ll face a new question – which car leasing operator should you go for?

The most important thing to remember is to ensure you are looking at PCH offers, and not BCH (business contract hire), available only to business customers. It’s also vital to be careful when entering your details, particularly the annual mileage, as it can make a big difference to your potential costs.

The vast majority of new car leasing is arranged through specialist leasing companies, and we’ve listed more than a dozen of them below.

The biggest leasing operators have very good relationships with the major car manufacturers (which is not surprising, since they buy thousands of new cars every year). That also means that they’re paying a lot less for their cars than you would when you walk into a dealership, so you get to benefit from their purchasing power.

Most of the top 12 companies listed here are brokers, rather than actually providing the lease – a bit like franchise car dealers who sell vehicles on behalf of a manufacturer, rather than the manufacturer selling you a car directly.

The list of companies below isn’t ranked – they all provide a high level of service and are worthy of consideration. They’re simply sorted by those who are commercial partners of The Car Expert (the ones with an asterisk next to their name), which means that we may get a small commission if you click through to their website, and those that are not. This doesn’t affect the deals you are offered or the price you pay on any of the sites.

Leasing.com*

URL: leasing.com

Leasing.com describes itself as the car leasing expert and is one of several comparison sites on the internet. The company doesn’t lease cars itself but acts as a comparison site for lease companies, enabling customers to compare deals and select the one that best suits them.

Having been trading since 2000, Leasing.com claims to have helped more than a million people find a deal, and it certainly offers plenty of choice. The rates we looked at were also cheaper than leasing the same cars directly from the manufacturers.

As with most comparison sites, there’s a huge choice of potential cars – from MG to Maserati and Renault to Rolls-Royce. And the site also includes a number of tutorials, including a video explaining how ‘you’re in the driving seat’.

Since July 2021, Leasing.com’s vehicle ratings have been powered by The Car Expert’s industry-leading Expert Rating Index, so you can be sure that the vehicles have been reviewed and rated by professional journalists from 30 of the UK’s top automotive websites.

• Search for your next new car with Leasing.com*

Select Car Leasing*

URL: selectcarleasing.co.uk

Select claims to be one of the biggest providers of lease cars, boasting 50,000-plus cars delivered in around 16 years of trading, and 21,000 five-star Trustpilot reviews as a result.

Each car includes all the usual information plus a useful review of the car, both in ten-second short form and a much more detailed version. Our sample search brought up only a few choices but they were at very competitive prices. As well as the usual EV section, there’s also plenty of general information about car leasing and whether it is right for you.

Select also currently promotes a price-match service, paying out £50 in Amazon vouchers if customers find a comparable deal at a better price elsewhere.

• Search for your next new car with Select Car Leasing

First Vehicle Leasing*

URL: firstvehicleleasing.co.uk

First Vehicle Leasing has been around since 1998, offering car leasing solutions “from Fiats to Ferraris” and a five-star Trustpilot score. It has office in both England and Scotland but, as with most leasing companies, operates nationwide. There are plenty of in-stock vehicles to choose from, or you can order a specific colour and specification if you’re happy to wait a bit longer.

The website is clean and easy to navigate, including a ‘Special Offers’ page, so you won’t be wasting time hunting around to find the right car. Although if you do want to waste time, there’s a blog section full of information about how leasing works.

The company also offers leasing for vans and pick-ups if you’re running a commercial vehicle for your business.

• Search for your next new car with First Vehicle Leasing*

Driveway Vehicle Solutions*

URL: drivewayvehiclesolutions.co.uk

Driveway Vehicle Solutions is a Nottingham-based fleet finance and leasing broker that offers nationwide delivery on a wide selection of manufacturers and models through its partner Evans Halshaw, which has over 150 dealerships across the UK.

Customers can select their desired car specs, term, and annual mileage limit and get an instant quote for a 24 to 48 month lease agreement. There are no processing fees, and road tax, manufacturer’s warranty, and breakdown assistance is included too, and optional maintenance packages are available with every car.

• Search for your next car with Driveway Vehicle Solutions*

DreamLease*

URL: dreamlease.co.uk

DreamLease is a family-run leasing broker based in Buckinghamshire but servicing the entire UK. The company works with customers small and large, whether you’re looking for one car for personal use or a fleet of cars for a whole company.

The clean, easily scannable site has a prominent search bar front and centre, so you can quickly find quotes for any particular vehicle. There are also plenty of special offers on the home page, so you could even find a bargain that might not have been the car you had in mind. You can easily tweak the upfront payment, term and mileage to see how the monthly payments are affected so you can be sure you’re finding a car that perfectly fits your budget.

There are also dedicated pages for electric vehicles, van leasing and salary sacrifice.Finally, there’s a useful help page that has a load of FAQs and tips for first-time leasing customers.

• Search for your next car with DreamLease*

VIP Gateway*

URL: vipgateway.co.uk

VIP Gateway is a Manchester-based leasing broker with customers all across the UK. To back up its ambitions to provide the very highest levels of service, the company claims to have customers on their ninth or even tenth vehicles.

The site has a colourful menu to highlight special offers, in-stock vehicles, electric cars, short-term leasing, used leasing offers, prestige vehicles and so on.

There’s also a whole raft of testimonials from famous customers, with a particular emphasis on Manchester-based football stars and celebrities.

• Search for your next car with VIP Gateway*

Rivervale Leasing*

URL: rivervale.co.uk

Established in 2001, Rivervale Leasing has grown to become one of the UK’s leading car leasing companies for both business and personal users.

As it’s not tied to any car maker, Rivervale Leasing promises to find you any make and any model of car and its website features 35 manufacturers to choose from. There’s a simple slider to switch between Personal and Business quotes, and a section high up showing the latest ‘Hot Deals’ currently available.

To find the car you’re looking for (your ‘Perfect Car’) you can choose to go one of four ways: manufacturer, preference (luxury, economical etc), car type or size, or budget (under £150 to over £500). From these, it’s easy to follow the next drop down boxes until you find yourself with a pared-down list, whichever way you’ve arrived there.

The site also has a growing library of car leasing advice plus some general features, tips advice and surveys.

• Search for your next car with Rivervale Leasing*

Fleet Sauce*

URL: fleetsauce.co.uk

Wrexham-based company Fleet Sauce offers a wide range of competitive leasing and salary sacrifice deals, with a focus and expertise on business leasing for sole traders to fleets. The company’s website says that the Fleet Sauce team aims to provide the highest level of customer service, and this is reflected by the company’s excellent five-star Trustpilot rating.

The company’s website has listings for models from over 50 different manufacturers, including some lavish exclusive makes not found elsewhere like BMW Alpina, and the search tools allow you to set your maximum budget and mileage. The site also has a growing library of car leasing advice.

• Search for your next car with Fleet Sauce*

Carparison*

Carparison presents a friendly and personal image to help you to sort out a lease car. For a fast, simple start you can enter your wish list details (starting with your monthly budget) and then follow up with all their latest top deals, which show initial rental outlay and the monthly payments.

The company says it was launched in 2018 to fill a demand not met by existing leasing sites for sourcing quick and easy deals. The site majors on personal service with lots of smiling faces all over the site.

Personal and Business options are sensibly kept very separate – in fact one is in a black box and the other in white. Click on the button and you’re taken to a more detailed page in which to enter more details and requirements.

You can do a simple search for make and model and then narrow it down, or an advanced search with far more details, including whether the offer that tempts you is actually in stock (which is helpful, as not all deals offered in the leasing market are available immediately at the moment).

There are several interesting features and advice pieces such as ‘Leasing fees explained’, ‘How to order a lease car’ and even ‘Is leasing right for me?’.

• Search for your next car with Carparison*

LeaseLoco*

URL: leaseloco.com

LeaseLoco is another car lease comparison site, and once you get beyond the home-page graphics recalling Mexican Day of the Dead celebrations, the site has much to recommend it.

Chief among these is the score system. It uses a comparison algorithm to analyse the value of each lease deal and whether customers can do better – for example, leasing an Audi A6 for the price of an A4.

The site majors on affordability – there is no make and model menu on the homepage, but a simpler one asking how much you want to spend each month. The site then seeks out the deals available, which you can narrow down by make, model, mileage and such like. One advantage of this is that, although you may have been tempted by one particular vehicle, the site shows alternatives you might not have considered.

It helpfully keeps Business and Personal schemes quite separate and the choice is wide. Another neat feature is a ‘dream garage’, enabling you to save certain cars and track their price movements, with notifications when the price drops.

• Search for your next car with LeaseLoco*

Gateway2Lease*

URL: gateway2lease.com

Gateway2Lease offers both new and used cars, as well as vans and pick-ups for commercial customers. The site emphasises its latest offers in all of those categories so you can potentially grab the perfect car at a discounted price.

There are also pages for the latest electric car deals, as well as deals for both personal and business customers. Each car is given a ‘G2L score’, although it’s not clear how those scores are calculated.

You can sort models by trim levels, fuel type, CO₂ levels and P11d values to find the right car for your budget. Cars that are in stock are also tagged so you can see which models are available for immediate delivery. As with most other sites, there’s also plenty of useful information for first-time leasing customers to explain how everything works.

• Search for your next car with Gateway2Lease*

Hippo Leasing

URL: hippoleasing.co.uk

Hippo Leasing’s parent company certainly knows a thing or two about cars and the automotive business – the family-owned Hippo Motor Group has been trading for more than a century. They use that experience and know-how to make car leasing simple for customers, using their access to a wide range of vehicle manufacturers to bring a vast choice of vehices, from Ford to Ferrari.

Unlike most of the sites listed here, Hippo devotes a specific section of its website to used car leasing, rather than only offering new cars. All used cars come with a minimum six-month warranty (potentially more if the car is still under its new car warranty) and go through a comprehensive workshop inspection before collection by the customer.

The site is well laid out and begins with four easy steps to lease a car, from finding one to driving one. If you don’t know what you want, there’s a browse section broken down into sections such as price, make, body type, and new or used, and if you need a nudge in the right direction there’s a good section of hottest special offers.

• Search for your next new or used car with Hippo Leasing*

Auto Trader 

URL: autotrader.co.uk

Auto Trader makes the most of its years of experience in selling cars to offer an extensive leasing comparison section on its site. The home page boasts the usual menu finder but majors on offering information on how leasing works. This is extensive, including video advice from former BBC Top Gear presenter Rory Reid.

The site will likely answer most questions a first-time leasing customer might have. There’s a good section showing reviews of some of the site’s latest cars too.

Once you feel you understand what you are after, the site offers a similar search engine to other comparison sites, narrowing down the deals based on the usual entries of model, mileage, monthly cost and such.

The deals on the site are good quality, Auto Trader claiming to source the best deals from the UK’s leading leasing providers, but there is not as wide a selection as on other comparison sites.

• More car leasing news, information and advice at The Car Expert

Leasing a new car direct from the manufacturer

In recent years, several car manufacturers have added personal leasing offers to their long-established business leasing services. Often it serves as a way of shifting large numbers of specific models, and to feed their used car forecourts with end-of-lease cars.

Leasing a new car directly from a manufacturer comes with obvious advantages – you are effectively ‘cutting out the middle man’ by dealing direct, with all the front-line servicing and maintenance back-up. And surprisingly, comparing certain models across the market, the manufacturer deals were necessarily not the most expensive.

The biggest downside is a lack of choice. Manufacturer sites tend to offer just a few grades available, sometimes on cars that are less easy to shift off forecourts, and on by no means their entire model line-up. There’s also the other obvious drawback that you can’t directly compare cars from different brands side-by-side.

If you go to a showroom, they’ll happily provide you a PCH quote on any car in the range, in any specification, but it will often cost you just as much as a PCP on the same vehicle.

More car leasing information

Additional reporting by Tom Johnston, Sean Rees and Stuart Masson. Originally published in April 2021, most recently updated May 2026.

*The Car Expert has commercial partnerships with Carparison, DreamLease, Driveway Vehicle Solutions, First Vehicle Leasing, Gateway2Lease, Hippo Leasing, LeaseLoco, Leasing.com, Rivervale Leasing, Select Car Leasing and VIP Gateway. If you click through to their websites, we may receive a small commission. This does not affect the price you pay.