The term dry lease comes from aircraft leasing, where a dry lease means the plane with no crew, fuel, or insurance. In the copier world it means the same idea: you lease the machine and nothing else. No service plan, no toner, no maintenance. Just the hardware and a monthly payment. That structure can save money or cost you dearly, and which one it turns out to be depends entirely on how you handle everything the lease leaves out.
What a Dry Lease Includes and Excludes
A dry copier lease includes the equipment and the financing. You make fixed monthly payments across a 36 to 60 month term for the use of the machine. Everything operational is excluded. You arrange your own service contract or pay per repair. You buy your own toner. You handle your own parts and drums. The leasing company is purely financing the box. This is why a dry lease payment can look low, sometimes $90 to $180 a month for a machine that would run $280 or more on a bundled plan. The difference is not a discount. It is the service and supplies you now have to source yourself.
Why Some Businesses Prefer It
A dry lease gives you control. You are not locked into the dealer service rates or their toner prices, which often carry a heavy markup. If you have an in house IT person who can handle basic maintenance, or a local independent tech who services copiers cheaply, a dry lease can beat a bundled deal. You also avoid paying for a service allowance you do not use. A low volume office that prints a few hundred pages a month does not need a fat maintenance contract, and a dry lease lets them skip it.
The other draw is transparency. With a dry lease you see exactly what the machine costs to finance, separate from what service and supplies cost. That clarity makes it easier to compare against buying, which our copier lease vs buy guide covers in detail.
The Risk You Take On
The danger of a dry lease is a big repair. Copiers are complex machines. A fuser assembly, a drum unit, or a mainboard failure can cost $300 to $900 to fix out of pocket. On a bundled plan those repairs are covered. On a dry lease they land on you at the worst possible time. Toner adds up too. A single color toner set can run $200 to $400. If you print heavy color volume, buying your own supplies without a per click plan can cost more than you saved on the lease payment.
So a dry lease shifts risk from the leasing company to you. If nothing breaks and your volume is light, you win. If the machine has a bad year, you can pay more than a bundled lease would have cost.
What Most Guides Miss
Here is the part that catches people: even on a dry lease, some leasing companies quietly require you to carry a service contract, just not with them. Buried in the fine print can be a clause that says the machine must be maintained by a certified technician and that failure to do so voids the return condition or triggers penalty charges at end of term. So you think you have full freedom, but if you skip service entirely and the machine comes back scratched up or worn, you get billed anyway. Before you sign a dry lease, read the return and maintenance clauses closely. If the contract requires certified service, you do not really have a pure dry lease, you have a net lease with a service obligation you must fund yourself. In that case, compare it honestly against an all inclusive copier lease where the service is already bundled and priced.
Who Should Actually Use One
A dry lease fits a low volume office with reliable local service access and someone willing to manage toner orders and the occasional repair. It fits businesses that print under a few thousand pages a month and want the lowest possible fixed payment. It does not fit a busy office that prints heavily, has no tech support, or wants one predictable bill. For those, a bundled or maintenance lease almost always ends up cheaper once you count the service and supply costs a dry lease leaves on your plate. Run the full math, including realistic repair and toner costs, before the low monthly number wins you over.
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