You get two copier quotes for the same machine and one is $190 a month while the other is $260. The cheaper one looks like the obvious winner until you realize they are structured completely differently. One is a net lease and one is a gross lease, and the gap between them is not profit. It is what is included. Pick the wrong structure and the lease that looked cheaper ends up costing more once the toner and service invoices start arriving.
What a Net Lease Covers
On a net copier lease, you pay only for the equipment financing. The monthly payment covers the machine and nothing else. Service, maintenance, parts, and toner are billed separately, either per click or on their own contract. A net lease is why a quote can look surprisingly low. That $190 a month might only be the hardware. Add a service and supply agreement and your real monthly cost could land at $300 or more once you are printing real volume.
Net leases make sense when you already have a separate managed print or service arrangement, or when your print volume is low and predictable enough that per click charges stay cheap. The risk is that the separate costs are easy to underestimate at signing.
What a Gross Lease Covers
A gross copier lease bundles the equipment payment with service, maintenance, and often a set volume of prints into one monthly number. That $260 quote might include the machine, all service calls, all parts, and 5,000 black and white pages a month. Nothing else to track. This is close to an all in structure, and we go deeper on the fully bundled version in our guide to the all inclusive copier lease.
Gross leases trade a slightly higher sticker price for predictability. You know your copier costs the same every month regardless of how many service calls you need. For a busy office that prints heavily, that predictability is often worth the premium.
The Real Cost Comparison
Compare on total monthly cost, not the lease line alone. Take the net lease at $190 and add its service and supply agreement. Say service runs $40 a month and your click charges come to $70 at your volume. Your real cost is $300. Now the $260 gross lease that includes the same service and volume is the cheaper option by $40 a month, or $480 a year on a 60 month term. The lease that looked more expensive is actually the better deal. Flip the volume the other way, though, and a light user might pay far less on the net lease because their click charges are tiny.
The lesson is that neither structure is cheaper by default. It depends entirely on how much you print. Get both quotes on the same volume assumption before you compare, and always ask the net lease provider for a realistic estimate of the separate service and supply costs.
How Volume Swings the Answer
Print volume is the single number that decides this. A law office running 12,000 pages a month will burn through per click charges fast on a net lease, so the bundled gross lease with a fixed page allowance almost always wins for them. A two person consultancy printing 800 pages a month is the opposite case. Their click charges are tiny, so paying a flat service premium on a gross lease means paying for coverage they barely use. Before you sign either one, pull your last three months of page counts from your current machine. If you do not have that data, ask the dealer to place a meter on your existing copier for a few weeks. Guessing your volume is the fastest way to pick the wrong structure and overpay for the full 60 month term.
What Most Guides Miss
Here is the detail that trips people up: on a net lease, the equipment finance company and the service provider can be two different companies with two different contract lengths. Your 60 month equipment lease might sit next to a service agreement that renews annually or has its own separate term. That means you can finish paying off the machine and still be locked into a service contract, or the reverse. On a gross lease, everything usually ends together because it is one agreement. Before you sign a net lease, ask whether the service contract term matches the equipment term. If it does not, you can end up managing two separate end dates and two separate cancellation windows, which is exactly the kind of thing a copier lease with service agreement is meant to simplify.
Which One to Choose
Choose a gross lease if you want one predictable bill, print moderate to heavy volume, and do not want to manage separate service invoices. Choose a net lease if your volume is low, you already have a service arrangement you trust, or you want the flexibility to shop service and supplies separately. Whichever you pick, insist that every quote you compare uses the same monthly page volume, because that single assumption changes which structure wins.
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