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The cost to buy the equipment outright.
Use the actual price for the specific tool or equipment you're comparing.
The cost to rent the same equipment for one day.
The hire firm's published day rate. If they also quote a week, put that in the next field rather than dividing it by seven — a weekly rate is usually three to four days' money, not seven, and dividing it hides exactly the discount that decides this.
The hire firm's week rate, if they quote one. Zero means day rate only.
Enter it as quoted, not divided down. Hire firms commonly price a week at three to four days' money, which is why a job of more than three or four days is often cheaper on a weekly ticket even when you do not keep it the whole week — and why the day rate alone can put break-even in the wrong place.
How many days the equipment is actually needed for.
Days you hold it, not days you use it: a machine sitting on site over a weekend is usually still on the ticket. If you are pricing several jobs, add the days together — the comparison below is about whether buying pays back across everything you will use it for.
What you expect to sell it for afterwards, if you will.
Only fill this in if you genuinely intend to sell, and use what the tool will fetch used rather than a share of its new price. Leaving it at zero is the conservative reading and treats the purchase as spent — which is also the right reading for anything you are buying because you expect to need it again.
Break-even rental days
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This page does not assume a price. Enter yours and the answer appears here.
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Equipment Rental vs. Buy Calculator — shown in imperial, US market. The link sets both, so the result they see is the one on your screen.
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How this was calculated
Formula source(s)
- Break-even days = purchase price (net of any resale) / daily rental rate — beyond this many rental days, buying costs less overall
- A hire is billed the CHEAPEST of three ways: every day at the day rate, the whole hire rounded up to complete weeks, or complete weeks plus the remaining days at the day rate. A weekly rate is commonly three to four days' money rather than seven, so the third is often the lowest and the day rate alone puts the threshold in the wrong place
Inputs used
- Purchase Price
- Daily Rental Rate
- Weekly Rental Rate (0 if none offered)
- Days This Job Needs It
- 10
- Resale Value After the Job (0 if keeping)
- 0
What this calculation does not cover
- The daily rate is the sticker, not the invoice. Yards add a damage waiver, environmental and fuel charges, and delivery and pickup on anything you cannot carry in a truck, and many bill an eight-hour meter day — run a machine ten hours and it counts as more than one day. Each of those raises the real cost of renting, which moves the true break-even below the day count shown here.
- It assumes the rented machine and the bought machine are the same machine, and at the same price they usually are not. Rental fleets are contractor-grade and built for daily abuse, while the tool a comparable purchase price buys is often a lighter homeowner model with less capacity and a shorter life. Matching the rented machine's specification costs more to buy and pushes break-even further out.
Computed in your browser — nothing you enter is uploaded. Presented in US customary units and US trade terminology. Where a formula follows a published standard, that standard and its edition are cited beside it on this page; where none governs, the page says so. Local amendments override model codes — verify against the code in force where you build.
Sources checked 2026-09-16 · v1.1.0
Regulatory standards & verification citations2
- Break-even days = purchase price (net of any resale) / daily rental rate — beyond this many rental days, buying costs less overall
- A hire is billed the CHEAPEST of three ways: every day at the day rate, the whole hire rounded up to complete weeks, or complete weeks plus the remaining days at the day rate. A weekly rate is commonly three to four days' money rather than seven, so the third is often the lowest and the day rate alone puts the threshold in the wrong place
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