Cost data

How Much Is the Acquisition Fee at Each Lease Company?

Written by JaredReviewed by JaredLast reviewed 2026-08-07

Figures reviewed 2026-08-07 (yesterday). Rate data is sourced per table and each table states its own reporting period.

How much is the acquisition fee at each lease company?

Acquisition fees, the charge a leasing company sets to open your lease account, run roughly $595 to $1,095 depending on the brand. That range comes from this site's own verified data anchors, and it is the widest honest answer available, because most captives (the manufacturer finance arms that actually set the fee) do not publish a specific dollar figure on their own consumer-facing pages.

Only a handful of brand-level figures could be checked against a source this research could actually reach: Capital One's own acquisition-fee compilation page, fetched directly for this page in August 2026. It states $645 through Ford Motor Credit, $650 for Toyota, $695 for Tesla or General Motors vehicles, and up to $1,095 for Porsche, the highest figure found for any brand. Complete Car Lease is not a dealer, lessor, or broker; we do not set or collect this fee, and the table below reports what could be confirmed rather than filling in a number for every brand.

Which brand's acquisition fee could this research actually confirm?

Four brands, Ford at $645, Toyota at $650, Tesla and GM at $695, and Porsche at up to $1,095, have a dollar figure this research could trace to a source it checked directly: Capital One's own acquisition-fee compilation page. That is a real source, but it is a secondary one, not Ford Credit's, Toyota Financial Services', Tesla's, GM Financial's, or Porsche Financial Services' own published page, so none of these four figures clears the stricter bar of being confirmed on the captive's own site.

That distinction matters because captives change fees without announcing it broadly, and a number sitting on a third-party finance-education page can drift out of date. Treat the figures in the table as a reasonable planning estimate, not a guarantee of what your specific offer disclosure will say. Your own lease's federal disclosure page, required under Regulation M, states the exact acquisition fee for your contract, and that number governs over anything on this page.

Seven brands checked for this page, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai, Kia, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW, had no dollar figure found in any source at all, not even a secondary compilation. BMW and Mercedes-Benz Financial Services both confirm a disposition fee exists on their own sites without naming a dollar amount, and neither site names an acquisition fee amount either, which is consistent with how those two brands were also the least transparent on this site's companion disposition-fee research.

Is the acquisition fee the same across Chevrolet, GMC, and Cadillac?

Probably not, though this research could not confirm a separate figure for each. Chevrolet, GMC, and Cadillac all lease through the same finance company, GM Financial, and Capital One's compilation cites one blended figure, $695, for "General Motors vehicles" without breaking it out by nameplate.

The reason to doubt a single number applies evenly across all three brands comes from this site's own disposition-fee research on those same brands. GM Financial's own 2024 Chevrolet lease-end guide states a disposition fee of up to $395, while its 2025 GMC guide states up to $495 for the same fee, in nearly identical language, and Cadillac's guide states no dollar figure at all. One finance company clearly prices its lease-end fee differently by nameplate, so assuming the acquisition fee is identical across Chevrolet, GMC, and Cadillac just because GM Financial signs all three contracts is a guess, not a confirmed fact. This page does not print separate Chevrolet, GMC, and Cadillac acquisition fee figures because none could be independently confirmed.

Can you negotiate the acquisition fee?

No. The acquisition fee is set by the leasing company that owns the lease, not by the dealer you sign with, so there is no line on the contract for a salesperson to discount the way they can discount the selling price. Complete Car Lease is not a dealer, lessor, or broker, and this page does not set or collect the fee either; it only reports what is publicly known about it.

The one legitimate way the fee gets reduced or waived is a manufacturer-run promotional lease program that includes it, the same way some programs waive the first month's payment. That is a captive decision advertised through a specific lease offer, not something a dealer grants on request. If a salesperson claims they can personally knock the acquisition fee off your deal, ask them to show it removed from the contract itself, since a verbal promise about a captive-set fee does not reliably survive to paperwork.

Will a dealer waive the acquisition fee for a higher money factor?

Some dealers offer this trade, and it is worth understanding before you take it, because it usually costs more than paying the fee outright. The mechanism is the same one covered on can dealers mark up the money factor: a dealer can absorb the acquisition fee out of its own margin instead of collecting it from you, then recoup that cost, and more, by marking up the money factor above the buy rate the leasing company actually requires. No captive checked for this page publishes this trade as an official program; it is a dealer-level negotiating tactic, not a captive policy, so treat any specific claim about it as something to verify in your own contract rather than a fixed industry rule.

Here is the arithmetic on a hypothetical 36-month lease, computed rather than estimated: a $30,000 MSRP car, a $28,000 negotiated selling price, and a 58% residual. The comparison is paying a $695 acquisition fee in cash at the buy-rate money factor against waiving the fee for a 0.0006 markup, the same markup size documented elsewhere on this site.

Waiving the fee for the marked-up rate saves $695 at the counter but costs $286 more over the full term, because the rent charge on the higher rate compounds every month for three years while the fee itself was only ever a one-time charge. New-vehicle loans averaged 6.39% APR in Q1 2026, per Experian's State of the Automotive Finance Market, so the 7.44% approximate rate in the marked-up scenario is well above a typical loan rate, a useful sanity check if a dealer offers you this trade. If you have the $695 available and do not need to lower what is due at signing, paying it in cash beats financing it through a higher rate.

Does the acquisition fee change whether leasing makes sense for you?

Rarely on its own, and this is worth saying honestly. Even at the top of the $595 to $1,095 range this page cites, a $1,095 Porsche-level fee is a one-time charge next to three years of monthly payments. On a hypothetical 36-month lease with a $695 acquisition fee and a $15,381 total lease cost, both computed with the site's lease calculator, the fee is about 4.5% of the total. Fixating on shaving a few hundred dollars off the acquisition fee misses the much bigger cost questions in a lease.

The bigger question is whether leasing fits how you actually drive. If you go well over your mileage allowance every year, or you keep vehicles for eight or ten years, the repeated acquisition and disposition fees across several leases, on top of the rent charge you never build equity from, usually cost more in total than financing one car and driving it past its loan payoff. A brand's acquisition fee is worth knowing before you sign; it is not worth letting it distract from that larger comparison. For the complete fee timeline from signing to lease end, see what fees do you pay when you lease a car; for the disposition fee this page's figures pair with, see disposition fees by brand; and for the return-versus-buy call itself, see leasing versus buying a car.