TRADE REALITY CHECK
Hire or Buy Plant & Equipment Calculator
Mini digger, compactor, breaker, stump grinder or other trade equipment — put in what you normally pay to hire it and what owning it would cost, and see roughly when buying starts to make more sense.
Keep the figures on the same basis. If you normally claim VAT back, use prices without that VAT. If you don’t, use the full price you pay.
Hiring
Use the rate you actually tend to pay. If you hire weekly, divide the hire charge by the number of days you have it.
We use this with your annual hire days to estimate what delivery normally adds to each day you use the equipment.
Buying
Use the price you would actually expect to pay.
Choose the period you want to compare.
A rough estimate is fine.
Use a rough annual total. Leave at £0 if negligible.
+ Include finance cost
Use the finance agreement's total charges if you know them. Leave at £0 if buying outright.
Your hire vs buy sense-check
BUYING LOOKS CHEAPER
14 days/year
On the figures you entered, buying starts to work out cheaper at roughly this level of annual use.You expect to use it about 30 days a year.
The break-even point assumes your usual pattern of hire periods and delivery or collection costs stays broadly similar as your usage changes.
A free tool from SmartTradie — the app that turns a voice note into a quote you can send before you leave the job.
A simple example
Say a machine costs £6,000 to buy, you expect to keep it for four years and think it will still be worth £3,000 when you sell it.
If owning it costs another £750 a year in servicing, repairs, insurance and storage, you can compare that with the day rate you normally pay to hire the same type of machine.
How the calculator works
Hiring uses your typical hire cost, expected days of use and delivery or collection costs. Buying spreads the amount you expect the equipment to lose in value across the years you keep it, then adds annual ownership costs and any finance charges you enter. This gives a simple annual equivalent so the two options can be compared on the same basis.
Why it is worth knowing
Buying a machine can feel cheaper because you stop paying hire charges, but ownership brings its own costs and ties money up.
Hiring can look expensive day to day, but if you only need something occasionally it may still be the cheaper option.
The useful number is the break-even point: roughly how many days a year you would need to use the machine before ownership starts to make financial sense.
This is a simple pre-tax business sense-check using your own estimates, not accounting or tax advice. The calculator doesn’t adjust for when payments happen, and tax, VAT, capital allowances and the actual timing of repairs or resale values can change the full financial picture.