There's no single right answer to lease vs buy — it depends on your mileage, how much certainty you have about future work, and whether you'd rather have a lower fixed monthly cost or build equity in a vehicle you'll own outright.
When buying (cash or HP) tends to make sense
If you're doing high daily mileage — common on multi-drop courier rounds — lease and PCP mileage caps can get expensive fast, with per-mile excess charges eating into any monthly saving. Owning outright also means no early-termination penalty if a contract ends and you need to lay up the van for a few weeks.
When leasing tends to make sense
If your mileage is moderate and predictable, and you'd rather have maintenance bundled into one fixed monthly cost with no resale hassle in three years, a lease can be simpler to budget around. It also avoids the risk of a van's resale value dropping faster than expected.
Don't ignore total cost of ownership
A lower monthly payment isn't automatically cheaper. Add up insurance, maintenance, tyres, and any mileage excess charges across the full term, not just the headline monthly figure, before comparing options against each other.
Depreciation matters more than most drivers expect
Panel vans from popular manufacturers tend to hold value better than less common models, which matters a lot if you're buying and planning to sell privately in a few years, and matters less if you're leasing and simply handing the van back.