California lease price report: what 5,122 live offers show
Most published lease figures are advertised offers: one trim, one region, one month, printed to attract a call. This is the other thing. On August 29, 2026 we took every offer priced in our own catalog, 5,122 cars across nine brands, and measured what they actually cost. The most useful finding is not a median. It is how far apart two identical cars can be.
What we measured and how
The dataset is every vehicle our engine had priced and served on August 29, 2026: 5,122 offers across Hyundai, Kia, Nissan, Subaru, Honda, Mazda, Chevrolet, Volkswagen and Genesis. Each row is one real VIN sitting at a partner dealer, priced through the same engine that quotes a customer, with California sales tax inside the monthly and a stated term, mileage allowance and credit tier. Payments here are computed at the catalog's default scenario, so they are comparable to each other rather than to a national advertisement. This is our own inventory, not the whole California market: we carry nine brands and no luxury German marques, so the numbers describe what a shopper sees on this site, and we say so rather than calling it a market average. Where a figure comes from a subset, the count is next to it.
The finding: the same car, priced $147 a month apart
We grouped offers where everything matches: make, model, trim, term and MSRP to the dollar. Inside such a group the cars are interchangeable, so any difference in payment is not a difference in vehicle. There are 293 groups holding four or more cars, and in 50 of them the payment splits. The widest is a Kia EV6 GT-Line RWD on 36 months at an MSRP of $50,485: six cars, cheapest $489.58 a month, dearest $636.61. That is $147.03 a month, or $5,293 across the term, for cars a buyer cannot tell apart. The mechanism is visible in the data rather than inferred: the cheap ones carry a dealer discount, the dear ones carry zero. Across the whole catalog a dealer discount exists on 1,128 of 5,122 cars, 22 percent, with a median of $1,294 and a maximum of $4,847. Whether you meet a discounted VIN or an undiscounted one is, for most shoppers, luck.
The window sticker does not predict the payment
Take the 3,407 offers on 36-month terms and compare them against each other at random. In 10.3 percent of pairs the car with the higher MSRP has the lower monthly payment. One pair makes the mechanism plain, and both cars are Nissans on the same term, the same 7,500-mile allowance and the same amount down. A Rogue Platinum AWD stickers at $42,250 and leases at $336.01 a month. A Sentra SR sedan stickers at $31,365 and leases at $477.75. The crossover costs $10,885 more on the glass and $141.74 less a month. The reason sits in two fields: the Rogue carries a money factor of 0.00099 and $3,325 of factory money, the Sentra 0.00270 and $300. A lease payment is set by the bank's program, not by the price of the car, and a shopper who compares stickers is comparing the wrong number.
Median payments by segment
Across all 5,122 offers the median payment is $461 a month, with a quarter of the catalog below $370 and a quarter above $588. By body style: SUVs $493 on 3,676 cars, sedans $351 on 1,015, hatchbacks $387 on 185, minivans $604 on 133, trucks $529 on 95. Splitting SUVs by size changes the picture more than the body style does: compact and subcompact crossovers sit at $422 across 2,074 cars, mid-size at $614 across 1,545, and body-on-frame full-size at $1,475 across 57. By price band, 6 percent of the catalog is between $200 and $300 a month, 30 percent between $300 and $400, 23 percent between $400 and $500, 28 percent between $500 and $700, and 13 percent above $700. Nothing is priced under $200: the floor across the entire catalog is $213 for a Hyundai Elantra SE on a 24-month term.
Strong deals are rarer than brands imply
Our Hunter Score rates the offer rather than the car: it compares a specific payment against the bank program data behind it, so a high score means this VIN on this term is priced well, not that the model is cheap. Scoring strictly above 90 are 230 cars out of 5,122, which is 4.5 percent of everything on the lot. The share is uneven by brand: Nissan 9.4 percent of its 512 cars, Hyundai 7.9 percent of 1,029, Subaru 6.7 percent of 676, Chevrolet 3.9 percent of 154, Kia 2.9 percent of 1,695. Four brands in our catalog have none above 90 today: Genesis, Mazda, Volkswagen and Honda. That is a statement about this month's bank programs, not about the cars: the same nameplate can cross the line next month when its program changes, which is why we recompute rather than publish a ranking and leave it standing.
What a shopper should take from this
Three things follow from the numbers above. First, ask which VIN the quote is for, because two cars with the same window sticker can be $147 a month apart and the difference is a discount you either got or did not. Second, do not shortlist by MSRP: in one pair out of ten the pricier car is the cheaper lease, and the reason is the money factor and the factory money, both of which live in the bank's program rather than on the sticker. Third, compare payments only when the term, the annual mileage and the assumed credit tier are stated, because a monthly figure without those three is not a number you can hold anyone to. Every offer in this report carries all three, and so does every listing on this site.
Limits of this data, stated plainly
This is a snapshot of one catalog on one day, not a market study. It covers nine mass-market brands and no luxury German marques, so the upper half of the California market is absent. Payments are computed at our default scenario, and a different term, mileage or credit tier moves every figure. Cars sell and bank programs reissue monthly, so the medians here will drift; we date the snapshot instead of implying it holds. We did not survey dealers, we did not model demand, and we make no claim about what any specific person will be approved for, because the lender decides that. What the data does support is narrow and checkable: on this day, in this catalog, identical cars carried different prices, and the sticker was a poor guide to the payment.
Common questions
In this catalog on August 29, 2026 the median was $461 a month across 5,122 offers, with SUVs at $493 and sedans at $351. We publish the median rather than the mean because a handful of very expensive cars pulls an average upward and misrepresents what most people see. This is our own inventory of nine mass-market brands, not the whole state, and it moves with the bank programs each month.
Because a dealer discount is attached to a specific VIN, not to a model. In our data 22 percent of cars carry one, median $1,294, and the widest gap we found inside a group of otherwise identical cars was $147.03 a month, which is $5,293 over a 36-month term. Ask which VIN a quote refers to; that question alone is worth more than most negotiation advice.
Often, but not reliably: in 10.3 percent of the pairs we compared, the car with the higher sticker had the lower payment. A lease payment is driven by the residual value, the money factor and the factory money in the bank's program, and a manufacturer subsidizing one model and not another can invert the order entirely.
The catalog it was computed from is public and live on this site: every offer shows its payment, term, mileage, money factor and full drive-off, and the figures here were measured from that same served data. We are not publishing a downloadable file, so the honest description is that the source is reproducible rather than that it is packaged.
The snapshot is dated because the inputs move: cars sell daily and bank programs reissue monthly. We date this report rather than refreshing the numbers silently under an evergreen headline, which is the practice that makes most published lease figures untrustworthy by the time you read them.