Choosing your lease mileage

Pick the allowance from the miles you actually drive, not the one in the ad, and decide before you sign whether to buy extra miles upfront.

How a lease mileage allowance works

Your lease states an annual allowance and a total for the whole term. A 36-month lease at 12,000 miles a year, for instance, allows 36,000 miles. The lessor uses that figure to set the residual value, its estimate of what the car will be worth at the end. More miles means a lower residual, more depreciation for you to pay and a higher payment.

If you return the car over the allowance, you pay the per-mile rate written in your contract for every extra mile. Federal Regulation M requires the lease to disclose that charge or how it's calculated. If you buy the car at the end instead of returning it, the mileage charge normally doesn't apply; Audi Financial Services, for one, says you owe no excess mileage charge when you purchase the vehicle (as of September 2026). See buying out your lease.

Common lease mileage options

Lessors usually offer a standard allowance plus one or more lower tiers, and many let you add miles above the standard at signing. A low-mileage lease lowers the payment if you truly drive little, and advertised payments are often built on a low allowance. In California, any lease ad that shows a payment or an amount due at signing must also state the mileage limit and the charge per mile beyond it (Civil Code 2985.71), so the fine print tells you which allowance the payment assumes.

How to estimate the miles you'll really drive

1. Start with your history. Compare two odometer readings a year apart. Service invoices and smog check reports show the mileage on a given date.

2. Do the commute math. Multiply your round trip by your workdays. A 30-mile commute each way, five days a week, is about 15,000 miles a year on its own.

3. Add everything else. Weekends, errands, school runs and road trips. One drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco and back adds about 800 miles.

4. Adjust for change. A new job, a move, a new driver in the house or a switch to remote work can change your miles more than anything else.

5. Add a cushion. Ten percent covers the trips you can't predict.

Example: a 20-mile round-trip commute on 230 workdays is 4,600 miles. Add about 80 miles a week of errands and weekends (roughly 4,200 a year) and two 800-mile road trips, and you land near 10,400 miles. With a ten percent cushion you need about 11,400, so a 12,000-mile allowance fits and 10,000 would be tight.

Buying extra lease miles upfront or paying the overage

There are three ways to pay for more driving, and they're priced differently:

• A higher allowance in the lease. The lessor lowers the residual, and the extra depreciation is spread across your payments. You pay for those miles whether or not you drive them.

• Prepaid miles at signing. Some lessors sell extra miles at a set price per mile when you sign. Ask whether unused prepaid miles are refunded or credited at the end; if the contract doesn't say so, assume they aren't.

• The overage at turn-in. You pay only for the miles you actually go over, at the contract rate, plus California tax on the charge.

Example with made-up numbers: if the contract charges 25 cents a mile and you finish 3,000 miles over, the bill is $750 plus tax. If the same lessor sold miles at signing for 15 cents each, buying 3,000 upfront would have cost $450. If you ended up needing only 1,000 of them, the upfront purchase cost more than the overage would have ($250), unless the unused miles are refunded.

Options during the lease vary by lessor. Toyota Financial Services says your allowance is set once you sign and take delivery, while Audi Financial Services offers eligible customers extra miles at the halfway point of the lease (both as of September 2026). If you're already running high, compare buying the car, trading it early if it has equity and paying the charge; see what to do when you're over your lease miles.