Which one should I pick?

The buyout is a fixed share of the sticker

This is the least obvious thing about Apple Upgrade and the thing that decides it. Apple describes the purchase option fee as the list price less the payments you have made and less any trade-in credit. Work that through and the trade-in cancels out: credit comes off the payments and off the buyout by the same amount. What is left is always the same share of list.

* The iPhone Duo has no older generations to quote, so its resale is estimated from Pro Max percentages. Buyouts include sales tax at 8.5%; trade-in credit is untaxed.

There is a catch inside the catch: Apple does not accept a trade-in against a replacement lease. You never owned the phone you handed back, so there is nothing to trade. The only route from a leased phone to trade-in value is to buy it out first and trade in the phone you then own. That is why "just hand it back and start again" is a luxury rather than a saving.

AppleCare, as arithmetic

Nothing here bundles it. The lease covers the financing, not the phone, and the premiums sit on top of every column identically. So the question is not which plan includes it — none do — but whether you break screens often enough to want it at all.

Premiums over 48 months

$702.56

One screen, with coverage

$31.47

One screen, without

$271.25

Saved per repair

$239.79

Screens to break even

2.9 in four years

Which is a crack every

16 months

Break one screen a year and coverage is worth having. Break one every other year and you have paid $223 for the privilege. Most people are in the second group and buy as though they were in the first. A good case is the cheaper hedge.

This prices screen repair only. AppleCare+ also covers theft and loss, battery service and other accidental damage at their own service fees; if you are buying it for theft cover, this arithmetic is not your arithmetic. There is one more wrinkle on a lease: a returned phone has to work, so a cracked screen you would happily live with on a phone you own becomes a $271 bill before you can hand it back.

What actually surprises people

Each of these is priced for the worked example, and each one is in the calculator response under gotchas with the same numbers.

• AppleCare is never part of the lease

  changes your answer

  $703 of premiums over four years sits on top of every column here, lease or not. It is billed by Apple, separately, and cancelling it does not touch the lease.

  Moves $703 on this example.

• AppleCare needs a cracked screen every 16 months to pay for itself

  changes the price

  $703 in premiums against $240 saved per repair is 2.9 cracked screens over four years. Break one every year and coverage comes out $257 ahead; break one every other year and it comes out $223 behind. This prices screen repair only — theft, loss and battery service are not modelled.

  Moves $703 on this example.

• Handing back the 12-month lease throws away $135

  changes your answer

  The 12-month lease collects $600 and leaves a $650 buyout — 50% of the sticker, with tax. A trade-in credit does not change that: it comes off the payments and the buyout equally. Apple's own trade-in quote for this phone at 12 months is $785, so giving it back sells it for $135 less than it is worth.

  Moves $135 on this example.

• Handing back the 24-month lease throws away $120

  changes your answer

  The 24-month lease collects $839 and leaves a $390 buyout — 30% of the sticker, with tax. A trade-in credit does not change that: it comes off the payments and the buyout equally. Apple's own trade-in quote for this phone at 24 months is $510, so giving it back sells it for $120 less than it is worth.

  Moves $120 on this example.

• The low payment is your old phone, spent

  changes your answer

  The trade-in credit is spread across the initial term and nothing after it. The 12-month lease bills $19 while the credit lasts, then $50 — a $31/mo jump. The 24-month lease bills $19 while the credit lasts, then $35 — a $16/mo jump. Budgeting off the first payment is how a lease cycle becomes hard to leave.

  Moves $375 on this example.

• Owning a leased phone means finding $650 in one month

  changes the price

  Take no action when the term ends and payments simply continue at the full rate; 6 months later Klarna charges the rest of the buyout to your card and the phone is yours. That charge is $650 at 12 months and $390 at 24 months. If a sudden charge that size is a problem, the cheap-looking exit is another lease, which is the point.

  Moves $650 on this example.

• You cannot trade a leased phone in

  changes your answer

  A replacement lease takes no trade-in, because you never owned the phone you handed back. The only route from a leased phone to trade-in value is to buy it out first and trade in the phone you then own — which is why the buyout is the whole decision on this path.

• 3% back on lease payments assumes Klarna takes your card

  changes the price

  Klarna does not accept American Express, UnionPay, cards issued by Chase or Capital One, Apple Pay, or PayPal. Debit works. If your rewards card is on that list the lease loses $49 of the rewards priced here, while everything billed by Apple keeps them — check your card before counting on it.

  Moves $49 on this example.

• Upgrading early hands $667 of carrier credit back

  changes your answer

  The promotion is paid out as $28 a month against the bill for 36 months, and it is the whole trade-in, not a bonus on top of one. Leave early and you pay off the remaining installments and stop earning the rest. It is the cheapest column precisely because it is the hardest to leave.

  Moves $667 on this example.

• How often you upgrade costs more than which plan you pick

  worth knowing

  Upgrading every year runs $581 a year here; every three years runs $309. That gap is $1,085 over four years, against $479 between the most and least expensive plan on the same schedule.

  Moves $1,085 on this example.

• The lease can never cost more than the phone

  worth knowing

  Payments and buyout add up to the sticker exactly, so there is no interest to find. The risk is not the total; it is the shape — a payment set artificially low by your old phone's equity, and a buyout you have to produce in one month to keep what you have been paying for.

Five paths, one schedule, four years

Settled at month 48 with every path holding a paid-off phone of the same age, so the columns are comparable. Net cost is in today's dollars, net of card rewards, after crediting back whatever phone you still hold.

Carrier · 36 mo costs $321 less than Apple Upgrade · 24 mo over four years, which is more than the assumptions can explain away. The lease rows assume the cheapest exit at each upgrade, which the calculator searches for you — on this schedule that is buying the 24-month lease out rather than handing it back.

Run it with your own numbers, month by month →

The calculator endpoint

GET https://martinemde.com/apple-upgrade/calculator returns this whole summary as JSON. Every parameter is optional. Called with none it describes itself: the parameter table below, a worked example, and notes on how to read the response.

https://martinemde.com/apple-upgrade/calculator?device_price=1199&trade_in=375&carrier_offer=1000&apple_care=monthly&upgrade_every=2&tax_rate=8.5

What comes back

recommendation

The pick, the runner-up, and the margin between them. When confidence is not clear the margin is inside the error bars on four years of guessed trade-in values, and the choice should be made on cash flow instead.

plans

All five paths, cheapest first by netCost, with the cash-flow columns (dueToday, biggestMonth) that decide whether a cheap plan is actually affordable. Lease rows carry leaseExits, which says what happened to the phone at each upgrade.

leaseBuyout

Rule one, per term: the buyout, its share of list, the trade-in it is up against, and a verdict of buy-it-out or hand-it-back.

appleCare

Rule two: premiums, repair prices, and the break-even cadence.

cadence

Rule three: best-case annual cost at one-, two- and three-year replacement.

gotchas

The catches this particular set of answers triggers, each priced. severity: critical means it changes which button to press, not just what it costs.

warnings

Parameters that were unknown, unparseable or clamped. Nothing is ever fatal: a bad value earns a warning and the default.

Parameters

All amounts are US dollars. The figures are estimates from published prices, not quotes: Apple trade-in maximums were read on 2026-09-20, and tax treatment, promotions and resale values all move.