Why equipment prices below the rest.
Equipment financing is secured by the equipment itself. The lender can repossess and resell the asset, so the loss exposure is small: across the industry the net losses run below 1 percent, about 0.49 percent overall and 0.69 percent on small-ticket contracts, and the spread over the lender cost of funds is a thin 2.59 percent. That collateral floors the whole distribution below the unsecured siblings, a term loan or a line of credit, and it gives equipment the narrowest gap between the advertised floor and the sold price of any product, roughly 1.8 to 2.6 times for prime borrowers, against the sixfold-plus gaps on the unsecured products.
Two structuresA loan or a lease, quoted two ways.
Equipment comes in two structures, and they are quoted in two different languages. A loan or an EFA, an equipment finance agreement, is quoted as an APR, and you own the equipment from day one while the lender holds a lien on it until you pay it off. A lease is quoted as a money factor, a small decimal like 0.02 to 0.035 that is the monthly payment per dollar of equipment cost, and it only becomes an APR-equivalent once you apply the term and any end-of-term residual. One warning: a lease money factor is not an MCA factor. The money factor near 0.02 to 0.035 is a payment multiplier; an MCA factor of 1.10 to 1.50 is a total-payback multiplier, a different measure entirely. Until both offers are expressed as an all-in APR-equivalent, they cannot be compared.
Three channelsThree price worlds under one name.
Lender channel is the dominant price axis here, as it is with every other structure. But equipment splits differently from the unsecured products: two of its three channels rest on a real securitized sold-price record (the financed contracts were bundled and sold to investors, so what those deals actually cost is on public record), and only the third is aggregator-guessed. These three envelopes are never blended.
Captive, bank, and SBA
APR-native and the lowest all-in cost, roughly 5 to 13 percent APR-equivalent. Captive lenders run 0 percent APR promotions to move new equipment, and their blended portfolio figure sits near 4 percent, while SBA 504 money is fixed near 6.2 percent at the low end. This band rests on a securitized sold-price record. Market data, not a Trident quote.
Independent finance company
Also APR-native, a step higher, roughly 6.5 to 18 percent APR-equivalent with a center near 10 percent. This is the strongest measured price record in the whole product set, built from prime contracts. The upper end is the small-ticket, weaker-credit edge. Market data, not a Trident quote.
Online and fintech
Higher, and different in kind: it has no securitized sold-price record, so its numbers come from aggregator estimates rather than a measured book. App-only deals are commonly quoted around 8 to 22 percent APR-equivalent, but read that as directional. The measured record is entirely prime and tops out near 10.5 percent. Market data, not a Trident quote.
Why a manufacturer will quote you 0 percent.
The lowest numbers in equipment come from captive lenders, the finance arms of the manufacturers themselves, Deere and Caterpillar among them. They will advertise 0 percent APR for 36 to 60 months on new iron, because the cheap financing is a way to sell the machine, not a way to earn on the money. Read that 0 percent as a promotion tied to specific new equipment, not the going price: the blended captive portfolio figure sits nearer 4 percent once the standard contracts are mixed in. It is real, and it is worth asking a dealer about, but it is a floor built to move product.
The industry figureWhat the whole portfolio actually earns.
The ELFA industry survey puts the realized pre-tax portfolio APR-equivalent for equipment finance near 7.4 percent in 2024. That is a balance-weighted portfolio figure, so it understates what a fresh deal is written at, but it is the honest center of gravity for the asset class. It sits that low for one reason: the collateral. With net losses below 1 percent, lenders can price close to their own cost of funds, which is why equipment is the least costly of the structures we cover and the one where the advertised number is closest to the sold one.
Every figure on this page is general US market data as of Jul 2026, not Trident pricing and not an offer. The prime channels are anchored to securitized sold-price records; the online figures are directional aggregator estimates. It is here so you can sanity-check a quote against typical ranges. Any real offer, and the partner paperwork behind it, governs. This page is education, not legal or financial advice.