When you buy a phone directly from Apple, you have three payment options: buy the phone at full price, finance it via monthly payments, or lease it through the Apple Upgrade program.
Financing, available for people with good credit history, allows you to spread out the payments for the phone over 24 months with 0% APR. You can stretch out your payments to 36 months, but only if you commit to AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon at the time of purchase. At the end of your financing term, whether it’s 24 months or 36 months, you’ve paid off your phone.
Apple Upgrade is a little different, as you’re leasing the phone instead of buying it. As a result, your monthly payments — available over 12- or 24-month terms — are lower than they would be if you were to finance the phone. Apple Upgrade is also available for other Apple products, such as the newly announced Apple Watch models, as well as iPads and Macs.
With the iPhone 18 Pro, Apple lets you finance the purchase via 24 monthly payments of $49.95, and you own the phone at the end of that term. Opting to lease that same phone through Apple Upgrade lowers your monthly payment to $34.99, since you’re not paying off the full value of the phone over time. A trade-in drops that price further.
When you come to the end of your Apple Upgrade lease, you have the option to upgrade to the latest iPhone, which would continue your monthly payments, or you can return the phone to Apple and end the agreement. If you want to keep your current phone, you need to pay Apple the remaining balance. In the case of the iPhone 18 Pro, you’d be on the hook for an additional $359 on top of the nearly $840 you paid over your 24-month lease.
To analyst Avi Greengart, president of consumer technology analysis firm Techsponential, Apple Upgrade is a win for shoppers, as there are no fees — the price is the same as if you had bought the phone outright.
But consumer advocate Clark Howard argues that Apple’s lease program encourages shoppers to keep extending the agreement as new devices replace the current models.
“The problem is that when people get new devices all the time, it means that you are in a ‘forever’ lease. You’re always facing another payment,” Howard said. “And that’s why I think this is a real bear trap for people.”
Like Apple, wireless providers also have financing options available for buying your phone in installments. “In the carrier financing, you own the device,” Popal said. “It’s just [that] you pay it through a certain set of months.”
Increasingly, with carriers, that period stretches to 36 months of monthly payments before you pay off your device. Extending payment options to 36 months allows carriers to dangle lower monthly payments in front of customers than they would face on a 24-month plan. But at the same time, you’re also tying yourself to that carrier for the length of your financing agreement.
Your monthly payments are the same regardless of which carrier you pick. Financing plans from AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon require 36 monthly payments of $33.34 for the iPhone 18 Pro and $36.12 for the iPhone 18 Pro. (Technically, Verizon charges a penny less than its rivals.)
The difference between carrier options lies in deals accompanying the new iPhones. AT&T and T-Mobile both offer up to $1,200 in rebates with an eligible phone and when you sign up for specific unlimited-data plans. With Verizon, you can also pay $50 per month in a financing program that allows you to upgrade to a new device every year.
