Back to Learn
How Lease End Protects Your Credit Score When Applying for Loans
Published 4/16/25
Estimated Read Time: 4 minutes
TL;DR: When buying out your lease, Lease End helps protect your credit score during the loan application process. We use a soft pull to pre-qualify you without affecting your score and only perform a hard pull if you decide to move forward, minimizing the impact on your credit.
Applying for a loan can be stressful—Who will fund my loan? How do I get the best rate? Will upcoming credit inquiries hurt my credit score?
Thankfully, Lease End is here to handle the more stressful aspects of buying out your lease. Our process is designed to keep your credit intact while finding you the best financing options. To better understand how we do this, let’s take a peek under the hood of our process, starting with the basics: soft pulls and hard pulls.
Soft Pull vs. Hard Pull: What's the Difference?
Most people have heard of credit inquiries—the request made by a company to review your credit report—but not everyone knows there are two types of credit inquiries: soft pulls and hard pulls.
- Soft Pulls: Think of a soft pull as a friendly check-in on your credit without leaving a mark. This happens when companies, or even you, want to get a general sense of your credit situation. It doesn’t affect your score at all and isn’t visible to other lenders. Soft pulls are standard for things like pre-approvals or when you're checking your own credit score.
- Hard Pulls: A hard pull, or hard inquiry, happens when a lender is making a more thorough assessment of your credit to decide whether to extend a loan or line of credit. A hard inquiry will ding your credit score, but the effect is temporary (it remains on your report for two years).
As long as hard inquiries apply to the same type of loan within a time period of 14 days, they generally don’t negatively impact your credit score long term.
Lease End's Soft Pull Mid-Application
When you work through Lease End's application, we run a soft pull to pre-qualify you for a loan. This means Lease End can assess your credit situation and let you know that you could be a lease buyout loan candidate without actually affecting your credit score.
We use the soft pull to match drivers with lenders for your best possible loan offer. The financial partners we work with may or may not pull your credit later in the process (some of our smaller lenders will only do a soft pull, but the big banks will do a hard pull).
This soft pull is like window shopping for a loan. You get a feel for your eligibility without having to commit or risk any damage to your credit. It’s the perfect way to assess your options and feel confident before making any big decisions.
Lease End's Hard Pull: Why It's Necessary (And Why Your Credit Will Recover)
If you decide to move forward and complete your loan application, Lease End will need to perform a hard pull in order to provide you an official loan offer for your buyout.
But here’s the good news for Lease End's hard pulls across lenders, as mentioned: since the inquiries are all for a shared loan type (auto loan), there will only be a minimal and temporary impact on your credit score when the pulls are consolidated into one pull after a period of 45 days, according to Experian.
This way, your credit score remains as high as possible while we work to find you the best loan.
Final Thoughts: End Your Stress with Lease End
When you work with Lease End, you get to explore your loan options without permanently harming your credit. It’s all designed to make sure you get the best deal possible—without unnecessary stress.
So, if you’re nearing the end of your car lease and thinking about a buyout, take a deep breath. Your credit is in safe hands with Lease End. Go ahead and explore your options, worry-free!
About the author
Adam Broud
Adam Broud is a writer and comedian based out of Salt Lake City, Utah. As a professional stand-up comedian with an MBA, his writing uniquely blends the worlds of business and comedy. Adam's writing for ads and comedy has appeared in places such as Buzzfeed, Vanity Fair, your television, and his mom's box of keepsakes. Feel free to review his writing from any of those places, but just know it's kinda weird if you choose his mom's house.
Lease End's mission is to empower auto lease owners with the technology to easily exit their lease. If you'd like to learn more about the lease-end options available to you, please don't hesitate to contact us. Our expert advisors are always prepared to answer your questions and are committed to finding the right plan for your individual needs.
©2025 Lease End
©2025 Lease End
Give Us a Call:
(844) 902-2842