Hitting the road on a motorbike can be one of the most thrilling ways to travel. Whether it’s weaving your way through traffic or leaning into a fast turn, it’s an entirely different experience to driving. While riding a motorbike is not the same as driving a car, the good news is that financing a motorbike is almost exactly the same.

No matter if it’s a chopper or a superbike you’re after, there are motorbike finance options available to you. Here’s our quick guide to how motorbike finance works.

Why choose motorbike finance?

The benefits of motorbike finance is that it can help get you on the road on the back of a better bike than what you might be able to afford with a single payment. It’s all about spreading the cost across a length of time, breaking down the cost of your motorbike into manageable monthly payments.

So if you have a motorbike you’ve been dreaming of but know it would take you a few years to save up enough money to pay for it, then motorbike finance simple reverses that. The money you would be saving up instead goes into the monthly payments.

What types of motorbike can I finance?

If you can find it, we can finance it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a little 125cc model or something with a lot more oomph like a superbike with 1200cc, there are a variety of finance options available depending on the make, model, price and your financial circumstances.

What finance options are available?

The set of finance options available depend on your personal circumstances, but for motorbike finance, there are three products that are most popular. Hire purchase works with a fixed rate of interest, so you know exactly how much the finance package will cost at the start of the agreement. While you may not benefit from a variable rate of interest, you will know exactly how much you have to budget each month for the entire duration of the agreement.

Lease purchase allows you to push some of the cost of the motorbike to the end of the agreement. So your monthly payments are lower and you have a simple balloon payment to pay at the end. The good news is that, if you don’t have enough cash to pay that balloon payment, it can also be refinanced, allowing you to spread the cost once again.

One of the most popular finance products on the market is Personal Contract Purchase (PCP). The big reason is that the flexibility it has at the end of the agreement. In a PCP deal, you pay the depreciation in value of the motorbike from the start of the finance period to the end, i.e. how much value the bike loses. At the end of the agreement you have three options: pay a one-off balloon payment to own the motorbike, return the motorbike to the vendor, or start a new finance package and use the motorbike you’ve been financing and riding as a part exchange.

What do I need to apply?

To apply for motorbike finance, you’ll need three things. The first is your contact details, which is pretty straightforward. The next is your address history for the previous three years. This is to help back up what’s written in your credit file, so we can ensure that the information we have is accurate. The third is the last three years employment history. This is to show you have a steady income and can afford to pay the finance package.