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Afterpay vs Laybuy vs Zip: Which Costs You Least on Tech?

All three buy-now-pay-later providers show up at the checkout of JB Hi-Fi, Noel Leeming and PB Tech, and all three market themselves as "interest-free." That's true only if you make every payment on time — and the three plans differ enough in structure that the wrong one for your situation can turn a good deal into an expensive one.

Twisti guides · Updated July 2026

How the three plans actually differ

Afterpay

Afterpay splits a purchase into four equal payments, one due at checkout and the rest a fortnight apart, so the whole plan is paid off in six weeks. There's no interest charged if you pay on schedule, but missing a payment triggers a late fee, and Afterpay caps how much of your available limit you can use based on your repayment history — first-time users typically get a much lower spending limit than someone with a track record of on-time payments. It's a good fit for a purchase you can comfortably budget for in fortnightly chunks over a month and a half.

Laybuy

Laybuy is NZ-founded and spreads a purchase over six equal weekly payments instead of four fortnightly ones, so the total repayment period is similar in length but the individual instalments are smaller. Like Afterpay, it's interest-free when paid on time, with late fees applying if a scheduled payment fails. Because the weekly amount is smaller than Afterpay's fortnightly one, it can feel easier to fit into a weekly pay cycle — worth comparing directly against Afterpay's schedule for the same purchase before choosing.

Zip

Zip is the most flexible of the three and, depending on which Zip product a retailer offers at checkout, that flexibility can work for or against you. Zip's standard pay-in-instalments option behaves similarly to Afterpay and Laybuy — interest-free if paid on time. But Zip also offers longer-term, higher-limit accounts that can carry an account fee or interest depending on the plan and how it's repaid, which is a meaningfully different cost structure to a simple four- or six-payment split. Always check exactly which Zip product is being offered before assuming it's interest-free the same way the others are.

The real cost isn't in interest — it's in the habits

When used exactly as intended — paid off on the fixed schedule, no missed payments — all three can genuinely cost nothing extra over the ticket price. The cost creeps in from two directions: late fees on a missed instalment, and the psychological effect of splitting a price into small chunks, which makes it easier to say yes to a purchase you might otherwise have paused on. Several BNPL instalments running at once across different retailers can also quietly add up to a heavier weekly or fortnightly outgoing than it feels like at checkout, since each individual plan looks small in isolation.

Practical tip: before checking the BNPL box, add up what you already owe across any active Afterpay, Laybuy or Zip plans and check the new instalment fits your next few pay cycles comfortably — not just whether the one-off payment today looks affordable.

Which one suits which purchase

For a single mid-sized purchase — headphones, a smaller appliance, an accessory bundle — Afterpay's four-payment, six-week structure is usually the simplest to track. If your budget works better in smaller weekly amounts, Laybuy's six-payment schedule can be easier to manage without feeling the pinch on any single week. For a bigger-ticket item like a laptop or TV where you might want longer than six weeks to pay it off, check whether the retailer's Zip option is the standard interest-free instalment plan or a longer-term account with its own fee or interest structure — the two are not interchangeable, and the wrong assumption here is where BNPL stops being free.

Before you check the BNPL box at checkout

Confirm the exact repayment schedule and any late fee amount in the provider's terms shown at checkout, not just the marketing copy on the retailer's page.
Check whether the specific Zip product on offer is interest-free instalments or a fee-bearing account — the checkout button doesn't always make this obvious.
Total up any existing BNPL commitments before adding a new one, so the fortnightly or weekly hit doesn't stack higher than expected.
Confirm the underlying price is actually competitive first — a BNPL plan doesn't make an inflated price a good deal, it just changes when you pay it.

Used deliberately, all three can be a genuinely free way to spread a cost you were already planning to pay. Used carelessly, or stacked across multiple retailers at once, the same tools can make it harder to see how much you're actually committed to each pay cycle. Either way, the plan is only ever as good as the price it's attached to.

Check the price is right before you split it

Twisti compares live prices across JB Hi-Fi, Noel Leeming and PB Tech at once, so you know the real starting price before any BNPL plan gets applied on top.

Compare prices now →