Online leasing strategy for depreciable equipment considering opportunity cost

•The online leasing strategies for depreciable equipment considering the factor of opportunity cost are proposed.•The deterministic strategy and randomized strategy are provided.•The proposed strategies own better performance when considering opportunity cost. There are two options for the leasing problem, buying at a high price or leasing at a low price. Once you choose to purchase the resources, you lose the opportunity to invest in other financial assets for additional benefits, such as a risk-free return of the interest rate. Thus, opportunity cost is an important factor to consider in the leasing problem. Accounting for opportunity cost, this paper extends the online leasing strategy for depreciable equipment. By applying competitive analysis, the optimal competitive ratios of the deterministic and randomized strategies are obtained. The results of numerical examples show that a smaller competitive ratio can be obtained when considering opportunity cost, which illustrates that the introduction of the opportunity cost has a significant influence on both the deterministic and randomized strategies.