Bobcat vs. Kubota: Which Compact Equipment Brand Is Right for Your Business?

Bobcat and Kubota are the two names that come up most when a small contractor is shopping for a skid steer or a compact excavator, and for good reason — both build reliable, widely-supported compact equipment. Here's how they actually compare for a contractor deciding where to put their next equipment dollar.

For more background, see our Bobcat skid steer financing guide, our Kubota compact excavator financing guide, and our skid steer and track loader financing guide.

Where Bobcat Wins

Bobcat basically invented the skid steer category and it shows — the Bobcat lineup, including the T740 compact track loader, is built around excellent visibility, strong rated operating capacity for its size class, and one of the largest dealer and attachment networks in North America. If you're running a lot of different attachments — brush cutters, augers, pallet forks, snow blades — Bobcat's attachment ecosystem is hard to match, and that flexibility often matters more to a small contractor than any single spec.

Where Kubota Wins

Kubota's reputation is built on engine reliability and low total cost of ownership — Kubota builds its own diesel engines rather than sourcing them, and that vertical integration shows up in maintenance costs and long-term durability. Kubota's compact excavators, including the KX and U-series machines, are especially well regarded for smooth hydraulics and tight tail-swing designs that let a contractor work close to foundations, fences, and existing structures without constantly repositioning. For landscapers, hardscapers, and contractors doing a lot of tight residential and commercial site work, that matters daily.

What Actually Decides It

For skid steers and CTLs specifically, Bobcat's attachment versatility tends to win out for contractors who need one machine to do five different jobs across a week. For compact excavators specifically, Kubota's tight-swing designs and engine reliability tend to win out for contractors working in confined residential and commercial sites. Either way, dealer proximity in your area for parts and service should weigh as heavily as the spec sheet — a machine that's down for a week waiting on a part costs you more than the spec difference between brands ever will.

Financing Beats Renting However You Slice It

Whichever brand you land on, the financing logic doesn't change: renting a skid steer or compact excavator by the week adds up to more than financing one over the same stretch of time, and when the rental period ends you own absolutely nothing. Financing turns those same dollars into a machine your business keeps, uses on every job going forward, and can eventually sell or trade. BFC can help fund your next machine before this one's fully paid off too — because growing your fleet shouldn't mean waiting five years between purchases.

Financing Terms That Fit a Growing Business

Getting equipment financed shouldn't take weeks of paperwork while a job you already won sits waiting on a machine. BFC works with contractors across a wide range of credit situations — strong credit, thin credit history, even a rough patch a season or two back — because a slow stretch during a tough year doesn't define whether a contractor is a good long-term partner to lend to. We structure terms around how construction businesses actually make money: seasonal cash flow, staggered payment schedules, and terms that match the revenue timeline of the work you're financing the machine to do.

Whether you're financing your first piece of equipment or adding the fifth machine to an established fleet, the process is built to move fast, because a machine sitting on a lot while financing drags on is lost production for your business and lost opportunity for ours to help.

A machine that starts every morning and performs the way it should is worth more to your reputation than almost anything else in this business — a missed schedule because a rented machine broke down is how a contractor loses repeat work to someone else. Owning reliable equipment outright, instead of juggling whatever happens to be available at the rental yard that week, is part of what lets a growing contractor bid confidently on bigger jobs and actually deliver on the schedule they promised.

Ready to Put a Machine to Work for You?

Renting by the month or the week might feel easier today, but it never gets you anywhere — every dollar you hand to a rental yard is gone for good, and at the end of the job you're left with nothing to show for it but a receipt. Financing or leasing-to-own puts those same payments toward a machine your business actually owns, can keep running job after job, and can resell or borrow against down the road. And unlike a lender who tells you to wait five-plus years until this machine is paid off before you can even think about the next one, BFC can help structure funding for your next project while you're still paying this one down, because our job is helping your business grow, not just collecting a payment.

Ready to get started? Apply for equipment financing and see what you qualify for. Looking to buy? Browse our current equipment inventory for units ready to finance today. And if you've got a machine sitting idle, list it for sale through BFC for free and let us help you turn it into your next down payment. Or just head back to our homepage to see everything we do for contractors like you.