I live in Washington State on the Olympic Peninsula. There is no natural gas here and everyone uses propane. I have two gas fireplaces, gas furnace, gas stove, gas water heater and a gas (propane of course) standby generator. Most buy their tanks. We have quite a few propane companies so prices will vary with each company. If you own your own tank you can get your propane from any company. Owning your own tank here usually gives you a 5 cent a gallon decrease. With a 500 gallon tank that could be a significant savings. If you lease your tank, you can only get propane from the company you leased the tank from. If they happen to be the highest price around your going to pay more for propane. Hope this helps.

Buy a tank. Then you are free to switch companies with having to give back the tank first and you can paint it the color you want.

Depending on the size of house, you’ll be shopping for a 500 or 1000 gallon tank. Note that they respectively hold 400 and 800 gallons, despite the names. Thus a $0.05 per gallon discount is worth, at most, $20-40 per fill up. That isn’t trivial, but is likely less than you can save with the ability to shop for your filling company, so the savings would compound.

Hove you estimated your propane needs, so as to determine the correct size tank to buy?

Thanks all, wow in shopping for just the propane vented insert, ( currently have wood ) the prices seems to be out of sight. Example a propane gas insert here in Ct. runs about $5,000.... install another $890. Non vented inserts run around $1300. Just blows my mind. Plus that's not including the plumber to run the gas line etc.

At my age I don't want to do wood or pellets.

I discourage use of non-vented or ventless fireplaces. Any combustion process generates gases that include CO2, CO, and water. These are things you do NOT want to keep in your house. Venting is the process of expelling them from the house. IMO, ventless appliances should be banned.