Read the lease terms about breaking same, plus applicable local laws. It only costs so little IF they landlord can replace the tenant readily (right away). Otherwise (in my jurisdiction) the renter's on the hook for remaining months until it's rented (worst case).
This is what it says: "BREACH OF CONTRACT; EARLY TERMINATION: In addition to any obligations established by paragraph 25, in the event oftermination by Tenant prior to completion of the original term of the Agreement, Tenant shall also be responsible for lost Rent, rental commissions, advertising expenses and painting costs necessary to ready Premises for re-rental. Landlord may withhold any such amounts from Tenant's security deposit."
However, I found a couple resources:
https://ipropertymanagement.com/laws/breaking-a-lease-in-california"Landlord’s Responsibility to Rerent in California
California state law does require landlords to take reasonable steps to rerent their unit when a tenant breaks their lease. This is referred to as the landlord’s duty to “mitigate damages”. This means that if you leave your lease early and your landlord rerents the unit before your lease ends, then the rent received from the new tenant will apply to your debt.
According to California state law (Cal. Civ. Code § 1951.2), landlords have to make a reasonable attempt to rerent the dwelling and, if they are successful in rerenting, credit rent received from the new tenant to your debt.
Keep in mind, not all landlords are aware of their duty to mitigate. If your landlord demands payment for the remaining balance of your lease, you may want to notify them of your state’s law.
TIP
California tenants who break their lease early without proper justification should still plan on losing at least one month’s rent, even though the landlord has a responsible to rerent. In California and other states where the law requires the landlord to make a reasonable effort to rerent, judges in civil courts commonly award landlords with at least one month’s rent, no matter how quickly the unit is rented."
and
https://caltenantlaw.com/breaking-your-lease/"No Legal Reason
If after going through the above legal reasons, you have no legal reason, you need to “break” your lease. It’s not a legal term, but it distinguishes this situation where you have no legal right to do so from the above situations, where you lawfully terminate your lease. In this case, your primary goal is to minimize your losses. Civil Code 1951.2 says that if you leave, you owe the rent for the rest of the lease term MINUS what YOU can prove the landlord COULD HAVE AVOIDED LOSING. The landlord also has a common law duty to minimize his losses [“mitigate damages”]. Therefore, you minimize YOUR losses partly by trying to minimize the LANDLORD’S losses, and partly protecting your interest in the Security Deposit which the landlord intend to apply. If you do this right, the landlord could end up owing YOU money.
The usual situation is that you leave, but others prospective tenants have expressed an interest in renting your place, because you placed an ad in Craigs List, or whatever, and have their applications, which you forward to the landlord. The landlord thinks that he’s going to have your guaranteed payment, so he’s NOT going to try to minimize his losses and accept one of your proposed replacements. Instead, he’s going to “test the market,” meaning raising the advertised rent to see if people will pay more for his units. He may say that your proposed tenants didn’t have high credit scores, or wanted to pay less than you, and turn them down. However, under Section 1951.2, his plan backfires, because you’re off the hook to the extent that any of your prospective replacements were willing to pay anything. A replacement with terrible credit and bad rental history who is only willing to pay $100 less than you were would be rejected by your landlord, but since the landlord could have avoided losing all but $100 per month by picking that tenant, you only owe that $100 difference per month for the remaining months of your lease.
Your landlord may attempt to describe your replacements as subtenants or assignees, and say he doesn’t approve of them. However, these are NOT subtenants of yours, nor assignees. They would have a completely different rental agreement with the landlord, and yours would be over. You don’t need his permission. You only need to present them, and enjoy the deduction from your liability to the extent that these people WOULD have paid something. Some tenants in this situation also have a friend contact the landlord posing as a prospective replacement, and the friend can then testify as your lawsuit against the landlord how he handled the situation. This strategy is also advisable to use even if you do have a valid termination, just in case the judge doesn’t agree with your termination, and you have a fall back point to protect you."
Obviously these would be worst case scenario situations....