Rent Affordability Calculator 2025
Find out how much rent you can comfortably afford on your salary — or what salary you need to afford a specific property. Uses your actual take-home pay after tax and NI, not just gross salary.
How much of your income should go on rent?
The most commonly cited rule is the 30% rule — spend no more than 30% of your gross income on housing. In practice, for UK renters it’s more useful to apply this to take-home pay (after tax and NI), since that’s what you actually have to spend. At 30% of net income, you have 70% left for everything else.
In London and other high-cost cities, many renters spend 40–50% of take-home on rent — which is financially stressful but often unavoidable. Landlords and letting agents typically require proof that your annual salary is at least 2.5× to 3× the annual rent.
Most letting agents require your gross annual salary to be at least 30× the monthly rent (equivalent to 2.5× annual rent). For a £1,000/month flat, you typically need to earn at least £30,000 gross. If applying jointly, combined salaries usually count. A guarantor can substitute if you don’t meet this threshold.