About the Rent Calculator
A rent calculator applies a percentage-of-income rule to your earnings to suggest what you can sustainably pay for housing. The traditional figure is 30 percent of gross income — a guideline that has shaped lending and letting standards for decades, though it fits some situations far better than others.
The formula
Affordable rent = monthly gross income · (rule percentage / 100)Monthly gross income is your pre-tax pay. The rule percentage is the share of it you are willing to commit to rent — 30 percent is conventional, though 25 or 35 are also used.
How to use this calculator
- 1Enter your Monthly Income ($). The field starts at
5000, which you can overwrite. - 2Enter your Percentage Rule (%). The field starts at
30, which you can overwrite. - 3Read the result straight away — it recalculates as you type, so there is no button to press. Use Share to copy a link that reopens the page with your exact numbers filled in.
Worked example
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Monthly Income ($) | 5000 |
| Percentage Rule (%) | 30 |
Result
Max Recommended Rent: $1500.00 / month
Those are the values the page loads with, so you can reproduce this result yourself and then change one field at a time to see what drives the outcome.
Understanding your result
The 30 percent guideline originates in US housing policy, where spending more than that is formally classed as being cost-burdened. Many landlords screen against it directly, so it functions as a practical ceiling for approval as well as a budgeting suggestion.
Its weakness is that it uses gross income and ignores everything else about your circumstances. Someone with no debt in a city with good transit can comfortably exceed 30 percent; someone with student loans, a car payment, and childcare may struggle well below it. In high-cost metros, 30 percent is simply unattainable, and 40 to 50 percent is common — which is a real affordability problem rather than a flaw in your budgeting.
Things worth knowing
- Test the figure against your net pay, not your gross. After tax, 30 percent of gross can be closer to 40 percent of take-home.
- Add the costs that come with the rent: utilities, internet, parking, renters insurance, and pet fees.
- Most landlords want gross annual income of 40 times the monthly rent, plus a deposit and often the first month upfront.
- The 50/30/20 framework is a useful cross-check — housing sits inside the 50 percent needs bucket alongside food and transport.
- If rent must exceed 30 percent, cut fixed costs elsewhere deliberately rather than hoping the month works out.
Frequently asked questions
Is the 30 percent rule based on gross or net income?+
Traditionally gross, which is also what landlords screen on. Budgeting against net income is more conservative and more realistic, since tax and deductions never reach your account.
What if rent in my city exceeds 30 percent of my income?+
That is the norm in many expensive metros. The usual responses are sharing, looking further out, or accepting a higher share while deliberately cutting transport, debt, and discretionary spending to compensate.
What income do landlords require?+
Commonly 40 times the monthly rent as gross annual income, roughly matching the 30 percent rule. Where you fall short, a guarantor, a co-signer, or a larger deposit can sometimes bridge it.
Should utilities count inside the 30 percent?+
The stricter reading of housing affordability includes them, and it is the more useful one for budgeting. An apparently cheap apartment with poor insulation and no included utilities can cost more than a pricier one.