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Rent vs Buy Calculator

The honest comparison, including what your deposit could have earned.

Finance Calculators Free, no sign-up Runs in your browser

The single most important number here.

Property tax plus maintenance. Around 1% each is a common assumption.

Agent, legal and transfer costs when you sell.

The opportunity cost of tying the deposit up in a house.

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Cheaper over your stay
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Renting costs
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Buying costs
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Difference
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Buying wins after
YearRenting, cumulativeBuying, net costAhead by
Every figure after the first two is an assumption about the future, and the answer is only as good as they are. Change the growth rate and the investment return to see how much the verdict depends on them, because it depends on them a great deal.

About the Rent vs Buy Calculator

Rent vs Buy Calculator compares the two over a period you choose, and it counts the things both sides of the argument usually leave out. Buying is charged with the deposit, the payments, property tax and upkeep, and the cost of selling; it is credited with the equity you walk away with. Renting is charged with the rent, rising each year; it is credited with whatever the deposit could have earned if it had been invested instead.

That last item is why honest comparisons are rare. A deposit tied up in a house is money not earning anything elsewhere, and leaving it out makes buying look better than it is. Equally, ignoring equity makes renting look better than it is. Both are here, and you can see how much the verdict moves when you change the assumed investment return.

How long you stay is the number that decides it. The costs of buying and selling are paid once, and they are large: on a 300,000 house, five per cent to sell is 15,000 that has to be earned back out of rent not paid. Over two years it almost never is. Over ten it usually is. The year the lines cross is shown as the break-even, and in a flat market it is a lot later than people assume.

This is arithmetic, not financial advice. It tells you what the numbers do; it cannot tell you whether a decision is right for your circumstances. Fees, taxes and local rules vary, so check anything that matters against the actual offer and speak to someone qualified before committing.

Everything is worked out inside your browser. Nothing you enter is uploaded, logged or stored, which matters for the financial calculators in particular: the figures you put into them are nobody else's business.

How to use the Rent vs Buy Calculator

  1. Enter monthly rent, rent rises per year (%) and years you will stayDecimals are fine, and thousands separators are accepted and ignored.
  2. Read the cheaper over your stay, renting costs and buying costsThe figures update as you type. The Calculate button is there if you would rather press something, but nothing waits for it.
  3. Copy or check the resultCopy the summary with the copy button, or open the table to check it row by row.

Features

  • Shows cheaper over your stay, renting costs, buying costs, difference and buying wins after together, so you are not running it twice
  • A results table you can read across
  • Updates as you type, with no button to press and no page reload
  • Copy the result in one click
  • Free, no sign-up, and it runs entirely in your browser

Who uses this tool

The rent vs buy calculator is used by writers, developers, students, marketers and anyone else who needs the job done once without installing software. Common cases include:

  • Deciding whether a two-year posting is worth buying for
  • Testing how much house price growth buying needs to win
  • Comparing a high rent against a high price in the same area
  • Seeing the effect of a bigger deposit on the comparison

Frequently asked questions

Why does the deposit earn a return in the renting case?

Because if you do not spend it on a house, you still have it. Ignoring what it could earn is the most common way these comparisons are rigged in favour of buying.

What growth rate should I assume?

Something you can defend. Long-run house price growth in most markets is close to inflation. Putting in the last five years of a boom will make buying look unbeatable, which is exactly what it did to people in 2007.

Does buying always win eventually?

Not always, but usually, provided prices do not fall and you stay long enough to earn back the transaction costs. The break-even readout is the point at which that happens on your numbers.

If the rent vs buy calculator is not quite what you need, these other free tools solve closely related problems, and there are 38 more in finance calculators.

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Inflation Calculator

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Checked and rebuilt on 2026-10-14. The method this calculator uses is described in the section above, and corrections go through the contact page.