The Rent vs Buy Calculator compares the total illustrative cost of renting against the net cost of buying a home over a time period you choose, using the rent, mortgage, maintenance and growth assumptions you enter below. It works out total rent paid, total mortgage payments, maintenance, stamp duty, selling costs, equity built through repayment and house price growth, then nets these off to show which option comes out cheaper and by how much. This is a projection based on your assumptions, not a guaranteed financial outcome — house price growth and rent growth are inherently uncertain and cannot be predicted with confidence, so treat the result as a way to compare scenarios rather than a forecast of what will actually happen.
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You are comparing the cost of renting against the cost of buying a home over your chosen time period. The buying side includes mortgage payments, maintenance, stamp duty and selling costs, offset by the equity you build through mortgage repayment and any house price growth.
Based on the rent, price, mortgage and growth assumptions entered, the calculator totals the cost of renting over the period, then separately totals and nets off the cost of buying — including a month-by-month mortgage amortisation to work out exactly how much capital is repaid and what the property and outstanding loan are worth at the end of the period.
Your comparison shows a total rent cost of £0 against a net cost of buying of £0 over 10 years.
This is an illustrative projection based entirely on the assumptions you enter — it is not a prediction or a guaranteed financial outcome. Actual rent growth, house price growth, mortgage rates and your own circumstances can all differ from what was assumed here, which would change the real result. This calculator does not constitute financial advice — always get independent advice before making a decision to rent or buy.
This calculator compares two different ways of paying for somewhere to live over a time period you choose: renting, where you pay rent each month and build no ownership stake in the property, versus buying, where you pay a deposit, stamp duty and mortgage payments, carry ongoing maintenance and insurance costs, and end up owning (some or all of) a property that has hopefully grown in value.
Because renting and buying have very different cost shapes over time — renting is a steady, non-refundable monthly outflow, while buying is front-loaded with transaction costs but builds an asset — a fair comparison has to net the costs of buying against the wealth a buyer ends up with. That is exactly what the "net cost of buying" figure on this page is designed to do.
Crucially, this is an assumption-based projection. It asks you to enter your own estimates for things that can't be known in advance — future rent growth, future house price growth, and how long you'll stay — and it calculates an outcome based on those specific numbers. Change the assumptions and the answer can change completely. It is a tool for exploring scenarios, not a crystal ball.
Pros: lower upfront cost (typically a deposit of a few weeks' rent, rather than a house deposit plus stamp duty and legal fees); flexibility to move for a new job, relationship or lifestyle change without the cost and hassle of selling; no responsibility for repairs, maintenance or buildings insurance; no exposure to falling house prices; and your monthly outgoing is capped (subject to rent increases) rather than tied to interest rate movements.
Cons: rent is a cost with no equity built up — you don't own any share of the property at the end; your landlord can increase the rent or, in many tenancies, ask you to leave with notice, creating less long-term security; and you don't benefit from any house price growth on the property you live in.
Pros: every mortgage capital repayment builds equity you keep; you benefit fully from any growth in the property's value; your mortgage payment (on a fixed rate) is predictable for that period, and once the mortgage is repaid in full your housing cost drops sharply to just maintenance, insurance and any ground rent or service charge; and you have full control to renovate, extend or change the property as you wish (subject to planning rules).
Cons: a large upfront cost (deposit, stamp duty, legal and survey fees); you're responsible for all repairs and maintenance; your mortgage payments can rise if you're on a variable rate or when a fixed-rate deal ends and you remortgage at a higher rate; selling involves further cost and time; and if prices fall, your equity falls too — in the worst case, you can end up in negative equity (owing more than the property is worth).
A larger deposit means a smaller mortgage, so lower monthly mortgage interest and (all else equal) a lower net cost of buying in this calculator. But a larger deposit also ties up more of your own money in the property rather than elsewhere — see the opportunity cost point below. A very small deposit, where most of the price is borrowed, means more of your early payments go on interest rather than paying down capital, so less equity is built in the first few years — which matters more if you expect to stay only a short time.
The mortgage rate directly drives your monthly payment and how quickly you build equity. At a higher rate, more of each payment is interest (a genuine cost) and less is capital repayment (which builds your own equity), so the net cost of buying rises. Because UK mortgage deals are usually fixed for only 2–5 years before needing to be renewed, it's worth testing the calculator with a somewhat higher rate than today's deal to see how sensitive your result is to future rate rises.
The house price growth percentage you enter has a large effect on the result, because it's applied every year, compounding, to the entire value of the property — not just to your deposit. A small change in this assumption can swing the net cost of buying by a large amount over a long period. It's important to remember that past UK house price growth has varied hugely by era and by region, and there is no guarantee that any particular rate of growth — including recent historical averages — will continue. Past house price growth does not guarantee future growth, and prices can also fall. Try running the calculator at 0%, and at a rate a couple of points lower than your main assumption, to see how much the conclusion depends on this one number.
Putting money into a house deposit means that money isn't invested elsewhere. If, instead of buying, you rented and invested your deposit — in a stocks and shares ISA, pension, or savings account, for example — it could have grown over the same period. This calculator does not automatically subtract that potential investment growth from the cost of renting, mainly because it depends so heavily on which investment you'd have chosen and how it performed. If you want a fuller picture, it's worth separately estimating what your deposit might have earned elsewhere over the same period and comparing that against the net cost of buying shown here.
Buying and selling a home both carry one-off costs that renting doesn't: stamp duty (or LTT/LBTT), legal and conveyancing fees, survey costs, mortgage arrangement fees, and — on selling — estate agent fees and legal fees again. These costs don't shrink just because you only stayed a short time, which is why buying tends to look relatively worse over short horizons and relatively better the longer you stay — the fixed, one-off costs get spread over more years of ownership, and there's more time for mortgage repayment and (hopefully) price growth to build equity.
Of everything in this calculator, the number of years you compare over usually has the single biggest effect on the result. A short stay concentrates the fixed transaction costs of buying into a small number of years and gives little time for equity or growth to build, which tends to favour renting. A long stay spreads those costs thinly, gives mortgage repayment time to build real equity, and gives house price growth more years to compound, which tends to favour buying. If you're not sure how long you'll stay, run the calculator at a few different horizons rather than relying on a single assumption.
Comparing renting at £1,500 a month (growing 3% a year) against buying a £350,000 home with a £35,000 deposit, a 5.5% mortgage rate over a 25-year term, £3,500 a year in maintenance, £7,500 stamp duty and 1.5% selling costs: over 5 years, total rent paid is roughly £95,600 against a net cost of buying of roughly £57,600 — buying is cheaper by around £38,000. Over 15 years, total rent paid rises to roughly £334,800 against a net cost of buying of roughly £84,300 — buying is cheaper by a much larger margin of around £250,500, because the stamp duty and other fixed costs are spread over more years and far more equity and growth has built up. Change any of the growth assumptions, however, and this gap narrows or can reverse — with house price growth assumed at 0% instead of 3%, over 10 years renting comes out cheaper in this same example, which shows how much the growth assumption really matters.
The net cost of buying adds up everything a buyer spends — total mortgage payments (interest and capital) over the period, total maintenance costs, the stamp duty/LTT/LBTT paid on purchase, and the estimated selling costs if the property were sold at the end — then subtracts the wealth the buyer has gained beyond their original deposit. That wealth gained is the capital repaid on the mortgage (the portion of each payment that reduced the loan balance, which the buyer now owns outright as equity) plus any growth in the property's value over the period. In short: net cost of buying = money spent on mortgage interest, capital, maintenance, tax and selling costs, minus the equity built through repayment and minus the growth in the property's value. The total cost of renting is simply the sum of monthly rent paid over the same period, allowing for your assumed annual rent growth.
For simplicity, this calculator does not separately model: one-off moving costs (removals, storage) for either renting or buying; mortgage arrangement or valuation fees; a rental deposit (which is usually refundable, so isn't treated as a real cost); the opportunity cost of the deposit discussed above; mortgage payment protection or life insurance some lenders require; or any tax relief or allowances that may apply to your specific situation. These can all matter in a full financial decision, even though they aren't part of the core rent-vs-buy maths shown here.
Treat the figures on this page as an illustration of how the comparison behaves under one specific set of assumptions, not as a forecast of your actual future costs. Small changes to the mortgage rate, growth assumptions or how long you stay can change the result significantly, sometimes reversing which option looks cheaper. The most useful way to use this calculator is to run it several times with different, plausible assumptions — optimistic, pessimistic and a middle estimate — to see the range of outcomes, rather than relying on a single run with a single set of numbers.
These calculators cover the other parts of the buying decision that feed into the comparison above.
For impartial, government-backed guidance on the renting vs buying decision, see the following from MoneyHelper (the UK government's free money and pensions guidance service):