Who it is for
Anyone renting for the first time, moving, or working out whether a place is a stretch.
Home and Family · Estimator · Free
What you can actually carry, not what you will be approved forRent Affordability Estimator
Check a rent figure against your income and your existing commitments, and see the share of your pay it takes once utilities and the rest of the bills are in.
Runs in your browser. Nothing to install. Save the result or embed it on your site.
Your numbers
What that means
Of your take-home pay goes on housing: 41%
41%
Of your take-home pay goes on housing
$1,470 of $3,600 a month
Rent and utilities come to $1,470 a month, which is 41% of your take-home pay. After housing, your existing payments and everything else, $810 is left over each month. A rent of about $860 would put housing at the 30 percent guideline.
35%
Rent alone
share of take-home
$810
Left after everything
$860
Rent at the 30 percent guideline
with your utilities
$390
Difference from that guideline
Housing$1,470
Existing payments$420
Everything else$900
Left over$810
Over 40 percent of take-home on housing leaves very little room for anything going wrong. It is doable, but it is tight, and there is no cushion in it.
Nothing you type is sent anywhere. Take-home pay, not gross, is the honest basis for this.
What this assumed
- Uses take-home pay. Letting agents usually assess against gross income, so their figure will be higher.
Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is transmitted, stored, logged or placed in a link. Close the tab and it is gone.
Not financial advice
This is an illustration, not personalized financial advice. It does not account for your full financial picture, and nobody here is your financial advisor. Talk to a licensed professional before acting on a number from a free calculator.
You ran this on August 21, 2026. Rates and rules change, so check the date before you rely on a saved copy.
What this tool actually does for you
The problem it points at
Landlords approve on gross income, which ignores the loan payment, the car and everything else. Plenty of approved rents are unaffordable in practice.
What you walk away with
The share of your take-home the place really takes, and what is left afterwards.
How to use it
Takes about two minutes. Be honest with the numbers, the tool is not going to tell anybody.
- Enter your take-home pay, not your gross salary.
- Enter the rent and the utilities that come with it.
- Add the loan, card and car payments you already have.
Questions people ask
Where does the 30 percent rule come from?
It is a long-standing rule of thumb that housing should be under about 30 percent of income. It is a guideline, not a rule, and in many cities it stopped being realistic some time ago.
Gross or take-home?
This tool uses take-home, because that is the money that actually pays the rent. Landlords and letting agents usually assess on gross, which is why their number and this one differ.
Put this tool on your own website
Free forever. I host it. You keep it.
This is a real lead magnet you can run on your own site tonight. Somebody lands on your page, plays with the numbers, sees what their problem costs, and now they are on your website instead of a competitor's. Costs you nothing, and I keep it working.
- Scroll up and press Put this tool on my website. The code appears right there, no form.
- Copy the one line you get.
- In your website editor, add an Embed, HTML or Custom Code block on whatever page you want it on.
- Paste it in, save, publish.
- Check it on your phone, then send people to that page.
Works on
WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, GoDaddy, Webflow, Duda, HubSpot, ClickFunnels, or plain HTML. Anywhere that takes an embed code.
What it costs you
Nothing. No monthly fee, no expiring trial, no watermark you have to pay to remove. If you get stuck putting it in, text me at (903) 500-8898 and I will help you place it.
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