Rent Affordability Calculator (Tenant)

Housing costs eat the largest share of most household budgets, so knowing the ceiling you can comfortably carry matters before you sign a lease. The starting benchmark here is the long-standing 30% rule: cap your rent at roughly 30% of gross monthly income so that the rest of your paycheck still covers everything else.

Three figures come out. First, the tool takes 30% of your gross monthly income (you can change the ratio) to set a target rent ceiling. Then it works from the other direction: take-home pay minus your other monthly expenses, such as a car payment, insurance, food, subscriptions and debt payments, is the stretch rent, the most you could pay with nothing left over, and the comfortable rent also sets aside 10% of take-home pay for savings. The tool also estimates utilities at 12% of the 30%-rule rent and, if you enter roommates, shows a combined budget by multiplying that rent by the number of people sharing.

Where many budgets break down is in the expenses people leave out, like student loan payments or childcare that quietly recur every month. Treat the 30% benchmark as a starting line rather than a hard target. In a high-cost-of-living area, or once your other obligations add up, the rent you can actually sustain may sit well below that figure.