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PropertyStamp DutyMortgageAffordabilityRent vs Buy
Tax year 2026/27 · Rest of UK · annual

Rent vs Buy Calculator

True 10-year cost of renting vs buying a UK home.

Tax year
Region
Schedule

Your details

Cost of renting (10 yrs)

£165,080

Total rent paid, 3%/yr growth

Net cost of buying (10 yrs)

£31,077

Cash out minus equity built

Buying is cheaper by

£134,003

over 10 years · equity built £172,498

Buying breakdown

Deposit£25,000
Stamp duty (SDLT, FTB relief)£0
Buying fees (est.)£3,500
Mortgage payments (10 yrs)£150,075
Maintenance, 1%/yr (10 yrs)£25,000
Total cash out£203,575
Home value after growth£335,979
Mortgage left to pay−£163,482
Equity built£172,498
Net cost of buying£31,077

Monthly picture

Monthly mortgage payment£1,251
Monthly rent (year 1)£1,200
Mortgage vs rent, monthly+£51

This is an illustration, not financial advice. It does not cover Scotland (LBTT) or Wales (LTT), interest-rate changes, or the opportunity cost of your deposit. Speak to a mortgage adviser before deciding.

Interactive scenarios

Tax and deductions, your way

Tax year

Region

Pay schedule

Salary £45,000

Net (monthly)

£2,806

Income tax (monthly)

£541

NI (monthly)

£216

Effective rate

20.2%

Modelled on a 5% pension. Showing monthly figures, rest of UK, tax year 2026/27.

The full guide

Everything worth knowing about Rent vs Buy

Worked examples with real figures, the rules underneath the number, and the traps that catch people out.

01

Rent vs Buy Calculator: the true cost of each route

The rent vs buy calculator compares the full cost of renting a home with the full cost of buying one over the years you choose: rent on one side, and deposit, stamp duty, mortgage payments, maintenance and the equity you build on the other. On the starting figures, £1,200 a month in rent against a £250,000 first home, buying works out £52,552 cheaper over five years and £134,003 cheaper over ten.

The verdict moves with the assumptions, so the sections below open the model up: what it counts, what it leaves out, and the situations where renting genuinely is the cheaper route.

Packed moving boxes in a bright kitchenTO LETSOLD
Same home, two routes in. Only one of them builds equity.

Growth does the heavy lifting

In the comparison above, house price growth supplies about half of the equity a buyer builds over ten years. Read the result as a statement about the assumptions as much as about the property.

02

How the comparison is built

The renting side adds up every rent payment across your timeframe, with the rent rising 3% a year. The buying side adds everything you hand over: deposit, stamp duty, £3,500 of buying fees, every mortgage payment and maintenance at 1% of the property price each year. It then credits back the equity you own at the end, and the cheaper route is the one with the lower net figure after that credit.

Equity does the heavy conceptual work, so it is worth defining. Your home is revalued at 3% growth a year, your remaining mortgage balance comes off, and what is left counts as money buying returns to you. Rent hands back nothing at the end, which is the structural gap the whole comparison turns on.

Three assumptions are fixed inside the model rather than asked of you: rent growth of 3%, house price growth of 3% and maintenance at 1% of the price each year. Change any of them in real life and the answer moves, which is why the growth section below tests what happens when prices stand still.

Some real costs sit outside both columns. Buildings insurance, and service charges or ground rent on a flat, belong to the buyer in life but not in this model, so a leasehold purchase carries more than the buying side shows. On the renting side, a tenancy deposit is refundable and moving costs are small, so the model is right to leave them out. Neither gap changes the ranking in most comparisons, but both narrow the winner's margin.

03

Worked example: £1,200 of rent against a £250,000 first home

Take the starting figures: rent of £1,200 a month, a £250,000 home, a £25,000 deposit, a mortgage at 4.5% over 25 years and first time buyer status. The loan is £225,000, the monthly payment is £1,251 against rent of £1,200, and stamp duty is £0 because the price sits inside first time buyer relief.

Over five years renting costs £76,452. Buying takes £116,037 of cash, made up of the £25,000 deposit, £3,500 of fees, £75,037 of mortgage payments and £12,500 of maintenance, but it leaves you owning £92,138 of equity, so the net cost of buying is £23,899. Buying wins the five year comparison by £52,552.

Stretch the same figures to ten years and rent totals £165,080. Buying takes £203,575 of cash and builds £172,498 of equity, a net cost of £31,077, so buying wins by £134,003. Notice what grew fastest: not the rent, but the equity, and price growth supplies about half of it.

04

The ownership costs renters never see

Stamp duty is the first cost renting avoids entirely. A first time buyer pays nothing at £250,000, but a mover buying the same home pays £2,500, and at £350,000 the first time buyer pays £2,500 against a mover's £7,500. The calculator applies the correct figure for the buyer type you select.

Interest is the largest cost on the buying side. Of the £150,075 of mortgage payments in the ten year example, £88,556 is interest and only £61,518 reduces the loan. The split is worst early on: across the first two years you pay £30,015 and clear just £10,198 of debt, which is why short stays punish buyers so hard.

Maintenance runs at 1% of the price a year inside the model, £2,500 a year on a £250,000 home and £25,000 across the ten year example. Boilers, roofs and fences arrive in lumps rather than monthly slices, and the renter's equivalent cost is zero, because the landlord carries every one of them.

The £3,500 of buying fees deserves a breakdown as well: conveyancing, a survey, the valuation and the lender's arrangement and product fees all live inside it. Choose a fee free mortgage product and the figure falls; buy a property that needs a full structural survey and it rises. Either way it is spent once, on day one, and no outcome at the end of the comparison returns it, which is why it weighs so heavily on short stays.

05

The deposit: £25,000 that stops working elsewhere

Buying ties your deposit up in the property, and an honest comparison charges for that. The model counts the £25,000 as cash out and then returns it inside your equity at the end, so the deposit itself is not lost. What never gets counted is the growth that money could have earned somewhere else, and the calculator's own notes flag exactly this gap.

Put a scale on it with the model's own growth rate. £25,000 growing at 3% a year for ten years becomes £33,598, so the foregone growth is roughly £8,598. Renting keeps the deposit invested and liquid; buying converts it into equity you can only reach by selling or remortgaging.

Liquidity cuts both ways. The renter's fund survives an emergency intact and can move house with them. The buyer's wealth sits in one illiquid asset on one street, which is a strength while prices rise and a trap in a year when you need to sell quickly.

A small deposit also leaves no cushion against a fall. With 10% down on a £250,000 home, a 5% drop in value wipes out £12,500, half the cash you put in, before a single payment is considered. The model never lets prices fall, but your own decision should at least ask what a fall would do to you in the first few years, when the equity is thinnest.

06

House price growth: the assumption that decides it

Take the £172,498 of equity in the ten year example apart and the verdict explains itself: £25,000 is your deposit returned, £61,518 is capital your payments cleared, and £85,979 is pure price growth at 3% a year. Growth is the largest single contributor, larger than everything you paid off the loan.

Hold prices flat instead and the picture changes without any other input moving. Equity falls to £86,518, the net cost of buying rises to £117,057, and buying's winning margin over £165,080 of rent shrinks from £134,003 to £48,023. Buying still wins this example because the rent is high relative to the price, but almost two thirds of its advantage was the growth assumption.

That sensitivity is the real lesson of the page. Where rents are cheap relative to prices, or where you doubt local growth, run the years down and watch the margin thin. The calculator cannot know your street; it can only show you how much of your decision is a bet on prices.

07

When renting wins, and what money misses

Renting wins the cash comparison when the stay is short and prices do not rescue the buyer. Buying spends £3,500 of fees and any stamp duty on day one, early mortgage payments are mostly interest, and selling carries costs this model does not charge, so a move inside two or three years in a flat market routinely leaves the renter ahead.

In the default example buying moves ahead quickly, because price growth starts building equity from the first month. Slow that growth down and the crossing point, the stay length at which buying pulls level and then ahead, moves years into the future. Ask how long you would need to stay for buying to win without growth's help, and compare that honestly with how long you actually expect to stay. That single comparison settles more real decisions than the ten year headline does.

Renting also wins where flexibility is worth more than equity: a career that may move city, a household that may grow or split, a deposit still being built. The renter can leave with a month or two of notice. The owner must sell, and a forced sale in a slow market hands back much of the paper gain.

Money is not the whole ledger either way. Owning brings security of tenure, freedom to renovate and protection from a landlord's decision to sell, and the mortgage payment acts as forced saving that many households would not otherwise do. Renting brings a landlord who funds repairs and a life that can be rearranged at short notice. Price those honestly for your own case before you let the headline difference decide.

08

Where the Rent vs Buy Calculator gets its figures

Rates, bands and thresholds follow published HMRC and gov.uk figures for the 2026/27 tax year, held in one table that every tool reads. April arrives, the table changes, and the results move together.

Earlier years stay available through the year selector, so a late self assessment runs on the numbers that applied at the time rather than today's.

Some cases still need an accountant. K codes carrying negative allowances, bespoke sacrifice arrangements, the annual allowance taper for very high earners, and anything involving two employments at once.

About this calculator

The Rent vs Buy Calculator compares the true cost of renting against buying a UK home over your chosen timeframe. It includes stamp duty, mortgage payments, maintenance and house price growth, so you see the net cost of each option side by side.

Frequently asked questions

Is it cheaper to rent or buy in the UK?+
Over five to ten years, buying is usually cheaper once the mortgage is underway, because rent is money gone while mortgage payments build equity. The crossover point depends on house price growth, how long you stay, and your upfront costs like stamp duty and deposit. The calculator compares both over your chosen timeframe so you can see the year-by-year maths instead of relying on rules of thumb.
How much stamp duty will I pay as a first-time buyer?+
In 2026/27, first-time buyers in England and Northern Ireland pay no stamp duty on homes up to £300,000, then 5 percent on the slice from £300,001 to £500,000. Above £500,000 the relief disappears and standard rates apply to the whole price. The calculator applies this relief automatically when you tick the first-time buyer box.
What are the hidden costs of buying a house?+
Beyond the deposit, budget for stamp duty, conveyancing (£1,000 to £2,000), a survey (£400 to £1,500), mortgage arrangement fees, removals and immediate repairs. Lenders also stress-test affordability, and you will keep paying buildings insurance plus roughly 1 percent of the property value a year in maintenance. The calculator includes stamp duty, fees and maintenance so the buying side is not understated.
How does house price growth affect the rent vs buy decision?+
Price growth is the lever that most often tips the maths toward buying, because even modest 3 percent annual growth compounds into serious equity over a decade. On a £250,000 home that is roughly £86,000 of growth in ten years, which offsets years of mortgage interest. The risk runs both ways though: flat or falling prices leave you with the costs and none of the gain, which is why the timeframe matters so much.
How long should I plan to stay for buying to beat renting?+
Most buyers need to stay at least five years for the upfront costs to be absorbed by equity growth and principal repayment. Sell after two years and stamp duty plus fees will usually wipe out any gain. The longer you stay, the more each mortgage payment shifts from interest to capital, which is why the calculator lets you test different horizons before you commit.
Does the calculator include Scotland and Wales?+
The stamp duty figures use England and Northern Ireland SDLT rates. Scotland charges Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT) and Wales charges Land Transaction Tax (LTT), both with different bands and first-time buyer rules. The mortgage, rent and equity maths works the same everywhere, but treat the tax line as England-only and check Revenue Scotland or the Welsh Revenue Authority for local figures.
Should I overpay my mortgage or invest the difference?+
Overpaying a mortgage gives a guaranteed, tax-free return equal to your mortgage rate, which is hard to beat when rates are high. Investing can win over long periods if returns exceed the rate after tax, but the outcome is uncertain and your money is less accessible. Many people split the difference: overpay enough to stay comfortable, then invest the rest. Neither choice changes the rent vs buy maths much in the first few years.