Finance Calculators
Rent vs Buy Calculator
Renting and buying cost money in different ways and at different times. This page adds up both, year by year, from the figures you enter: the mortgage's interest, the costs of owning, buying and selling against the rent you would pay, so the year buying overtakes renting becomes a crossing on two curves rather than an opinion.
Calculator
How the three answers are worked out
The monthly payment is the annuity on the price less the deposit, over the term at the rate. Each year, the net cost of buying is the deposit, the payments made, the buying costs, the ownership costs at the stated percentage and the mortgage still owed, less what the home would sell for after the selling costs: the deposit and the principal cancel out, so what remains is the interest, the running costs, the buying and selling costs and the home's own change in value. Rent is added year by year at its growth rate, and the break-even year is the first year buying's net cost is at or below rent's. The deposit's opportunity cost is what it would have earned invested at the return you enter; it is reported as its own figure and added to neither side.
About This Calculator
What It Does
This calculator compares renting a home with buying one, using only the figures you enter. From the price, the deposit, the mortgage and the costs on each side it returns three answers: the year buying overtakes renting on total cost, what each option costs over your holding horizon, and what the deposit would have earned if it had been invested instead. The ownership percentage and the growth rates are stated assumptions of the page, labelled as such, and nothing here is advice.
Worked Example
The page opens with a 300,000 home, a 60,000 deposit and a 240,000 mortgage at 4.5 % over 25 years, which is 1,334 a month. Buying costs are 3 % (9,000), selling costs 4 %, ownership costs 1.5 % a year (4,500), rent 1,000 a month growing 3 % a year, house prices growing 3 % a year and the deposit assumed to earn 4 % if invested. Over ten years the net cost of buying is 61,412.43 — 94,460.35 of interest, 45,000 of ownership costs, 9,000 of buying costs and 16,127 of selling costs, less the home's growth to 403,174.91 — while rent paid is 137,566.55. Buying overtakes renting in year 4, and the deposit's opportunity cost is 28,814.66.
Real-World Usage
Use it before you commit to a move, when the rent and the asking price for the same home are both in front of you: the break-even year tells you how long the purchase has to last before its costs are recovered, and the horizon totals show what each choice costs at the point you actually expect to sell. It also answers the change of plan — extend the horizon, or raise the rent growth, and the crossing moves.
Local Context
The comparison follows the figures rather than the country: buying costs, selling costs and the running costs of a home are whatever the reader pays in taxes, fees, insurance and maintenance, and the calculator carries no national rate table. What varies by place is folded into the inputs — a market with high purchase taxes has a higher buying percentage, and a rent-controlled market a lower rent growth. The ownership percentage stays an assumption the page labels as one, wherever the page is read, and the figures are shown in the page's own currency and number format.
Last reviewed: November 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the break-even year mean?
It is the first whole year in which the net cost of buying is at or below the rent you would have paid over the same period. Before it, renting has cost less; from it on, buying has. When buying never gets there inside the horizon you entered, the page says so instead of reporting a year that does not exist.
Is the opportunity cost of the deposit part of the comparison?
No. It is shown as its own figure — what the deposit would have earned at the return you enter — and neither the buying side nor the renting side includes it. Adding it would answer a different question, so this page reports it and leaves that step to you.
Why does the result need growth rates?
Because both sides run for years. Rent grows and so may the home's value, and without those two figures the comparison would be a single year's snapshot. Both rates are your own projections, labelled as projections on the page: nothing here forecasts house prices or rents.
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