Rent Affordability Calculator
Enter your income and see the maximum rent you can afford under the classic 30% rule — or your own ratio. Factor in existing debts, convert take-home pay to gross, and get a 25/30/35% guideline range plus what's left over each month. Runs locally in your browser.
About this tool
This calculator estimates the maximum monthly rent you can comfortably afford from your income. By default it applies the classic 30% rule — housing should take at most 30% of your gross (pre-tax) monthly income — but you can dial the rent-to-income ratio anywhere from 10% to 50% to match a landlord's requirement or your own comfort level.
It goes beyond a single number:
- Debt-adjusted ceiling. Add your existing monthly debt payments and a back-end
debt-to-income cap (36% by default). The recommended rent is the smaller of the 30%-rule
figure and
gross monthly income × DTI% − debts, so real obligations pull the number down the way lenders and landlords expect. - Gross vs. net. Enter take-home (net) pay and an assumed tax rate, and it grosses the figure up before applying the ratio — because landlords screen on pre-tax income.
- A guideline range, not one bare figure. You get conservative (25%), moderate (30%) and aggressive (35%) anchors, the income-to-rent multiple landlords look for (about 3.3× rent at 30%), and how much is left over each month.
Everything runs locally in your browser — nothing you type is uploaded. The tax gross-up is a flat assumed rate, not a jurisdiction tax table, and there are no live local listings; it's a budgeting guide, not financial advice.
FAQ
What is the 30% rule for rent?
The 30% rule is a long-standing budgeting guideline that says your rent should be no more than 30% of your gross (pre-tax) monthly income. On a $60,000 salary — about $5,000 a month — that works out to roughly $1,500 a month in rent. It's a starting point, not a hard limit: this tool lets you set any ratio from 10% to 50%.
Should I use gross or net income?
Most landlords and the 30% rule use gross (pre-tax) income, which is why that's the default. If you only know your take-home (net) pay, switch the income type to net and set an assumed tax rate — the calculator grosses the figure back up before applying the ratio. The gross-up is a single flat rate, not a full progressive-tax calculation.
How do existing debts change the result?
Enter your recurring monthly debt payments (car loan, student loans, minimum credit-card
payments) and a back-end debt-to-income (DTI) cap — 36% is a common lender threshold. The
calculator computes a debt-adjusted ceiling of gross monthly income × DTI% − debts and
recommends the smaller of that and the plain rent-to-income figure. More debt means a lower
recommended rent.
What income multiple do landlords want?
Many landlords require your gross income to be about 3× the rent (sometimes 2.5× or 3.5×). The 30% rule is the same thing from the other direction — 30% of income as rent is an income-to-rent multiple of about 3.3×. The tool reports this multiple so you can check a listing's stated requirement at a glance.
Is this financial advice?
No. It's a budgeting guideline that runs entirely in your browser. It uses a flat assumed tax rate rather than real jurisdiction tax tables, doesn't know your local cost of living or utility costs, and doesn't pull live rental listings. Treat the result as a planning starting point and adjust for your own situation.
Developer & Automation Access
Run it from the terminal
Same engine as this page, headless — via the gizza CLI:
gizza tool rent-affordability 'income=60000'New to the CLI? Get gizza →
Open it by URL
Pre-fill and auto-run this tool with query parameters — the names match the API/CLI:
https://gizza.ai/tools/rent-affordability/?income=60000&income_period=annual&income_type=gross&tax_rate_percent=25&rent_to_income_ratio=30&monthly_debts=0&max_dti_ratio=36¤cy=%24&decimals=2Machine-readable descriptor: tool.json — title + parameters JSON Schema for agents.