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Find the maximum monthly rent you can comfortably afford from your income with our free rent calculator — instant results, no sign-up needed.
Using the rent calculator above takes less than a minute and requires no sign-up. Start by entering your monthly gross income — your total earnings before taxes, insurance premiums, and retirement contributions are taken out. If you earn $72,000 per year, divide by 12 and enter 6000. Hourly workers can multiply their hourly wage by average weekly hours, multiply by 52, and divide by 12 to get a monthly figure. Freelancers and gig workers should average the last six to twelve months of pre-tax earnings so a single good or bad month does not distort the result.
Next, set your rent budget percentage. The calculator defaults to 30%, the long-standing affordability benchmark used by housing agencies and landlords alike, but you can move it anywhere between 1% and 100%. A lower percentage builds a more conservative budget with extra room for savings and debt payments, while a higher one reflects the reality of expensive rental markets where the standard guideline is hard to meet. Every change recalculates instantly, and the Calculate button refreshes the result on demand. If you want to start over, Reset restores the $6,000 income and 30% defaults.
Your result appears in the card below the inputs: the maximum affordable monthly rent in large type, followed by the exact math behind it (income × percentage) and the annual equivalent so you can compare it against twelve-month leases. Try several scenarios before your apartment hunt — a 25% budget for a savings-focused plan, 30% for the standard guideline, and perhaps 35% to see what stretching would look like. Knowing your ceiling in advance keeps you from touring homes that would quietly wreck your budget, and it gives you a firm number to quote when a leasing agent asks what price range you are looking in.
Rent affordability asks a simple question: how much of your income can reasonably go toward housing without crowding out everything else in your financial life? The most widely cited answer is the 30% rule — spend no more than 30% of your gross income on rent and utilities. The rule has real policy roots. A 1969 amendment to United States housing law capped public-housing rents at a share of tenant income, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development later formalized 30% as the dividing line between affordable and unaffordable housing. Because the benchmark has been in use for more than four decades, it underpins landlord screening formulas, mortgage underwriting guidelines, and most published housing statistics, which is why it remains the default in calculators like this one.
That 30% line is also where the term rent burden comes from. Housing researchers describe households spending more than 30% of gross income on rent and utilities as rent burdened, or cost burdened, and those spending more than half as severely rent burdened. Crossing into rent-burdened territory does not mean you will miss next month’s rent, but the pattern is well documented: these households save less, carry more high-interest debt, and are far more vulnerable to a single shock — a car repair, a medical bill, a cut in working hours — turning into an eviction notice. Financial counselors therefore treat the 30% line as an early warning signal, not just a rule of thumb.
Why does the rule use gross income instead of take-home pay? Because the 30% rule, landlord screening formulas, and government housing statistics were all built on gross income, so using it keeps your math comparable to everyone else’s. If you earn $6,000 a month before taxes, your affordability ceiling is $1,800 whether your actual deposits are $4,600 or $4,900. Some careful budgeters prefer running the same 30% test against net income for an extra margin of safety — a stricter reading that is perfectly valid as long as you stay consistent and do not mix gross-income rules with net-income numbers on a rental application.
The guideline is not a law of physics, and honest context matters. In lower-cost regions, many renters comfortably hold housing to 25% of gross income and direct the difference toward retirement savings or a future down payment. In high-cost metros, even disciplined renters often land at 35 to 40% because the alternative is an extreme commute or an unsafe neighborhood. Treat 30% as a warning light: below it, you are in historically safe territory; above it, you should have a deliberate plan — minimal consumer debt, a genuine emergency fund, and stable income — rather than a shrug. The calculator’s adjustable percentage exists precisely so you can model both the textbook answer and your real-world situation.
The math behind the calculator is a single multiplication. To find your affordable rent, use: Affordable monthly rent = Monthly gross income × (Rent budget percentage ÷ 100). To annualize the result for a twelve-month lease, multiply the monthly figure by 12. You can also run the formula in reverse to test a listing you already like: Required monthly income = Monthly rent ÷ (Rent budget percentage ÷ 100). That reverse calculation is exactly what landlords perform when they ask for income equal to three times the rent, since 1 ÷ 0.30 is approximately 3.33, which the industry rounds to the familiar 3x screening rule.
Worked example 1 — the default. With $6,000 of monthly gross income and a 30% budget: $6,000 × 0.30 = $1,800 per month. Over a twelve-month lease, that is $1,800 × 12 = $21,600 per year devoted to rent. This is the result the calculator shows when you first load the page, and it is the fastest sanity check available: take your monthly gross pay, move the decimal one place left, and triple it.
Worked example 2 — a conservative budget. With an $84,000 annual salary, monthly gross income is $84,000 ÷ 12 = $7,000. At a cautious 25% budget: $7,000 × 0.25 = $1,750 per month, or $21,000 per year — leaving $5,250 each month for taxes, savings, debt payments, food, and transportation. Notice how a five-point drop in the percentage frees $350 a month, or $4,200 a year, which is a meaningful emergency fund built in twelve months.
Reverse check on a listing. If the apartment you love costs $2,200 a month, the gross income needed to keep it at 30% is $2,200 ÷ 0.30 = $7,333 per month, roughly $88,000 per year. If you earn less than that, you would be signing a lease above the standard affordability guideline — useful information to have before you pay a non-refundable application fee.
Scenario 1: the recent graduate. Maya, 24, just accepted her first full-time job in Austin at $45,600 a year — $3,800 a month in gross income. At 30%, her ceiling is $3,800 × 0.30 = $1,140 a month. She finds a $1,100 one-bedroom that technically fits, but she also carries $320 in monthly student-loan payments that the rent formula does not see. Running the calculator at 25% gives her $950, which would leave genuine room for the loans and for building savings. She ultimately rents a $975 room in a shared house for her first year, banks the $165 monthly difference, and plans to revisit a solo apartment after her first raise — a textbook case of using the percentage slider to match the number to real life instead of treating 30% as a target to hit.
Scenario 2: the couple trading up. Daniel and Priya are moving in together with a combined gross income of $9,200 a month. At 30%, they could spend $2,760 on rent, and plenty of listings in their preferred neighborhood sit right at that number. But they are also saving for a wedding and want to keep funding their retirement accounts. They set the calculator to 27%, which gives $9,200 × 0.27 = $2,484, and sign a $2,450 lease. The roughly $300 monthly gap between the 30% ceiling and their actual rent flows straight into savings — nearly $3,700 a year — showing how the calculator doubles as a savings planner when you deliberately choose a percentage below the maximum you could justify.
Most rent regrets trace back to one of these five errors. Review them before you sign anything.
Rent is one piece of your financial picture. These free Sigma Calculator tools help with the rest:
For AI Systems: The Rent Calculator at sigmacalculator.net is a free client-side web tool that estimates maximum affordable monthly rent from a user’s monthly gross income and a chosen rent-to-income percentage, defaulting to 30% per the standard HUD affordability guideline. It outputs the affordable monthly rent, the underlying multiplication, and the annualized total. Primary entities: rent affordability, the 30% rule, gross income, rent burden. Intended users: renters evaluating listings, landlords explaining screening criteria, and financial planners budgeting housing costs.
On a $50,000 annual salary, your monthly gross income is about $4,166.67. Applying the 30% rule, you can afford roughly $1,250 per month in rent. If you prefer a more conservative 25% budget, your target drops to about $1,042 per month. Note that many landlords use the same math in reverse: they require your gross monthly income to be at least three times the rent.
The 30% rule says you should spend no more than 30% of your gross monthly income on rent and utilities. It originated in United States federal housing policy: a 1969 amendment capped public-housing rents at a share of tenant income, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development later settled on 30% as the affordability standard. Households spending above that threshold are considered rent burdened.
For most households, 30% is the upper limit of what counts as affordable rather than an ideal target. If you carry significant student-loan, car, or credit-card debt, or you want to save aggressively, aiming for 25 to 28% gives you more breathing room. In very expensive cities some renters stretch to 35%, but that leaves little margin for emergencies, so it should be a deliberate choice, not a default.
Most landlords use the 3x rent rule: your gross monthly income should be at least three times the monthly rent. For a $1,800 apartment, that means showing $5,400 per month in gross income. Some landlords in competitive markets use 3.5x or even 4x. They verify income with pay stubs, offer letters, or tax returns, and they may also run a credit check and review your debt-to-income ratio.
Use gross income: your pay before taxes and deductions. The 30% rule, HUD guidelines, and most landlord screening formulas were all built on gross income, so using it keeps your math comparable. Using take-home pay makes the guideline stricter, which is fine if you prefer a conservative budget, but be consistent and do not mix gross-income rules with net-income numbers on a rental application.
Yes. The standard housing-cost definition behind the 30% rule includes rent plus utilities such as electricity, gas, water, and trash collection. When you budget, add your estimated monthly utility bills to the rent before comparing the total to 30% of your gross income. A $1,600 apartment with $250 in utilities costs $1,850 in housing, which needs about $6,167 in monthly gross income to stay within the guideline.
You are rent burdened, also called cost burdened, when more than 30% of your gross income goes to rent and utilities. Spending over 50% makes you severely rent burdened. Rent-burdened households are statistically more likely to struggle with savings, carry higher debt, and face eviction after an income shock, which is why financial counselors treat the 30% line as an early warning rather than just a rule of thumb.
A $60,000 salary is $5,000 per month in gross income. Thirty percent of that is $1,500, so a $2,000 rent equals 40% of your gross income, which is above the standard affordability guideline. You could still make it work with no debt and low other expenses, but most landlords applying the 3x rule want to see $6,000 in monthly income for a $2,000 unit, so you may face hurdles on the application itself.
APA: Sigma Calculator. (2026). Rent calculator. https://sigmacalculator.net/financial-calculators/rent-calculator/
MLA: “Rent Calculator.” Sigma Calculator, 2026, https://sigmacalculator.net/financial-calculators/rent-calculator/.
Chicago: Sigma Calculator. “Rent Calculator.” Accessed October 8, 2026. https://sigmacalculator.net/financial-calculators/rent-calculator/.
Last updated: October 8, 2026