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Rent Affordability Calculator

See how much rent you can afford under three real published affordability rules side by side — the 30% rule, the 50/30/20 budget, and the landlord's 40x-rent screening rule — plus a reverse mode that turns a target rent into a required income.

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Result

"How much rent can I afford?" doesn't have one universal answer — it has at least three, depending on which real, commonly cited rule you ask. This calculator runs your numbers through all three at once so you can see where they agree and where they diverge, instead of anchoring on a single percentage that happens to be the one most websites repeat.

The first is the 30% rule, the classic affordability guideline long associated with U.S. federal housing programs (traced back to HUD's use of 30% of gross income as a threshold for housing cost burden): maxRent = monthlyIncome × 0.30. It's simple, it's the number most people have heard, and it's exactly what this calculator computes first.

The second is the 50/30/20 budget rule — popularized as a way to split take-home pay into 50% needs, 30% wants and 20% savings. Rent is a need, not the 'wants' bucket, so a rule that names one crisp rent figure would be misrepresenting it. This calculator is honest about that: it shows a range, from a more conservative roughly 25% of income (if rent has to share the needs bucket with groceries, utilities, insurance, transportation and debt payments) up to the full 50% needs allocation (if rent is close to your only major recurring cost). The third is the '40x rent' rule many landlords and leasing offices use to screen applicants: they want to see annual gross income at least 40 times the monthly rent, which rearranges neatly to maxRent = annualIncome ÷ 40 — often the strictest of the three for renters in expensive markets.

Switch to reverse mode to flip the question: enter a rent you've been quoted and see, under each rule, the income it implies you'd need to comfortably (or, for the 40x rule, successfully) take it on. Amounts are plain numbers that work in any currency, and every calculation happens locally in your browser — nothing is uploaded or stored.

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Accepted Formats & Rules

  • 30% rule: maxRent = 30% of monthly income, the classic HUD-cited affordability guideline.
  • 50/30/20 budget rule shown as an honest range (~25% to ~50% of income) since rent shares the 'needs' bucket with other expenses.
  • 40x rent rule: the common landlord/leasing-office screening threshold, annual income ÷ 40.
  • Reverse mode inverts all three rules to show the required income for a target rent.

Key Benefits

✓ Compare three genuinely different, real-world affordability rules at once instead of trusting a single made-up percentage.
✓ See the honest range the 50/30/20 rule actually implies for rent, rather than a false single number it was never designed to give.
✓ Flip the calculator around: enter the rent you're quoted and see the income each rule says you'd need to qualify.
✓ Everything runs locally in your browser — no sign-up, and your income figures never leave your device.

Use Cases

  • • Enter your gross income to see three genuinely different affordability rules — the 30% rule, the 50/30/20 budget range, and the landlord's 40x-rent screening rule — side by side instead of trusting one number.
  • • Flip to reverse mode with a rent you've been quoted to see the income each rule implies you'd need before applying.
  • • Compare an annual salary against a monthly rent listing by switching the income period toggle, instead of doing the /12 or ×12 math by hand.
  • • Sanity-check whether a landlord's income requirement (often 40x the monthly rent) is stricter or looser than the classic 30%-of-income guideline for your situation.