How much you need to earn to rent a room in London in 2025

If you’re a renter, you’ve probably heard of the ‘30 percent rule’. And if you’re lucky enough to be blissfully unaware of this, it’s a budgeting theory that says your rent should never be more than 30 percent of your income. 

In London, where a bog-standard room in a flatshare can easily cost upwards of £1,000, there’s fat chance of the 30 percent rule coming true for most residents. 

Now, new research from SpareRoom has revealed exactly how much you would need to earn to comfortably rent a room in the capital. In London the average price of a room is currently £995 per month. According to SpareRoom, Londoners would need to earn a salary of £40,000 or more for their rent to be 30 percent of their gross salary. 

However, if you wanted your rent to be 30 percent of your net salary (that’s take-home pay), it would need to be much more than this. Let’s break down the numbers: to pay £995 per month and meet the 30 percent rule, Londoners would need a monthly take-home packet of £3,317, equating to £39,804 per year – that’s after paying tax. To make this number, Londoners would actually need to be earning well over £50,000 a year. 

This is well above the median monthly pay for London, which according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) was £2,992 in September 2025, equalling a gross income of £35,900. This means that the majority of London residents will be falling many thousands of pounds behind annually. Ouch. 

What is the 30 percent renting rule?

The 30 percent rule is pretty much as it says on the tin: that 30 percent of your pay is a reasonable amount to spend on rent. It’s a rule of thumb, not strict financial advice. 

What renters need to earn to afford room rents in every major UK city

London is the most expensive city in the country to rent a room, but how expensive are other UK hubs? According to SpareRoom’s research, here’s how much you need to earn (gross salary per year) to rent a room in other British cities. 

• Edinburgh – £35,480
• Oxford – £32,920
• Cambridge – £32,000
• Brighton – £30,640
• York – £30,200
• Bristol – £29,600
• Glasgow – £28,200
• Manchester – £28,040
• Cardiff – £26,440
• Birmingham – £24,920
• Norwich – £24,240
• Newcastle – £24,080
• Belfast – £23,640
• Leeds – £23,120
• Liverpool – £21,840
• Swansea – £21,560
• Sheffield – £21,360
• Hull – £19,520

The salary you need to buy a house in every London borough. 

From speed-flatmating to ‘au pairing for the elderly’, meet the Londoners taking renting to extremes.