Rent vs Buy Calculator
Should you rent or buy? Enter your home price, monthly rent, and time horizon to compare the full cost of each option side by side. This calculator breaks the decision into four buckets — initial costs, recurring costs, opportunity cost, and net proceeds — and reports the result in today's dollars so you can see which choice really saves more.
Cumulative cost over time
Cost breakdown at year 7
| Cost | Renting | Buying |
|---|---|---|
Initial costs security deposit / down payment + closing costs | $2,500 | $92,000 |
Recurring costs rent / mortgage, tax, insurance, maintenance | $207,901 | $243,790 |
Opportunity cost forgone real return on locked-up cash | $877 | $32,282 |
Net proceeds deposit returned / home value minus selling costs and loan | -$2,103 | -$172,845 |
| Total cost at year 7 | $209,175 | $195,227 |
About This Rent vs Buy Calculator
The rent vs buy decision is one of the biggest financial choices you'll make, and most online calculators reduce it to a single number that hides why one option wins. This free calculator does the opposite: it splits both renting and buying into the same four cost buckets — initial costs, recurring costs, opportunity cost, and net proceeds — so you can see exactly which line item is driving the answer.
Buying-side costs include the down payment, closing costs, monthly mortgage payments (principal and interest), property taxes that scale with your home's appreciated value, homeowner's insurance, HOA, annual maintenance, and PMI when your down payment is below 20%. PMI automatically drops out once your amortized equity reaches 20% of the original purchase price. When you sell, the calculator subtracts selling costs and the remaining loan balance to give you net proceeds — which can be negative in the early years if selling costs exceed appreciation plus principal paid.
Renting-side costs include rent (escalated each year), the security deposit you put down at signing, the opportunity cost of that locked-up cash, and the deposit returned when you move out. The security deposit defaults to one month's rent.
All future cash flows are discounted to today's dollars using your inflation assumption, and opportunity cost uses your real return (investment return minus inflation), so you're not comparing nominal dollars at different points in time. The chart lets you drag a vertical line to any year on your timeline — the verdict, breakdown table, and breakeven marker update live so you can quickly answer 'what if I stay 5 years vs 15?' without retyping anything.
Use the advanced settings to tune every assumption to your situation — mortgage rate, property tax rate, appreciation, rent increase, investment return, and inflation. For deeper real estate investment analysis including seller financing, wrap mortgages, and amortization schedules, try our full-featured Flexi calculator.