How should we split the rent?
Put the rent in, pick how you want to divide it, and see what each person pays. Split it evenly, by what each of you takes home, or by the size of your rooms.
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58% of the rent · 33% of what they take home
42% of the rent · 33% of what they take home
Split down the middle instead and it would be $1,200 each, which is 29% of what Alex earns and 39% of what Sam earns. Same rent, different sting.
And in thirty days?
Great. Now do the other fourteen bills.
Pairly keeps the list. Every subscription and every bill in one place, totalled, with what is left to spend. Two minutes to set up, and there is no bank login at any point.
The three ways people actually split rent
Down the middle is the default because it needs no conversation. It works when two people earn roughly the same and stops working the moment they do not, because the same dollar amount leaving two different sized accounts is not the same sacrifice.
By income is what most couples on unequal salaries end up at. Everybody gives up the same percentage of their take-home, so both people finish the month in a similar place. The number that makes this land is not the rent share, it is the percentage: seeing that an even split costs one person 34% of their pay and the other 21% is usually the end of the argument.
By room size is the housemate answer. Add up the square footage, take each person’s share of it, apply it to the rent. Most houses then adjust by hand for the room with the ensuite or the one facing the road, and that is the right instinct: this is a starting point, not a ruling.
The part a calculator cannot do
Rent is the biggest line and it is also the easiest one, because it is the same number every month and everybody already knows it. What breaks down is everything after it: the power bill that moved, the internet that one of you pays, the groceries that were meant to be shared, the four subscriptions nobody has counted. Those are the ones that quietly stop being split at all.
That is the gap Pairly fills. Same split, applied to everything, every month, without anybody having to open a spreadsheet. If you want to see what a whole month looks like rather than one line of it, set one up in two minutes.
Living with somebody who earns very differently?
There is a page written for exactly that, and one for roommates and one for people who have just moved in together.
Questions people also ask
- Is it fair to split rent by income?
- It is one fair answer, and it is the one most couples on unequal incomes land on. Splitting evenly means the same dollars leave two different sized accounts, so the person earning less feels it more. Splitting by income means both people give up roughly the same share of what they take home. Neither is objectively right, which is why this calculator shows you both and does not pick.
- How do you split rent when one bedroom is much bigger?
- Square footage is the usual tiebreaker. Add up everybody's room size, work out each person's share of that total, and apply it to the rent. The room size mode above does exactly that. Housemates often adjust it by hand afterwards for a private bathroom or a room with no window, and that is fine: the number is a starting point for a conversation, not a verdict.
- Should we split rent 50/50 if we are a couple?
- Plenty of couples do and are perfectly happy. It gets uncomfortable when the incomes are far apart, because the person earning less ends up with far less left over at the end of the month while paying the same rent. If you have never actually written down what each of you has left after the bills, that is usually the conversation worth having before the one about percentages.
- Does this include utilities?
- No, this is rent on its own. Utilities, internet, insurance and the rest tend to be split the same way, but they arrive on different dates and change month to month, which is why they are the part people stop tracking first.
- Do you store any of this?
- No. Everything on this page runs in your browser. There is no account, nothing is sent to us, and there is no bank connection anywhere in Pairly at all.