What it actually costs to live here

The visa makes you prove a fixed monthly figure. That figure is a minimum to be evidenced, not a budget. Answer a few questions about how you want to live and see what the difference looks like — and what you could legally earn against it.

How do you want to live?

Nothing here is stored. Change any answer and everything recalculates.

Where will you be studying

Rent comes from published statistics for June 2026.

Where will you live

Monthly rent (£) — we need this one

There is no official published figure for hall rates — every university sets its own and publishes them on its website. Take 30 seconds to look yours up; it will be far more accurate than anything we could guess.

What does your shopping look like?

We priced these baskets on 2026-08-02. They are our own figures, not an official statistic.

Meals out per week

Nights out per month

Getting around

I’ll watch live TV or BBC iPlayerA TV Licence is required by law for either — including on a laptop or phone, which is what catches people out.

Who is coming with you?

Partner

Whether they study matters: students don't pay council tax, but the exemption belongs to the whole household.

Children

Under-18s do not affect the council tax exemption.

Can you work?

Your age when you start

The legal minimum wage depends on your age, so this changes what you could earn.

My visa lets me work 20 hours a week in term timeUntick if you are part-time or your sponsor is not a higher education provider — then no work is permitted at all.

Add your rent to see the total

Hall rates are not published as official statistics, so we cannot fill this one in for you. Your university lists its room rates on its accommodation pages.

Find the real rates

There is no official published series for hall rates, so rather than guess we will take you to the source. Universities list theirs down to the room type.

Your university

Where each number comes from

This tool mixes three kinds of number and labels every one of them, because they do not deserve equal confidence.

Official statistics

Rent comes from the ONS Price Index of Private Rents (June 2026), and the hourly wage from the published National Minimum Wage rates. The visa comparison figure comes from the Immigration Rules themselves.

Covering 71 university towns and every English region, taken from the published monthly spreadsheet rather than the bulletin summary. If you live alone we use the one-bedroom figure; if you share, we divide the whole-property figure between you.

Our own pricing

The shopping baskets, meal and night-out costs, and transport figures are ours, priced on 2026-08-02. The ONS stopped publishing individual food prices in March 2026, so there is no official per-item series to use instead. These are the only numbers on this site without a primary source, which is why they are labelled wherever they appear.

Your answers

How many people you share with, how often you eat out, how often you go out. We apply arithmetic to what you told us — we are not claiming to know how you live.