How UpRently works

This page explains how the free check reaches its result, so you can judge how much weight to put on it. If anything here is unclear or looks wrong, tell us and we will fix it.

What UpRently is

UpRently is a free check for anyone in England facing a rent increase, or proposing one. You tell us about the home and the rent, and we compare the proposed rent with similar homes advertised nearby.

The result is a comparison, not a valuation. It shows where the proposed rent sits against real local homes, with their addresses and distances, because that is the comparison a tribunal makes. The check is free. If you want the full evidence in a document you can hand to a landlord, a tenant or a tribunal, that is the £19.99 Evidence Pack, and it is optional.

How the free check works

You answer five short steps. We ask for:

• your current rent
• the proposed rent
• your postcode
• the dates on your notice or tenancy
• a short description of the property

From those answers we work out how the proposed rent compares with rents for similar homes nearby. You get a verdict, a chart of how the rent compares, the two closest comparable homes, and your dates checked against the timing rules.

The verdict is worked out by fixed rules, not by AI. The same figures always produce the same result. We use AI for one thing only, which is writing the short paragraph that explains what the result means. Before you see that paragraph we check it against the real figures. If it quotes a number we never supplied, or describes the comparison the wrong way round, we throw it away and use a fixed explanation instead.

Where the comparable rents come from

A comparable is a similar home advertised to let near yours. We ask a market-data provider for up to 20 recently advertised homes near your postcode, matched on property type and number of bedrooms. The provider collects listings from the main property websites.

Every comparable is an advertised rent, which means the rent the landlord asked for. It is not always what the tenant agreed to pay, and some listings are marked as let agreed.

This matters if you take a case to the tribunal. Shelter(opens in new tab) and Citizens Advice(opens in new tab) both say advertised rents can help as evidence, and that a rent somebody actually agreed to pay is stronger. We say so beside every set of comparables, not only here. Agreed rents are the single biggest improvement we would like to make to the evidence.

Why you usually see fewer than 20 homes

The same home is often advertised on more than one property website, so the 20 listings we receive can include the same home twice. We remove those duplicates before we show you anything.

We treat two listings as the same home only when both the address and the rent match. Matching on the address alone went wrong in testing, because different flats in one building can share a street address.

So the number of comparable homes you see is usually below 20. That is expected, not a fault. Your result shows both numbers, the 20 we received and the number we kept, so the difference is never hidden.

How evidence strength is worked out

Evidence strength describes how much evidence stands behind your comparison and how tightly it clusters. It is not a measure of how likely you are to win.

We start with how many comparable homes we found. Five or more is strong, three or four is moderate, and fewer than three is limited whatever the distances.

Distance can then only lower that rating, never raise it. If the typical comparable is more than three miles away, strong becomes moderate. If the typical comparable is more than ten miles away, the rating drops to limited. And if even one of the homes we used is more than ten miles away, we never call the evidence strong, however close the rest are.

Tribunals give less weight to homes drawn from a different local market, which is why distance can pull a rating down but never push it up. Your Evidence Pack prints both the typical distance and the furthest one, so the rating can be checked rather than taken on trust.

Separately from the rating, we say when the proposed rent sits within three per cent of the typical local rent or the top of the local range. A result that close to the line could move if the evidence moved, and that is worth knowing whichever way it fell. It is said alongside the evidence strength, not instead of it.

The property estimate

If you describe the home in more detail, such as its floor area and roughly when it was built, we also produce a second, separate estimate of the rent it could achieve.

This estimate is worked out a different way from the comparison above, so the two can sometimes point in different directions. When that happens we show you both figures side by side and say what each one is based on. We do not pick a winner between them. A tribunal decides a case on comparable homes, not on an estimate, so the comparison is the one that answers the question you came with.

What the timing checks look at

We check two things about your dates. Whether the notice period is long enough, and whether the date the new rent starts lines up with your tenancy period. That is all.

We do not check:

• whether the landlord used the correct form
• how the notice was served, or whether it was served properly
• whether it names the right tenant or tenants
• whether an earlier increase you have not told us about affects the timing
• the signature on the notice

A result of no issues found is not a finding that the notice is valid. It means the two things we looked at did not raise anything.

Why it is built this way

Every design choice follows from how a rent dispute is actually decided in England. The rules are in the Housing Act 1988, and the body that decides is the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber).

• Real homes, not an area average. Plenty of tools will give you the average rent for a postcode district. A tribunal does not compare averages. It compares one home with other similar homes, so that is what we show, with the address and distance of each one.
• Distance matters. A home in a different town is in a different market, and a tribunal will discount it. That is why we rate the evidence by how close the homes are, and why we would rather show you 12 homes nearby than 50 spread across the county.
• A comparison, not a single figure. A tribunal sets the open market rent, which is what the home could reasonably be let for today. One confident figure from us would look like we were saying what your rent should be. We are not. We show you where the proposed rent sits in the local range, with the working.
• Dates are checked because deadlines are real. A tenant who wants the tribunal to decide the rent must apply before the new rent starts. Nothing we show you is worth much if that date has already passed, so the dates are part of the free check.
• Nothing is pre-filled. We ask for the floor area and the condition of the home instead of guessing them, because a guess presented as a fact would be a worse piece of evidence than an honest question.

For journalists and advisers

UpRently was built by one person in Wiltshire to answer a question most renters do not know they can ask, which is whether a rent increase is above what similar homes nearby actually go for. It is a sole trader business, not a letting agent, a landlord or a law firm.

The verdict is a fixed calculation on published advertised rents. AI writes only the summary paragraph, and that paragraph is checked against the figures before anyone sees it. We take payment only for the Evidence Pack, and the free check has no account, no card details and no tracking across other websites.

If you are writing about rent increases in England, or you advise tenants or landlords and want to know more, send us a message and choose media or adviser as the subject. Our guides to rent increases cover the rules in more detail.

What UpRently is not

We are not solicitors and we do not give legal advice. We do not tell you whether you would win at a tribunal, and we do not decide whether a landlord’s notice is legally valid.

For advice about your own situation, Shelter(opens in new tab) and Citizens Advice(opens in new tab) are free and independent. A solicitor can advise on anything unusual.

We only cover England. If a word on this page is unfamiliar, the glossary explains the terms we use, and the frequently asked questions cover what you get and what you pay.

Keeping this page honest

We review this page every three months, and sooner if the way the check works changes. If you spot something that does not match what the product actually does, tell us and we will correct it.

Last updated 10 September 2026