Watering salary you now need to make to rent alone in London

Living in a flat alone in the big city is one of the requirements of our most beloved movie characters.

Just look at our beloved Bridget Jones, who lived in her one-bed Borough Market flat (which would now cost more than £2,000 per month to rent), or Carrie Bradshaw in her iconic Upper East Side apartment.

But the concept of renting solo in 2026 feels like as much of a work of fiction, as our favourite films and TV shows.

With ever-increasing rental prices, the salary you need to earn to live without flatmates is pretty astronomical.

The Economist recently crunched the numbers in their aptly named annual ‘Carrie Bradshaw Index’, which assesses how easy it is to do so in European cities.

You can access completely fee-free mortgage advice with London & Country (L&C) Mortgages, a partner of Metro.

Customers benefit from:
– Award winning service from the UK’s leading mortgage broker
– Expert advisors on hand 7 days a week
– Access to 1000s of mortgage deals from across the market
Unlike many mortgage brokers, L&C won’t charge you a fee for their advice.

Find out how much you could borrow online

Londoners, strap in for a rather nasty reality check…

The salary you need to rent alone in London

This figure is based off the rule of thumb that you shouldn’t spend more than 30% of your income on rent.

The average one-bedroom flat in London costs £2,000 per month, according to the European Commission’s statistics agency, Eurostat.

Currently, this means that residents in the capital who earn the average London salary of £55,530, based on the Economic Research Institute’s figures, would still have to fork out 44% of their income on rent.

All this means London is deemed ‘unaffordable’ to live in as a lone renter, and makes it the ninth most unaffordable city to live in across Europe.

Shock, Brits are spending more than we should

Where is affordable in Europe?

Think gothic architecture, and its claim to fame as the birthplace of Beethoven.

It got an overall index score of 1.33 (anything above a score of one is affordable), compared to London’s measly 0.68 score.

Lyon (France), Bern (Switzerland), Brussels (Belgium), Helsinki (Finland), Vienna (Austria), Luxembourg and Berlin (Germany), were the other European cities considered to be affordable.

For example, Berlin has an average salary of £47,605 per year with an average monthly rent of £1,168.

This equates to 29% of your yearly salary going towards rent.

If you want affordable rent in the UK, the most affordable options as of 2025 were Durham, Doncaster, and Hull, where a resident will spend 32% of their average income on rent.

It’s still not technically ‘affordable’ but it’s a best of the worst situation.

More property news...

The elite London areas with the largest property discounts in 2025
This is the salary you need to buy a house in every London borough — and it’s bleak
Charlotte Benson, customer operations manager at rental company Canopy, explains: ‘Tenants are being stretched to the outer limits of rental affordability as financial strain continues, and in certain areas the situation is becoming even more severe.

Unfortunately, with high demand, limited supply, and stagnant wage growth, rental affordability has not improved in the past year, particularly in the southern and highly urban areas.’
So, if living alone feels unachievable, just know that you certainly aren’t alone.

This article was first published on February 2, 2026.
Get in touch by emailing MetroLifestyleTeam@Metro.co.uk.