Cost of Living
See how fast prices are rising for the things you actually buy
You're looking at an example household
We've filled in average UK spending for a household that rents, so you can see how it works. Change the amounts to your own, or start from a blank form.
Example Household
Example household's inflation rate
4.2%
0.7 percentage points higher than the UK average
Extra cost a year
£1,715
for the same things as a year ago
Official inflation rate
3.5%
UK average, year to September 2026
A household like this needs its take-home pay to rise by about 4.2% a year to keep up. Check if your pay has kept up.
Price rises from the Office for National Statistics, for the year to September 2026.
What's driving the rate
How many percentage points each type of spending adds to the inflation rate.
- Rent: prices up 4.2%, adds 1.25 points
- Everything else: prices up 3.5%, adds 0.70 points
- Car fuel: prices up 29.8%, adds 0.70 points
- Energy bills: prices up 7.8%, adds 0.35 points
- Eating out & hotels: prices up 3.8%, adds 0.24 points
- Leisure & subscriptions: prices up 2.3%, adds 0.24 points
- Council tax: prices up 5.1%, adds 0.21 points
- Phone & broadband: prices up 5.8%, adds 0.16 points
- Food & groceries: prices up 1.3%, adds 0.12 points
- Water bills: prices up 9.0%, adds 0.10 points
- Household goods: prices up 1.0%, adds 0.05 points
- Travel fares (train, bus, flights): prices up 2.3%, adds 0.05 points
- Clothing & shoes: prices up 0.1%, adds 0.00 points
Your Monthly Spending
Example figuresChange any amount to make it yours.
Home, total£1,355
Everyday, total£670
Getting around, total£150
Going out, total£570
Other, total£685
Example inflation rate4.2%
Disclaimer: These figures are estimates for guidance only and errors may occur. They use national average price rises for each type of spending, so the prices you pay may change by a different amount. Mortgage payments count as not rising. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
About personal inflation
The official inflation rate, 3.5% in the year to September 2026, is an average across every household in the UK. But no household is average. If more of your money goes on things whose prices are rising fast, such as energy or rent, your own cost of living is rising faster than the headline figure. This calculator works out your personal inflation rate from what you actually spend.
Prices for different things rise at very different speeds. In some years energy bills or car fuel jump by more than 20%, while clothes or household goods barely change. Two families with the same income can face very different inflation, depending on whether they rent or own, drive or take the bus, and how much of their budget goes on food and bills.
Knowing your own rate helps you plan. It tells you how much more you need each year just to buy the same things, which is useful when budgeting or asking for a pay rise. It also shows which costs are pushing your bills up most, so you know where cutting back would make the biggest difference.
For each type of spending, the calculator takes the latest yearly price rise published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). It weights each one by how much of your monthly spending it makes up, then adds them together. A type of spending that makes up half your budget counts for half of your rate.
The figures update automatically when the ONS publishes new data each month. Most categories use the Consumer Prices Index (CPI). Council tax isn't in CPI, so it uses CPIH, which includes housing costs. Mortgage payments aren't part of price inflation, so they count as not rising. The example household uses average UK household spending from the ONS Family Spending survey for April 2024 to March 2025, with rent averaged over households that rent.