How much is a room in London?

The median advertised room in a shared house in London is £927 a month, from 1,640 live listings. Half of all rooms sit between £823 and £1,100. These are asking rents on the open market, refreshed regularly.

Is a room or a one-bed flat cheaper in London?

A room in a shared house in London runs about £927 a month against £1,740 for a one-bed of your own (official ONS average), so sharing saves roughly £813 a month before bills.

Do room rents in London include bills?

86% of advertised rooms in London include bills in the rent. Always check which utilities are covered: an all-in room at a higher headline rent is often cheaper overall than a bare rent plus bills.

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ROOM RENTS1,640 LIVE LISTINGS

Room rents in London

The median advertised room in a shared house in London is £927 a month, and half of all rooms sit between £823 and £1,100. Measured from 1,640 live listings on 2026-08-09. No official statistics track what a room costs, so we do.

Median room

£927

Middle half

£823–1,100

Bills included

86%

1-bed alone

£1,740

Sharing saves about £813 a month against the official average one-bed (£1,740, ONS) before bills, so roughly £9,756 a year.

What the listings say

Bills change the picture. The median all-in room (bills included) is £910, against £1,000 plus bills for the rest. Compare the true monthly total, not the headline rent: gas, electricity, water, broadband and council tax on top of a bare rent usually cost £80 to £150 a month per person.

90% of rooms accept students. Most of the market is open to you, so don't settle for a bad room.

The middle option. Studios here run about £1,450 a month: between a £927 room and a £1,740 one-bed, for a front door of your own.

Room rents by borough

One median for the whole of London hides a lot. These are the 31 boroughs with enough live rooms to count, cheapest first.

Cheapest borough first

median room · rooms counted · middle half

Havering£75061 rooms£693–800

Barking and Dagenham£778194 rooms£650–850

Croydon£800105 rooms£750–900

Enfield£80037 rooms£750–950

Hillingdon£80063 rooms£700–900

Hounslow£800125 rooms£700–950

Redbridge£800138 rooms£700–850

Sutton£80042 rooms£725–950

Waltham Forest£82575 rooms£750–975

Brent£850176 rooms£780–980

Harrow£850126 rooms£758–1,000

Kingston upon Thames£85039 rooms£750–900

Newham£850251 rooms£750–953

Merton£86585 rooms£775–997

Bromley£87338 rooms£800–950

Haringey£873122 rooms£800–1,100

Ealing£90098 rooms£750–1,050

Lewisham£900101 rooms£800–1,000

Richmond upon Thames£90042 rooms£825–1,025

Lambeth£950210 rooms£850–1,100

Tower Hamlets£975336 rooms£865–1,150

Wandsworth£975142 rooms£890–1,170

Southwark£978276 rooms£875–1,150

Greenwich£980223 rooms£890–1,150

Hackney£985170 rooms£850–1,150

Islington£1,050148 rooms£900–1,230

Westminster£1,050193 rooms£900–1,279

Hammersmith and Fulham£1,073134 rooms£900–1,250

Camden£1,100148 rooms£900–1,300

City of London£1,100213 rooms£900–1,257

Kensington and Chelsea£1,148169 rooms£950–1,300

The caveat, plainly: these are live advertised room prices from one portal, read on 2026-08-09, not an official statistic. Each borough is its own search covering everything within 4 km of the borough centre, so neighbouring inner boroughs overlap and a big outer borough is only partly covered. A borough needs 30 live rooms before we print a median for it, the same sample floor we use elsewhere.

Too thin to publish this time, under 30 rooms each: Bexley (24), Barnet (15).

Found a room or flat in London?

Paste the listing into the free student rent check and get a verdict for that exact address: whether the rent is fair for the street, how far it is from campus, and the area basics nobody puts in the advert.

Run a free rent check Prices by postcode

Room rents in other cities

Hull £445 Lincoln £456 Huddersfield £470 Middlesbrough £472 Stoke-on-Trent £475 Swansea £498 Preston £498 Leeds £500 Coventry £500 Durham £500 Sunderland £500 Sheffield £520 All cities

Method: advertised rents for rooms in shared properties, live on the open market on 2026-08-09. One-bed comparison from the ONS Price Index of Private Rents. Figures refresh regularly and are free to cite with attribution to gemhome.