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 alone 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 alone 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.
Londoners, strap in for a rather nasty reality check…
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The salary you need to rent alone in London
If you’re looking to rent a one-bedroom apartment on your own in the capital, you’ll need a salary of £81,800 — that’s about £50,000 more a year than the estimated UK average salary of £30,660 (ONS).
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
According to the 2025 UK Rental Affordability Index, Brits are expected to spend 50% of their take-home pay on ‘needs’. This includes rent, utilities, food, travel, childcare, insurance and debt payments.
But this is pretty impossible for those of us living in the UK, with the average renter now spending 41% of their take-home pay on rent alone last year.
It’s of no surprise that the index found London tenants actually spend 48% of their take-home pay cheque on rent, although following closely behind is South East renters who spend 44% of their salary.
In an even bleaker picture, 12 London boroughs saw renters forking out more than half their earnings to afford their property, with the worst culprits being Enfield and Barking and Dagenham. Both of these boroughs saw tenants pay 55% of their earnings towards rent.
Where is affordable in Europe?
The most affordable city to rent in in Europe is Bonn, Germany, which is the country’s second city. 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.
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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.
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