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Prorated Rent Calculator

Created by Bogna Szyk, Tomasz Jedynak, PhD, Filip Derma and Wei Bin Loo
Reviewed by Dominik Czernia, PhD, Jack Bowater and Adena Benn
Last updated: Jun 06, 2024


If you don't occupy a rented apartment for the entire month, this prorated rent calculator will surely come in handy. It allows you to easily determine the rent you need to pay if you're moving in at any date other than the first of the month. Read on to learn

  • What prorated rent is;
  • Why prorated rent is a good thing;
  • How to calculate prorated rent;
  • How to use our prorated rent calculator; and
  • When you can request prorated rent.

Additionally, we have provided an example of the prorates rent calculation to make things clearer for you.

If you are wondering whether it is better to rent or buy a house, try our rent or buy calculator. If you're a real estate agent, jump to the rental commission calculator to determine your fee😉!

What is prorated rent?

Imagine that you are moving into a new apartment. You have already talked to the landlord and agreed to move in on the 20th of September. Typically, rent is charged every month; it seems unfair, though, to demand from you a full month's rent for September. A fair solution would be to charge you prorated rent - a certain percentage of the total rent proportional to the number of days you'll be staying in the apartment.

When prorated rent is applied, and you move into an apartment on the 20th of September (which has 30 days), your payment for this month would be one-third (10 / 30), i.e. about 33% of the full month's rent. Similarly, the prorated rent could be used to calculate the amount of the rent due if your landlord asks you to move out before the end of the month or if you want to stay an extra couple of days at the beginning of next month.

So what is prorated rent exactly? The formal prorated rent definition is the portion of the rental rate that corresponds to whatever part of the month the tenant lives in (or has access to) the property. Or in other words, the prorated rent is the amount of money a landlord charges a tenant for occupying the rented property for part of the base rental period (usually a month).

If you're a landlord, remember that the prorated rent calculator computes the rent from the tenant's point of view. Take a look at the net effective rent calculator for a different tool dedicated to you!

Thinking of buying a house? Our mortgage calculator is just what you need.

Why prorate rent?

The easiest and best explanation is that it is the only way to be fair!

More specifically, this fairness refers to the way the landlord treats his tenant from the first day. It is because rent proration is a mechanism that is used to calculate the rent amount due for a month during which the tenant did not fully occupy the property.

So to answer the question of why prorate rent, the tenant has a favorable view of his landlord. It is always good to develop a good relationship with the people with whom you do business. After all, they can also influence those with whom you do business in the future. Thanks to prorating, the landlord receives the correct amount of rent due, and the tenant only pays for the actual period they stayed in the property. Everybody wins. It doesn't hurt that the tenant now has a favorable view of his landlord.

How is prorated rent calculated?

So are you now wondering how to prorate rent? To calculate the amount of prorated rent, you first need to determine a daily rent amount. To do so, you have to divide the total rent amount by the number of days in a month. Then you should multiply the obtained daily rent amount by the number of days you will be occupying the property in that month. The result of this operation is the prorated rent amount for the partial month of renting.

To compute the prorated rent amount, it is easier to use our prorated rent calculator. However, if you want to know how the calculations are done, you should take a look at the following steps. A practical example of prorated rent calculations is provided in the next section. Don't worry - it's easier than you think!

  1. Pick your move-in or move-out date.
  2. Check how many days there are in the month of your move-in (if you are not sure, you can find the necessary information in the section called the months' length). Note this number down.
  3. Count the number of days in the month that you will occupy the apartment.
  4. Check the monthly rent amount in your rental agreement or ask your potential landlord about its value.
  5. Divide the monthly rent by the total number of days in the month.
  6. Finally, multiply this value by the number of days you plan to occupy the apartment.
  7. That's it. The result of the last operation is the exact amount of your prorated rent.

Remember that you don't need to perform all of these calculations by hand! Type your move-in date and monthly rent in the appropriate fields of our prorated rent calculator instead. You'll be amazed by how fast it works!

If you have been considering buying a house, you may be interested in our what to offer on a house calculator.

Example of prorated rent calculation

In the following example, let's make two assumptions: you move into a rented flat on the 15th of September, and the monthly rent is $650.

Below you can see a step-by-step guide on how to calculate the prorated rent:

  1. Move-in date: the 15th of September
  2. Days in September: 30
  3. Number of days of property occupancy: 16
  4. Monthly amount of rent: $650
  5. Daily rent amount (monthly rent amount divided by the number of days in a month): $650 / 30 = $21.67
  6. Prorated rent: $21.6667 * 16 = $346.67

Remember to be very careful with calculating the number of days you will occupy the apartment in a month. In our example, you count the 15th of September as the first day, the 16th as the second day, and so on. In total, you will occupy this apartment for 16 days.

Note that even though it is a monetary value, we round the daily rent amount to four digits. This is to guarantee the accuracy of the prorated rent amount.

Finally, your prorated rent in September is $346.67. If you fill the appropriate fields of our prorated rent calculator, you will receive the same value.

The months' length

As you have seen, calculating prorated rent is generally a piece of cake. All you need to know is the amount of monthly rent and the number of days in the month. The former will be in the rental agreement. The latter is a bit more complicated as not every month has the same number of days. Thanks, Caesar. However, this number is the same every year (except February, which changes every leap year), so if you are unsure of the correct values, you can check it in the table below.

Month

Number of days

Month

Number of days

January

31

July

31

February

28 (29 in leap years)

August

31

March

31

September

30

April

30

October

31

May

31

November

30

June

30

December

31

🙋 Did you know that the mean month length of the Gregorian calendar is 30.436875 days? If you multiply this number by 12, it gives 365.2425. That is why we have leap years (or intercalary years) when February has one additional day.

The reason for including this additional day is to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year. In the Gregorian calendar, the extra days occur in years that are multiples of four, except for centennial years not divisible by 400 (e.g., the years 1900 and 2100). Another curiosity regarding the calendar is that any five consecutive months (not including February) contain 153 days.

If you want to remember the length of each month, you can use a traditional verse mnemonic, which states:

Thirty days has September
April, June, and November.
All the rest have thirty-one
Excepting February alone,
Which only has but 28 days clear
And 29 in each leap year.

To easily memorize the length of the month, you can also use another popular mnemonic which uses your hands. To do so, you have to make fists and join them together. Now the knuckles of the four fingers and the spaces between them can be used to remember the lengths of the months. Imagine that each month is listed on your knuckles and spaces between them as you proceed across the hand. All months that land on a knuckle have 31 days. The months that land between them do not.

Did you know that this pattern of the lengths of the months is also reflected on the musical keyboard? If you assume the F is January, then the black and white keys that lay on the right represents the length of the rest of the months (with the note F correlating to January).

And one more remark regarding the calendar - despite February having fewer days than other months, you shouldn't expect to receive any "regular prorated rent" because of it. You should treat February as an ordinary month. In the end, monthly rent is a monthly rent.

When can you request prorated rent?

There is no federal or state law regarding prorated rent; only in some places is prorated rent required by law. Usually, most of the landlords will agree to prorate rent if you move in during the month. However, don't be surprised if they deny prorating rent when you suddenly decide to move out. It is advisable always to check the possibility of prorating with your landlord. Also, try to include it in the rental contract.

Since it is in the landlord's best interest to have his apartments rented at all times, you may request prorated rent be a part of your agreement should you leave in the middle of a month.

FAQ

What is prorated rent?

Prorated rent is a way to consider the actual moving-in date when starting a rental contract for any house or apartment. If you are not starting your stay at the beginning of the month, paying the entire month's rent would be unfair: the prorated rent allows you to pay only the exact amount due. Prorated rent is calculated proportionally, depending on the day of the month you will move in. Always ask for this type of payment if you are eligible!

How do I calculate the prorated rent

To calculate the prorated rent, you can set up a proportion. Follow these simple steps.

  1. Set up the following proportion: monthly rent : days in month = prorated rent : effective stay, where:
    • days in month — The exact number of days of the month you're moving in or out; and
    • effective stay — The effective number of days of your stay in the first or last month.
  2. Calculate the daily rent for the given month: daily rent = monthly rent/days in month.
  3. Multiply the daily rent by the effective number of days to find the prorated rent: prorated rent = daily rent × effective stay.

What is the prorated rent if I move on the 6th of June?

If you moved on the 6th of June, the prorated rent would be 83.3% of the total monthly rent. To find this result, follow these steps:

  1. Calculate the daily rent for June: daily rent = monthly rent/30, since June has 30 days.
  2. Calculate the effective stay: effective stay = 30 - 6 + 1= 25. Why +1? Because your first day in counts!
  3. Multiply the daily rent by the effective stay to find the prorated rent: prorated rent = monthly rent × 25/30 = monthly rent × 0.833.

Thus the prorated rent is 83.3% of the monthly one.

Can my landlord refuse prorated rent?

Prorated rent is not usually regulated by law: it will depend on your landlord if you can pay for the total number of days you will spend in your rented apartment. Usually, it's easier to ask for prorated rent in the first month than in the last month, and it's always better to ask for a written agreement in advance if you are interested in this type of payment.

Bogna Szyk, Tomasz Jedynak, PhD, Filip Derma and Wei Bin Loo
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