Rent Guarantee Insurance Cost Calculator
See the typical published range for rent guarantee insurance, what it covers and excludes, the referencing rule, the tax treatment, and when self-insuring beats buying.
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No UK insurer publishes one formula that turns your rent into an exact rent-guarantee premium. Instead they publish a scatter of real prices — a from-price, example quotes, a no-excess and an excess price. This calculator anchors a low and high end on four published 2026 UK price points and adjusts for the excess and cover-length you pick, showing a typical published range, never a quote.
The published price points
Simply Business quotes rent guarantee insurance “from £8.40 a month” (£100.80/yr), with a lower, 2019-dated “tenant default” FAQ figure of £6.56/mo; example real quotes on its page run £14.46–£18.33/mo. Just Landlords charges £260/yr no-excess or £210/yr with one month’s excess, cover up to £2,500/mo over 12 months. Alan Boswell’s 2026 quote data prices the same cover at £195/yr bundled or £250 standalone. HomeLet’s “46p a day” example (£600/mo rent) ≈ £168/yr is a sense-check only. Together: £100–£260 a year (£8–£22/mo), referenced tenant, 12-month cover, no excess.
What the excess and cover-length choices do
One adjustment uses a single provider’s own two current prices: Just Landlords prices one month’s excess about 19 per cent cheaper than no excess, applied directly. The other two are stated assumptions, flagged as such in the result text. “Arrears only, no legal cover” scales the range using Simply Business’s £6.56 “tenant default” FAQ figure against its £8.40 legal-expenses price — but that £6.56 figure is dated, in Simply Business’s own small print, to 2019 cohort data, six years older than the current figure, so the ratio is an illustrative separation, not a same-day comparison. The 6-month option has no published price anywhere we checked either, so it applies a separate stated reduction.
What it covers — and typically doesn’t
- Covered: rent arrears while the tenant remains in occupation; legal and eviction costs of pursuing the tenant (standard with Just Landlords, a legal advice helpline with Simply Business).
- Usually excluded — the void after eviction. Just Landlords: rent is “only payable while the tenant ... remains in occupation”. Simply Business’s own FAQ says it doesn’t sell a broader, void-inclusive product at all — budget for that gap separately with our void period cost calculator.
- Also excluded: abandonment without formal eviction proceedings (Just Landlords).
The referencing requirement
This voids a claim rather than shrinking it. Just Landlords: skip right-to-rent and credit checks before the tenancy starts and “your policy likely won’t be legally binding”. Simply Business treats referencing as a risk filter — tenants who fail a credit check “may be excluded”, case-by-case. Reference first, insure second.
Tenant type: what changes, and what we couldn’t verify
A referenced professional is what every price above assumes. Students and benefits/Universal Credit tenants aren’t automatically excluded, but Simply Business names both as more likely to fail the credit check, and Just Landlords sells a separate DSS product alongside this one. For a company let, none of the pages we read say whether cover extends to a corporate tenant: that is not verified, so this calculator says so rather than guessing.
The tax treatment
Allowable, like other landlord insurance: gov.uk’s rental-income guidance lists “insurance, such as landlords’ policies for buildings, contents and public liability” as deductible, and this site’s landlord insurance tax page treats rent-guarantee the same way — box 24 on the SA105. A payout is taxable property income in the year received, replacing the rent you’d have declared.
When self-insuring beats buying: the arrears-probability maths
Buying cover only wins if the expected cost of not having it beats the premium. For £1,000/mo: 4 weeks’ notice plus the median 27.1 weeks claim-to-repossession (Ministry of Justice, Apr-Jun 2026) is 31.1 weeks (≈7.2 months) of possible unpaid rent — £7,180, plus the £415 HMCTS claim fee — call it £7,590 worst case. Against Alan Boswell’s £195/yr bundled premium, the breakeven probability is £195÷£7,590 ≈ 2.6 per cent a year:
| Assumed annual probability | Expected cost of self-insuring | vs. £195 premium |
|---|---|---|
| 2% | ≈ £152 | Self-insuring cheaper |
| 5% | ≈ £380 | Buying cover cheaper |
| 10% | ≈ £759 | Buying cover much cheaper |
Two caveats: 2%/5%/10% are stated assumptions, not published rates — substitute your own estimate. And this is expected-value, not risk, maths: a landlord who couldn’t absorb a one-off £7,590 hit may rationally buy cover even where the average favours self-insuring.
Where this fits
If a tenant stops paying, the rent repayment order calculator covers what happens next. For the rest of the policy: how much landlord insurance costs, 8 UK providers compared and the full tax page; for the gap this cover leaves, the void period cost calculator.
Prices: Simply Business (“last updated 7 September 2026”), Just Landlords (dated 19 January 2026), Alan Boswell Group’s 2026 landlord insurance statistics and HomeLet, all read live 13 Sep 2026 — each provider’s own published price for its own product on the day we checked, not an independent comparison or a quote. Tax treatment: gov.uk “Income Tax when you rent out a property: working out your rental income” and the SA105 UK property notes, read 13 Sep 2026. Eviction-timeline figures: Ministry of Justice mortgage and landlord possession statistics, April-June 2026 (published 19 Aug 2026); gov.uk grounds-for-possession guidance; HMCTS civil court fees (EX50), in force from 13 Jul 2026 — all read 13 Sep 2026. General information, not advice or a quote; get an actual quote from a named insurer before buying.
Asked constantly
Published 2026 UK provider prices for a single, standard, referenced letting run roughly £100 to £260 a year (about £8 to £22 a month) for 12 months' cover with no excess — Simply Business quotes from £8.40 a month, Just Landlords charges £210–£260 a year depending on excess, and Alan Boswell Group's own 2026 quote data puts it at £195–£250 a year. None of these is a quote for your specific property — only an application with a named insurer gives you an actual price.
Usually not. Just Landlords states plainly that rent is only payable while the tenant remains in occupation — cover stops once you regain possession, even if the property then sits empty. Simply Business's own FAQ says it doesn't sell a broader, void-inclusive 'rent guarantee insurance' product at all — every price it publishes is for 'tenant default' cover. Budget for the void gap separately.
Yes, and it has to happen before the tenancy starts. Just Landlords is explicit that skipping right-to-rent and credit checks means your policy 'likely won't be legally binding' — no payout, not a reduced one. Simply Business frames referencing as the filter that decides who is covered at all, rather than a strict precondition, but the practical answer is the same: reference first, insure second.
Yes. It's an allowable property-business expense in the same way as buildings or contents insurance — gov.uk's own guidance on rental income lists insurance premiums as deductible, and it goes in box 24 on the SA105 (rent, rates, insurance and ground rents). If the policy ever pays out, that payout is taxable property income, because it's standing in for the rent you didn't receive.
Not automatically excluded, but harder to place. Simply Business's own page says tenants on state benefits are more likely to fail the credit check that decides eligibility, assessed case-by-case, and Just Landlords sells a separate DSS Landlord Insurance product alongside its standard rent-guarantee policy — a sign the standard product isn't always the right fit. Ask the insurer directly before assuming a benefits tenant is covered on the standard terms.
It depends on the annual probability you assign to needing it. Using this site's own sourced eviction timelines, a £1,000-a-month tenant who stops paying and has to be evicted under Ground 8 could cost around £7,590 in lost rent and court fees over the median 31-week process — against a typical £195 premium, the breakeven probability is about 2.6 per cent a year. Above that, buying cover costs less on average; below it, self-insuring does — though insurance also buys certainty against a bad year, which the average-case maths doesn't capture.
Sources
The primary documents this page is built from. Links checked 5 September 2026.
- Work out your rental income when you let property — GOV.UK / HMRC
- Self Assessment: UK property (SA105) — GOV.UK / HMRC
- Mortgage and landlord possession statistics: April to June 2026 — GOV.UK
- Grounds for possession: guidance for landlords and letting agents — GOV.UK / MHCLG
- Civil court fees (EX50) — GOV.UK