About LiveWhere

LiveWhere helps people understand a place before they move there. It began with areas: rent, earnings, house prices, council tax, crime, schools, broadband and climate for every local authority, side by side. It now also has a report for any home in England and Wales, built from the official records for that address.

Area figures come from official data, apart from the standard allowances for groceries, transport and childcare, which are set out below. We don't rely on user submissions, crowdsourced estimates, or guesswork. Every other number traces back to a named publication from a government department, regulator or public body, each listed on this page.

The area pages cover 360+ local authority areas across England, Scotland and Wales, and answer two questions: "What does it cost to live in X?" and "How does X compare to Y?" The property reports answer the questions a buyer has about one home, and draw on 24 million homes and 31 million recorded sales since 1995. Reports cover England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland are not covered yet.

The area pages, comparisons, rankings and calculators are free. For a home, the preview is free and so is your first full report. After that a report is £5.99, or the LiveWhere Property Insight Licence covers any number of homes for 90 days for £24.99, paid once, with no renewal.

LiveWhere is built and maintained by Ryan Hughes.

LiveWhere is run by Addie Labs Ltd (company no. 17477308). The company was founded by Ryan Hughes and is based in Cardiff.

Buying a home is one of the biggest decisions most people make, and the official data that bears on it is scattered across a dozen public bodies and hard to find. LiveWhere brings it together for one address or one area, in plain English, with every source named. It reports what the records show and leaves the decision to you.

Questions and corrections are welcome at [email protected].

Cheapest and Most Expensive rankings

• The Cheapest ranking is ordered by estimated single-person monthly cost, cheapest first. The Most Expensive ranking uses the same figure, most expensive first.
• The monthly cost adds up six things for a single person: average one-bed rent, Band D council tax with the 25% single occupier discount, the estimated energy bill, the estimated water bill, and standard allowances for groceries and transport. Rent, council tax, energy and water use the sources listed above.
• The allowances are £220 a month for groceries and £80 a month for transport (£160 in London boroughs). They are set by LiveWhere and are the same in every area.
• Rent typically dominates the total. Council tax, bills and the allowances make up the rest.

Household scenarios (single, couple, family)

Area profiles show cost estimates for three household types. Single estimates are the monthly cost described above. Couple estimates use a 2-bed rent, full Band D council tax, a £350 groceries allowance and the same £80 transport allowance (£160 in London). Family estimates use a 3-bed rent, full Band D council tax, a £420 groceries allowance for one child, the same transport allowance and a £200 childcare allowance for one child. Energy and water figures are the same across all household types, except that a single adult in Scotland gets 25% off the water charge. Student estimates differ again and are set out below.

Best Value ranking (Affordability score)

• Calculated as (monthly rent + monthly council tax Band D) ÷ monthly gross earnings × 100
• A lower score means housing costs take up less of your income, so your salary stretches further. Areas under ~30% are highly affordable; areas over ~70% are stretched.
• Rent uses the ONS Price Index of Private Rents (PIPR) latest monthly figure; council tax is the 2026-27 Band D bill inclusive of all major precepts; earnings are the ONS ASHE average annual gross divided by 12.
• Only includes areas where all three inputs are available. Energy, water and other costs aren't part of the headline score yet; they appear separately on each area profile.

Rent-to-earnings ratio

• On comparison pages this is calculated as (average monthly rent × 12) ÷ average annual earnings × 100
• Shows the share of gross earnings spent on rent for a typical earner.
• Only shown where both rent and earnings data exist for the area.

Energy estimates

• The headline figure is the Ofgem price cap for a typical dual-fuel household paying by Direct Debit (2,700 kWh electricity + 11,500 kWh gas per year).
• Ofgem sets a single national cap, so we show the same headline figure for every area. The electricity region is surfaced on each profile for transparency; regional variation in distribution costs is typically within 5%.
• Actual bills depend on usage, tariff, and whether the household is on a fixed deal or the cap-tracking standard variable tariff.

Energy costs on property reports

A property report shows what the home's Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) says heating, hot water and lighting cost a year, brought up to today's prices. The certificate may be years old, so its own figure can't be used as it stands.

• EPCs are not priced at the going rate. The assessor's software uses its own fuel prices, which are changed only now and then. Certificates carried on using pre-2022 prices right through the 2022 price rise, then roughly doubled overnight in February 2023. Adjusting by inflation since the certificate's date would get many homes badly wrong.
• We work out the prices inside each certificate from the certificates themselves. Homes with the same EPC score, size and built form should show the same cost whenever they were assessed. Where the cost of like homes steps up or down on a particular day, the software's prices changed that day. We measure this across about 1.5 million certificates, separately for gas, electricity, oil, LPG, solid fuel and community heating.
• Then we bring the cost to today's prices using the ONS consumer price index for the home's heating fuel, and for gas and electricity the current Ofgem price cap. Lighting always uses electricity prices.
• We check it by confirming that like homes come out at a like figure whether their certificate dates from 2009, 2022 or this year.

Its limits:

• It is still the EPC's estimate: a standard household heating the whole home to a standard pattern. It is not the home's actual bills, which are often lower, especially in homes rated D or below. Ask the seller for the last 12 months of bills.
• We change the prices, not the assessment. If the home has been insulated or had a new boiler since the certificate, the figure won't show it.
• The way EPCs are assessed has changed over the years. Our figures put every certificate on the footing of those lodged in 2016 to 2018, and part of the difference between old and new certificates is the method, not prices.
• A certificate lodged within a few days of a price change in the software may have used the old prices or the new. We only know the date.
• Figures for homes heated by LPG, coal or wood rest on far fewer certificates and are rougher. LPG and community heating have no official price index, so those figures are at the prices in the newest certificates.
• Gas and electricity are priced at the level of the Ofgem price cap, which covers Great Britain. Your tariff may be cheaper or dearer.

Water estimates

• Average annual bill per water and sewerage company, sourced from Water UK / Discover Water (England + Wales) and Scottish Water.
• Each area is mapped to the predominant water and sewerage company for its region. Water company boundaries don't follow local authority boundaries, so this is an approximation.
• The figure represents an unmetered customer; metered bills depend on actual usage.

Student cost of living estimates

• Student cost estimates appear in our student city guides and are derived from the same official data sources used across the rest of the site, plus standard allowances for groceries and transport, with the inputs adjusted to reflect how students typically live.
• Rent is calculated by taking the average monthly rent for four-plus-bedroom properties in the area (from the ONS Price Index of Private Rents) and dividing by four, representing the per-person cost of a room in a shared student house. Where four-plus-bed data is not available, three-bed rent divided by three is used instead. This is an approximation. Actual student rents vary depending on the property, its condition, its distance from campus, and the local market. Halls of residence, purpose-built student accommodation, and studio flats are not reflected in this figure.
• Council tax is set to zero because full-time students are exempt.
• Energy and water use the same Ofgem and Water UK figures as our standard area profiles, divided by four to reflect a shared household.
• Groceries use a standard allowance of £160/month, below our standard single-person allowance of £220, to reflect typical student spending patterns.
• Transport uses a standard allowance of £50/month, reflecting that most university cities are compact enough for students to walk, cycle, or use local buses.
• Maintenance loan comparisons use the 2025/26 maximum rate for students living away from home outside London (£10,227/year). The maximum is only available to students from lower-income households; many students receive less. Rates for 2026/27 had not been confirmed at the time of writing.

These figures are estimates designed to give a realistic starting point. Individual costs will vary. For a personalised estimate, use our cost of living calculator.

We try to be transparent about what's in the data and what isn't.

• Rent covers England, Wales and Scotland (ONS PIPR). English and Welsh figures are at local authority level; Scottish figures are at Broad Rental Market Area (BRMA) level - councils within the same BRMA share the same headline rent.
• Some recently reorganised local authorities - including Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness, North Yorkshire and Somerset - may show incomplete data while government datasets catch up with the new boundaries.
• House prices cover England and Wales. Scottish house price data is published separately by Registers of Scotland and will be added.
• Council tax covers all three nations, but uses different banding systems - A-H in England and Scotland, A-I in Wales.
• Energy estimates are based on the Ofgem national price cap. We don't yet model the small (~5%) regional variation in distribution costs - the same headline figure appears for every area.
• Water companies don't align neatly with local authority boundaries; each area is mapped to the predominant water + sewerage company for its region. Areas that sit on a boundary may receive service from a different company.
• All figures are the most recently published at time of update. The "Data last updated" line on each area page shows when the data was last refreshed.