Credit Building > How to show your rent payments on your credit report

How to show your rent payments on your credit report

Wollit Team2 minute read · Updated 11th October 2024

Paying your rent on time is a good habit, but until recently, these payments weren't included in your credit report in the UK.

Now, however, there are services that let you tell credit agencies about your rent payments, which can help improve how lenders see you and make it easier to get loans and mortgages.

How do rent reporting services work?

Rent reporting services basically act as a middleman between you and the credit agencies. Here's how they work:

Sign up with the service and give them details about your tenancy, like your landlord's information and how much rent you pay each month.
The service will check to confirm your rent payments and then tell the credit agencies about them. This check can happen either with your landlord or by analysing your bank statements.
Your on-time rent payments will then be added to your credit report, helping to show lenders that you pay your bills on time.

Also, these services tend to be either free, paid, or included as part of another package – it all depends on which rent reporting service you use.

Which rent reporting services are available in the UK?

There are several rent reporting services available in the UK, each with slightly different features and costs. Some popular options include:

CreditLadder: CreditLadder claims to be the UK's first rent reporting platform. It's free for tenants and reports your rent payments to any of the three major credit agencies you chose. However, for a fee of £8 per month, it can also report your rent payments to all three credit agencies in one go.
Loqbox Rent: Loqbox Rent is a service offered by Loqbox, which also has a separate credit-building service that works by asking you to save a certain amount each month in a “digital piggy bank” then giving you a loan for that amount. It's also free for tenants and reports your rent payments only to Experian.
Canopy Rent: Canopy works very similar to CreditLadder in the sense that it’s free if you want to report your rent to only one credit agency (Experian) but you can also pay (£7.99 per month) to report your rent to all three credit reference agencies. Canopy also has an interesting credit score simulator which you can use – we’ve only seen Experian and Equifax offer something similar as part of their (slightly more expensive) subscriptions.
Wollit. Wollit is an app that lets you report your rent to Experian as part of its premium credit-building subscription. Wollit does this for free and only charges a fee for its credit history building service, which reports this fixed monthly fee as a loan repayment to all three credit reference agencies.

Can rent reporting improve my credit score?

Despite what you might have read, rent reporting doesn’t improve your credit score yet – at least not with all credit reference agencies. However, it can improve how lenders see you. Rent reporting is basically another line that you can add to your credit report to show lenders that you’re responsible and you pay your bills on time.

Also, as far as we know, all the main credit agencies (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion) are working on including rent, so in the near future you might very well see your rent payments actually build your credit history.

However, if you want to improve your credit score, you’ll need to work on your credit history, which is the main factor that the credit reference agencies use when calculating it.

The good news is that Wollit does both: it reports a fixed-fee monthly subscription as a loan repayment to all three credit reference agencies, and it also reports your rent payments to the largest credit agency, Experian, all in one subscription.