Frequently asked questions

Checking your rent, sharing a rent submission and reading our public neighbourhood pages are free. You do not need an account.

We may charge eligible governments, public agencies, unions and universities for reports and analysis based on grouped rent statistics. Our tenant protections apply to every paid project.

No. We never sell individual submissions. Paid reports contain grouped rent statistics and analysis. They respect our privacy requirements and the permissions that apply to the source data.

We do not sell reports, data or private access to landlords, property managers or anyone acting for them. Public pages can be read by anyone.

No. Payment cannot change our methods, scores or findings.

Renters report their own rent. We check submissions for quality, but an accepted submission does not prove that a lease was verified or that it comes from a separate household.

FairRent does not determine what your landlord may legally charge. The result compares prices. Any rent-rule information is shown separately. Our Ontario and British Columbia pages show the current rent increase guideline and offer a yearly calendar reminder, no email needed.

• Ontario rent increase guideline
• BC rent increase limit

No. There is no account, no password and no profile. You can check your rent, browse neighbourhood estimates and share what you pay without giving us any contact information.

We never ask for your name, email address, phone number or home address, and nothing identifying is attached to your submission. Some submissions made before 7 September 2026 also hold a building name or address that an older form asked for. These names and addresses are never displayed publicly and are not used in any estimate. No new submission records one. Leaving out names and exact addresses reduces the risk of identifying a renter. It does not remove that risk completely. Details about a home may still identify a person when they are combined with information from elsewhere. We do not publish a figure drawn from fewer than 5 submissions, and counts are shown as bands rather than exact numbers.

No. We never display individual rent submissions publicly. We only show grouped results, such as ranges, medians, counts in bands and confidence labels for an area and type of home.

Three sources: CMHC Rental Market Survey (October 2025), Statistics Canada Quarterly rent statistics (first quarter of 2026), and rent submissions from renters. The CMHC Rental Market Survey figure describes the previous October for the city as a whole, for privately initiated rental structures with three or more rental units, in urban centres of 10,000 people or more. Statistics Canada records advertised asking rents every quarter. Each city baseline is half CMHC's signed rent and half Statistics Canada's asking rent. FairRent then applies its own neighbourhood adjustment to the city baseline. Neighbourhood adjustments are set by hand by FairRent, with no recorded source. An area with no adjustment set yet uses the city baseline. Reported rents are blended in where there are at least 5 recent ones for the area and type of home, and they are not too alike. Each source measures something different, so we present results as estimates with their limits stated, not as appraisals. The methodology page shows each city baseline, with the signed rent and the asking rent it is built from.

No. We use their published figures under their licences, the CMHC Licence Agreement for the Use of Data and the Statistics Canada Open Licence. Neither has reviewed, endorsed or sponsored FairRent. We name our sources so you can judge them, not to borrow their credibility.

No. Earlier versions of this site named Rentals.ca as a source. Its terms of use require written permission to reuse its content, and we do not hold that permission, so we do not use its figures. Our asking rents come from Statistics Canada, which builds its quarterly rent statistics mainly from listing data supplied by Rentals.ca and publishes them under its open licence. Rentals.ca has not endorsed, sponsored or partnered with FairRent.

Results are estimates, not appraisals. We show a range with a confidence label that reflects how many recent local submissions support it. The width of the range beside each confidence level is a preset band chosen by how many recent local submissions the estimate uses. It is not a measured spread of local rents and it is not a margin of error from a probability sample. Where the reported rents are more spread out than that band, the range is widened, and the result says so. The middle half of those rents is shown separately, with a line saying whether the range covers it. More comparable submissions can improve how much of an area is covered. Accuracy also depends on who reports their rent, how recent the submissions are and whether they come from different households. It also depends on whether the estimate has been checked against independent data. We have not yet done that check.

Because a single number would be misleading. Rents for comparable homes in the same neighbourhood vary by hundreds of dollars depending on building age, condition, finishes and amenities. A range reflects that variation honestly.

Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver, with neighbourhood-level pages for each. If you want your city covered, tell us.

No. FairRent Canada provides market estimates for information only. Results are not professional appraisals, legal opinions or official determinations. For rent disputes or formal proceedings, consult a licensed paralegal or your provincial tenant rights organization.

Email samuel@fairrent.ca. We read every message. You can also reach us about data corrections, methodology questions, press inquiries, or privacy questions.