See what a storage quote will actually cost

Why the number on the advert is not the bill

A self-storage quote is a bundle. The figure you are shown might be the storage rate only, it might be an offer for the first few weeks, and it might be charged every 28 days rather than once a calendar month. Protection, a padlock the store will accept, an admin fee and a deposit sit beside that rate. None of those is exotic. They are easy to miss when two websites put a single price in a large typeface.

Four-weekly billing is the clearest example. There are 13 periods of four weeks in a 52-week year, not 12. A worked example, not a market rate: £85 every four weeks is 85 × 13 / 12, which is about £92.08 a calendar month. The four-weekly page shows the sum and has a small converter. The true cost calculator does the same sum for two quotes, including the offer period and the one-off fees.

Location matters, and so does the week you ask. A store beside a station and a store on an industrial estate are not selling the same convenience, and a price can change when a floor fills up. This site will not pretend there is one UK tariff. It will show you which parts of a quote to line up so that a comparison is about the stay you actually expect.

A sensible order of work

Start with what you are storing, not with the cheapest unit you can find. The size calculator is a planning aid. Its room starting points and item allowances are labelled as illustrative, because ceiling height and how tightly you pack change the answer. If you need to reach a box in week six, leave an aisle, which means more floor area than a unit packed to the door.

Then collect two quotes for that size, for the same length of stay. Write down the billing period, what happens when any discount ends, the protection charge and its period, and every one-off fee. Put those into the calculator. The result is a total for the stay and an effective monthly cost. The cheaper headline is not always the cheaper stay.

Read the agreement before you pay. Many UK self-storage contracts are licences rather than leases. They set access hours, the notice you must give, and what happens if the bill is late. The guide to hidden costs walks through the clauses worth finding. If you are between homes, use the moving house guide. If the boxes belong to a student year, use the student storage guide.

What this site will not do

We do not store goods, reserve units or take a deposit. We do not ask you to submit a quote so that a salesperson can call. Affiliate links to storage providers are switched off while approval is outstanding. If they are turned on later, they will be marked as adverts. The method is written out on how we work, and the money side is on the advertising disclosure.

The calculators round money to the nearest penny and use a 52-week year so that 13 four-week bills equal 12 months. They do not know your contract. A price rise after the quoted period, a late fee, or a discount for paying a year up front will not appear unless you type the figures the store actually gave you. That limit is deliberate. A tool that guesses the rest would look more precise than it is.

Who it is for

It is for anyone in the UK staring at two storage prices and trying to see which one they would actually pay. Movers with a gap between completion dates. Students who cannot take a year of belongings home. People clearing a relative’s house who need a few months, not a lifestyle. Businesses with a short overflow of stock can use the same arithmetic, with the extra step of asking whether the price they were given includes VAT.

If you only remember one thing, remember the stay. A deal that looks generous for eight weeks can be ordinary once you are paying the standard rate in month four. Put the length you really expect into the calculator, including a buffer you are willing to fund if a completion date slips, and compare the totals. The size of the unit and the honesty of the quote matter more than the largest discount badge on the page.