Do you earn money if I store with a particular company?

Not in this version. Affiliate links are switched off while partner approval is outstanding. If they are switched on later, adverts will be marked and the price the store charges you should be the same either way. The calculators do not change because a link is live.

Why do you use a 52-week year?

So that 13 four-week bills line up with 12 months. A calendar year is 52 weeks plus one day, or two in a leap year. That extra day is smaller than the mistake of treating 12 four-week bills as a full year. The method is explained on the four-weekly page.

How we compare storage quotes | Storage Made Clear

This page is the methodology. The calculators are conveniences for sums you could do on paper. If a result surprises you, you should be able to see why from the rules below, and you should be able to disagree with a rule by reading the contract instead.

We do not collect the quote

The size tool and the quote comparison run in your browser. The figures are not posted to a server, not stored in an account, and not passed to a storage company. There is no account. There is no lead form. That is a product decision for v1, not an oversight. It means we cannot “retrieve your quote” later, because we never had it. It also means a screenshot is your record, if you want one.

The year we use

A month in the calculator is a twelfth of a 52-week year. Thirteen four-week bills then equal twelve months. A real calendar year is 52 weeks and a day, or two days in a leap year. We drop that day. Mixing up 12 and 13 bills is a much larger error, and it is the error the tool exists to stop.

A weekly price is multiplied by 52 × months / 12. A four-weekly price is multiplied by 13 × months / 12. A monthly price is multiplied by the number of months. The result is rounded once, to the nearest penny. The “equivalent monthly rate” is the same sum for a single month. Worked example, not a market rate: £85 every four weeks is 85 × 13 / 12 = £92.0833…, shown as £92.08. Over three months the same example is £276.25. Over 52 weeks it is exactly £1,105, which is 13 bills. Twelve times £92.08 is a penny or two off £1,105, because the monthly rate was rounded and the year’s bills were not. The total uses the single rounding. That is the number the comparison uses.

Offers

If you enter a percentage, it is taken off the storage price and rounded to the nearest penny. That reduced price is converted with the same formula, for the length of the offer only. The ordinary price covers the rest of the stay. Protection, the admin fee and the padlock are not reduced. If your offer includes them, type the amounts you will pay, not the amounts before the offer.

Weeks are converted by multiplying by 12 and dividing by 52. Eight weeks is about 1.85 months on the display. The sum uses the exact fraction. If the offer is longer than the stay, it is cut to the stay. You are not credited for months you will not be there. A blank offer length is rejected, so a discount cannot apply in silence to nothing.

The total, and the deposit

Total cost is storage, plus protection for the whole stay, plus admin, plus padlock. Effective monthly cost is that total divided by the number of months, rounded to the nearest penny. The deposit is shown and excluded. We treat it as refundable cash you may have to find, not as rent. If your contract lets the store keep it for reasons you would not call damage, the contract is right and the label “refundable” in your head is wrong. Read the clause. The hidden costs guide is the longer version of that advice.

What we refuse to guess

Late fees and failed-payment charges.
Notice periods and minimum terms. They can dominate a short move, and they are not a number we can infer.
Price rises after the period you were quoted.
VAT. We tell you to check it is included on both quotes. We do not add 20% in case. Self-storage facilities have been standard-rated since 1 October 2012. The standard rate at the time of writing is 20%. That is context, not a calculation, and it is not tax advice.
Travel, van hire, and your time.
A national or city average price. We do not have a dataset we are willing to pretend is one, and a made-up average would make the site look more certain than a quote.

Sizes

The size guide uses the steps 25, 35, 50, 75, 100, 150 and 200 square feet. Room starting points are a heuristic for a normally furnished home. Item figures are illustrative floor allowances, printed on the page, with boxes assumed stacked and sofas not. If you enter both, the larger suggestion wins. Over 200 square feet, the tool stops at 200 and says so. Ceiling height is not in the sum. Ask the store.

Affiliate links

Outbound partner links live in one config file and are off unless a master switch is on. v1 ships with the switch off. We are waiting on affiliate approval and we will not point a button at a placeholder tracking URL while we wait. When a link is on, it will be an advert, marked, with rel="sponsored nofollow". It should not change the price the store charges you. It will not change a calculator result. We do not run pay-per-click ads in this version, and we do not bid on storage brands’ names.

Editorial pages are not paid placements. A guide does not exist because a provider asked for it. If that ever changes, the page and the advertising disclosure will say so in words a person can find without looking in the page source.

Corrections

If a sum on the site does not match this page, the page and the code have drifted and that is a bug. The PHP class App\Support\QuoteCost and the JavaScript module resources/js/cost-calculator.js are tested against the same examples, including the £85 and the £100-versus-£85 comparison. If a store’s paperwork uses a different convention, follow the paperwork for that contract and, if you like, email us the wording. Do not email the personal details of the quote. The address is on the contact page.

Costs