Oxbridge College Accommodation Costs: What Each College Charges in 2025-26

Oxford and Cambridge assign every undergraduate to one of the universities' constituent colleges, and each college sets its own accommodation charges rather than following a single university-wide rate. Oxford's own AY2025-26 table puts the weighted-average cost of a college room at £4,590 at St John's and as high as £6,910 at Wadham for a broadly similar 175-day contract — a gap of more than £2,000 a year before any bursary is applied.

What Choosing a College Actually Commits You To Financially

A place at Oxford or Cambridge is, financially, two separate commitments stacked on top of each other. The first is the tuition fee and the central cost of living, which is broadly the same whichever college a student is placed at. The second is the college itself: a semi-autonomous institution with its own kitchens, its own accommodation stock, its own endowment and its own rules about who pays what and for how long. Two students on the same course, in the same year, at the same university, can end up with materially different annual bills purely because of which of roughly thirty colleges they were assigned to or applied for.

Our guide to choosing an Oxford or Cambridge college covers the admissions side of that decision — acceptance rates by college, the step-by-step framework, open applications and pooling. None of that overlaps with what follows here. This page starts where that one stops: once an offer is on the table, or a UCAS form needs a college preference, what does each college actually cost, what does it guarantee, and what financial support sits behind it.

How Much Oxford and Cambridge Say You Need to Live On

Before college-level variation enters the picture, both universities publish a central estimate of what a student needs to live on, updated annually and quoted in the year that applies. Oxford's figures are for 2026-27; Cambridge's, published a year further out in its own admissions cycle, are for 2027-28. The two are not a clean like-for-like comparison because they cover different academic years and different rates of assumed inflation, but they are the two most authoritative starting points a family has.

Over a standard nine-month academic year, Oxford's own range works out at £12,645 to £18,945. The university publishes the full breakdown and international-student notes here.

Cambridge's own page states that most students should budget around £11,970 for nine months in Cambridge, or £15,960 if staying for the full twelve. On both universities' central figures, accommodation is consistently the single largest line item after food is accounted for — which is exactly the cost that varies most by college, and where the rest of this page focuses.

What Each Oxford College Actually Charges for Accommodation

Cambridge does not publish a single, public, college-by-college accommodation comparison in the way Oxford does. Oxford's admissions site carries a table, headed "Do you pay to live in your college?", giving a weighted-average accommodation cost for a 175-day contract at every undergraduate college, for the 2025-26 academic year. It is the only place either university states, in one document, exactly how far apart its colleges' charges sit.

The spread runs from £4,590 to a published £6,910 at the top of Wadham's range — a difference of £2,320 for what the university itself frames as a comparable contract length. St John's own website independently describes its accommodation as "among the most affordable in the University," which matches its position at the bottom of Oxford's own table rather than contradicting it. At the other end, Pembroke, Keble and Christ Church all sit close behind, and Wadham's range, driven by a wider mix of room types and locations, tops every fixed-rate college on the list.

Individual colleges also publish their own figures, in their own formats, which do not always match the university's weighted average exactly — the university's number accounts for vacation residence and room-type mix, where a college's own page usually quotes a flat termly rate. Balliol's admissions page, for instance, states a daily average room rate of £26 across a 189-day undergraduate contract, with termly rent running between £1,200 and £2,750 depending on room type and year of study.

How Long a College Guarantees You a Room

A weighted-average cost only tells half the story. The other half is how many years of a degree that cost actually applies to, and here the colleges' own pages diverge sharply in what they choose to state. Trinity's accommodation page says plainly that the college "guarantees College accommodation for undergraduates throughout their degree," meaning a Trinity undergraduate never has to compete for a room, budget for a landlord, or factor private renting into their finances at any point across the course. Queen's makes an equivalent commitment in its own words: it "can offer College accommodation to all undergraduates for the duration of their course," charged only for the roughly half of the year students are required to be in residence.

Not every college states this as clearly. Balliol's page describes guaranteed accommodation for first-year "freshers" and "more choice" from the second year onward, without using the word "guarantee" for the whole course the way Trinity and Queen's do. That difference matters financially: a college that only guarantees the first year effectively pushes some students into the private Oxford rental market from their second year, at rates the university's own living-costs page puts well above the college-average figures shown here. A family weighing colleges on cost should ask each shortlisted college directly how many years of accommodation it guarantees, rather than assume the answer from the weighted-average table alone.

The Central Bursary Schemes: Identical Wherever You Study

Set against that college-level variation, both universities run a central, non-repayable bursary scheme that pays the same amount regardless of which college a student attends. For UK students starting in October 2026, Oxford's Crankstart Scholarship offers up to £6,370 a year to households with an annual income of £32,500 or less, awarded automatically once eligibility is confirmed through the standard student finance application. Crankstart Scholars who live more than 80 miles from Oxford also receive an Oxford Travel Supplement, worth £220 a year between 80 and 150 miles, or £550 a year beyond that, measured as the crow flies from the student's home address.

Oxford runs two further university-wide schemes worth naming specifically. UK students who have been in care, or who are studying without family support, can apply for a non-repayable bursary of up to £3,500 a year for every year of their course. Separately, the university's Student Support Bursary exists for students facing a shortfall or an exceptional cost once term has started — a route worth knowing about precisely because it sits outside the standard scholarship timetable.

Cambridge's equivalent is the Cambridge Bursary Scheme: up to £3,500 a year, income-tested, and paid automatically to any student who applies to Student Finance for a loan, whether or not they actually take the loan up. Care leavers receive a higher rate, up to £8,350 a year. As at Oxford, this figure does not change based on college — a student at the wealthiest college and a student at the newest, smallest college receive an identical central bursary if their household income qualifies. Families weighing up costs for an international applicant should note that both Crankstart and the Cambridge Bursary Scheme are aimed at UK-resident students; our international students' guide to Oxford and Cambridge covers the separate funding routes that apply outside the UK.

What Colleges Add on Top, and Why Most Will Not Tell You the Number

Every Oxford and Cambridge college holds its own endowment, and every college uses part of that income to fund hardship and welfare support on top of the two central schemes described above — a student who runs into an unexpected cost mid-term can, in principle, go to their college tutor rather than only the university. That much is consistent across the collegiate system. What is not consistent is transparency about the number.

Searching each college's own website for its named hardship or welfare fund turns up rent, meal and room-type figures reliably, published to the pound, updated annually, and easy to compare — exactly the table shown above. The same search for a headline hardship-fund amount turns up far less: most college finance pages route a student toward "speak to your tutor" rather than a published sum, and none of the colleges checked for this page state their own endowment-funded top-up as a fixed annual figure the way Oxford states Crankstart at £6,370 or Cambridge states its bursary at £3,500. That asymmetry is itself useful to know before ranking colleges by wealth: a college's reputation for a large endowment does not translate into a public number a family can budget against, and the only genuinely comparable, published figures remain the accommodation table and the two universities' central bursary schemes.

Christ Church is a useful illustration of how little is published. Its own undergraduate pages say only that “We subsidise meals to make this accessible to everyone in college”, without naming a rate, an income threshold or a value — and Christ Church is one of the wealthiest colleges in Oxford. A specific percentage subsidy at a named college is the kind of figure that circulates on parent forums, but none is published here, because none of the colleges checked for this page states one on its own site. Treat any fixed percentage quoted to you second-hand as something to confirm with the college itself before it changes a decision, and ask directly: what does the college add on top of the central scheme, and on what income bands. The central schemes are the part you can rely on without asking.

What You Can Actually Do About the Cost Difference

Three things follow directly from the figures above. First, treat the accommodation-guarantee question as seriously as the weighted-average cost: a cheaper college that only guarantees one year of accommodation can end up costing more overall than a pricier college that guarantees three, once second- and third-year private renting in Oxford or Cambridge is factored in. Second, check whether a shortlisted college publishes a reduced-cost option the way Queen's does — its 2026-27 rates drop from £1,684 a term to £1,263 for a shared room, or £1,347 for a small single, available from the second year onward. Not every college offers an equivalent, so it is worth asking rather than assuming none exists.

Third, remember that the two central bursary schemes do not depend on getting the college choice right. A student whose household income qualifies receives the same Crankstart or Cambridge Bursary amount whichever college makes an offer, which means the accommodation-cost research in this guide is genuinely optional for students focused purely on minimising cost through the central schemes — it becomes relevant once a student is weighing several offers, or deciding how to rank colleges before applying. For families preparing an Oxbridge application more broadly, our Oxbridge admissions preparation support covers the application and interview side; nothing in that programme involves choosing a college on cost, which is a decision a family is better placed to make directly from the universities' own published figures.

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