Roommate agreement template: the free version that actually gets used (with a chores section)

Most roommates already have an agreement. It was made on the sofa on move-in day, over a takeaway, and it went something like: “We’ll just split everything and keep the place tidy.” Everyone nodded. Nobody wrote anything down.

Six weeks later the internet bill is in one person’s name and nobody else has paid their share, somebody’s partner has been staying four nights a week, and the bathroom has not been cleaned since the agreement was made. Not because anyone is a bad person. Because “split everything” and “keep the place tidy” were never defined, and three people now remember three different versions of that conversation.

A roommate agreement fixes this by writing the obvious things down before they turn into arguments. This guide covers what to put in one, goes into detail on the section most templates skip (chores), and ends with a one-page template you can copy.

One thing to be clear about first: a roommate agreement is not a lease. The lease is between you and the landlord. The agreement is between you and each other. It will not get anyone evicted, and nothing here is legal advice. What it does is settle who agreed to what, which is what most roommate arguments are really about.

What a roommate agreement should include

Seven sections cover almost everything. Each one should fit in a few lines. If a section is getting long, you are writing a rulebook, and rulebooks do not get read.

Rent and deposit

Who pays what, and whether it is an even split or weighted by room. The person with the box room and no window has a fair case for paying less, and it is much easier to agree that before anyone has unpacked.

Write down the due date, who the money goes to (the landlord directly, or one roommate who pays the whole amount), and what happens when someone is late. “Tell the others before the due date, not after” is a reasonable rule.

For the deposit, record how much each person paid in. Deposits come back months later, and by then nobody remembers who put in what.

Bills and utilities

List every recurring bill: electricity, gas, water, internet, any streaming or cloud subscriptions you share. Next to each, write whose name the account is in and how it is split.

Then write down how you settle up. Once a month, through one shared app or a spreadsheet, by a fixed date. The method matters less than the fact that there is one.

Groceries and shared items

Decide what is shared and what is personal. Cleaning products, toilet paper, bin bags, washing-up liquid, cooking oil and salt are shared in most flats. Milk, snacks and anything with a name on it are personal.

Agree how shared items get bought: a small kitty topped up monthly, or taking turns and reimbursing. And settle the fridge rule, because there is always a fridge rule. Labelled means ask first; unlabelled means fair game. Or the other way around. Just pick one.

Guests and overnight stays

This is the section people are most embarrassed to write and most relieved to have. Set a number: how many nights a week a guest can stay before it becomes a conversation. Agree on a heads-up (a message in the group chat before someone stays over, not a stranger in the kitchen at 7 a.m.).

Then the harder one: at what point does a partner who is always there start contributing to bills? Three nights a week is a common line. Write yours down while everyone is single, or at least while nobody is defensive about it.

Quiet hours

Weeknights and weekends separately, for example 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. Sunday to Thursday, midnight at weekends. Add the specifics that actually cause friction: laundry at midnight, work calls in the living room, music without headphones, and how much notice a party needs.

Cleaning and chores

The section that gets one line in most templates and causes most of the arguments. It gets its own part of this guide, below.

Moving out

Agree how much notice you owe each other, not just the landlord. Usually it matches the lease, often thirty days. Decide who finds the replacement roommate and whether the others get a say (they should). Write down how the person leaving gets their deposit share back, and who owns the shared furniture. The sofa you split three ways becomes a problem the day one of you leaves with a van.

The chores section, in detail

A typical roommate agreement template handles cleaning like this: “Roommates agree to keep common areas clean and tidy.” That is the sofa conversation again, with a signature under it. It fails for the same reason.

A chores section that works answers three questions: which chores, how big is each one, and whose turn is it.

Which chores

Shared spaces only. Bedrooms and personal laundry are each person’s own business and do not belong in the agreement. For most flats the list looks like this:

• Kitchen: dishes and counters (daily), deep-clean the stove, sink and microwave (weekly), clear old food from the fridge (weekly)
• Bathroom: full clean of toilet, sink, shower, mirror and floor (weekly)
• Floors: vacuum shared rooms and hallway (weekly), mop (weekly)
• Trash: take out trash (when full), recycling (weekly)
• Supplies: restock cleaning products, bin bags and toilet paper (monthly)

How big each one is

Treating every chore as equal is where fairness breaks down. Taking out the recycling and cleaning the bathroom are not the same job, and the person who keeps getting the bathroom knows it. Give every chore an effort size:

Size	Points	Examples
S	1	Trash, recycling, wipe counters, restock supplies
M	2	Vacuum, mop, fridge clear-out
L	3	Clean the bathroom, deep-clean the kitchen

This is the same S/M/L system the Evenhaus effort points use, and it changes the conversation. The bathroom (3 points) equals three trash runs. Whoever has it this week is not being punished; they are doing a week’s share in one go.

Whose turn it is

Rotate the big chores weekly and leave the small daily ones open to anyone. Take the Maple Street Flat: Priya, Tom and Dani. Their weekly rotation looks like this:

Chore	Effort	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3
Clean the bathroom	L	Priya	Tom	Dani
Deep-clean the kitchen	L	Tom	Dani	Priya
Vacuum & mop	M	Dani	Priya	Tom
Trash & recycling	S	Priya	Tom	Dani
Restock supplies	S	Tom	Dani	Priya

Dishes and wiping counters are “anyone”: whoever does them gets the credit. Over three weeks everyone has done every chore once. Nobody has to remember whose turn it is, because the table says.

If you want the full method, including what to do with two roommates or five, the roommate chore chart guide walks through it with a four-week template.

When a roommate does not do them

Write the consequence into the agreement now, while nobody is annoyed. Two rules handle most cases:

1. An overdue chore stays with you until it is done. The rotation does not move on. If Tom skips the bathroom in week 2, the bathroom is still Tom’s in week 3, and Dani’s turn starts after.
2. Once a month, compare points to fair share. Add up each person’s points for the month and divide the total by the number of roommates. If the flat did 36 points and there are three of you, fair share is 12 each. Someone on 16 is carrying the flat; someone on 7 is not. That is a number, not an accusation, and it is a far better opening line than “you never clean anything.”

You can keep the tally in a spreadsheet, or let an app do it: the Evenhaus balance adds up each person’s points for the week and month and shows them against the fair-share line, so the monthly check takes about a minute.

The template (copy and paste)

Paste this into a document, fill in the blanks together, and print one copy for the fridge. It fits on one page.

# Roommate agreement: ____________________ (address)

Roommates: ____________, ____________, ____________
Lease runs from ________ to ________. This agreement is between the roommates
and does not change the lease.

## Rent and deposit
- Rent: $____ per person, due on the __ of each month, paid to ____________.
- Room adjustment (if any): ____________ pays $____ less because ____________.
- Deposit paid in: ____________ $____ / ____________ $____ / ____________ $____
- If someone will be late, they tell the others by the __ of the month.

## Bills
| Bill        | Account in whose name | Split      | Settled by       |
|-------------|-----------------------|------------|------------------|
| Electricity | ____________          | equal / __ | __ of each month |
| Gas         | ____________          | equal / __ | __ of each month |
| Water       | ____________          | equal / __ | __ of each month |
| Internet    | ____________          | equal / __ | __ of each month |
| Other: ____ | ____________          | equal / __ | __ of each month |
We settle up through ____________ (app / spreadsheet / transfer).

## Groceries and shared items
- Shared: toilet paper, bin bags, cleaning products, dish soap, ____________
- Paid from: a shared kitty of $____ a month / taking turns and reimbursing
- Fridge rule: labelled food is personal. Unlabelled food is ____________.

## Guests and overnight stays
- A guest may stay up to __ nights a week. More than that, we talk first.
- Heads-up for overnight guests: message the group chat by ____________.
- A partner staying more than __ nights a week contributes $____ to bills.
- Parties: at least __ days’ notice, and everyone agrees.

## Quiet hours
- Sunday to Thursday: ____ p.m. to ____ a.m.
- Friday and Saturday: ____ a.m. to ____ a.m.
- No laundry or vacuuming after ____ p.m. Calls and music in shared rooms
  use headphones after quiet hours start.

## Cleaning and chores
Sizes: S = 1 point, M = 2, L = 3. Big chores rotate weekly on ____________.
| Chore                  | Size | Week 1       | Week 2       | Week 3       |
|------------------------|------|--------------|--------------|--------------|
| Clean the bathroom     | L    | ____________ | ____________ | ____________ |
| Deep-clean the kitchen | L    | ____________ | ____________ | ____________ |
| Vacuum & mop           | M    | ____________ | ____________ | ____________ |
| Trash & recycling      | S    | ____________ | ____________ | ____________ |
| Restock supplies       | S    | ____________ | ____________ | ____________ |
Anyone, any day: dishes, wipe counters, replace toilet paper.
Rules: an overdue chore stays with you · swaps are fine if both agree ·
we compare points to fair share on the __ of each month.

## Moving out
- Notice to the other roommates: __ days, in writing (a message counts).
- The person leaving finds a replacement; the others can say no.
- Deposit share is returned when ____________.
- Shared furniture: ____________ owns ____________; ____________ owns ____________.

## If something goes wrong
1. Say it directly to the person, within a week.
2. If it continues, a house meeting with this page on the table.
3. We review this agreement together on the __ of each month.

Signed: ____________  ____________  ____________   Date: ________

Delete anything that does not apply. Add a line for the thing your particular flat argues about. If that is the thermostat, add a thermostat line.

How to make it stick

A roommate agreement that lives in one person’s notes app is a verbal agreement with better formatting. Four habits keep it working.

Fill it in together, once, early. One evening in the first week, all of you. The agreement is the conversation; the document is just the record. If one person writes it and sends it round, it will be treated like terms and conditions.

Sign it. It changes nothing legally and quite a lot psychologically. People argue with a rule they were told; they rarely argue with a rule they signed.

Put it where you can see it. Fridge, hallway, pinned in the group chat. When Dani’s partner is on night five, nobody wants to search a chat history for what was agreed.

Revisit it monthly. Fifteen minutes on the first Sunday of the month: settle the bills, check the chores balance, change anything that is not working. A rule that nobody is following is a rule to rewrite, not a reason to argue.

For the chores half, you do not have to keep a spreadsheet. Evenhaus is a shared chore app built around the system above: every chore has an S, M or L effort size, chores rotate automatically when you tick them done, and the balance tab shows each person’s points against their fair share for the week and month. If someone ticks the wrong chore, there is a 24-hour undo. It is free for the whole household, on Google Play for Android, and roommates with iPhones use the web version at app.evenhaus.me in their browser.

Paper or app, the principle is the same. Write it down before it matters. Then the day it matters, you are both looking at the same page.

Frequently asked questions

What should a roommate agreement include?

Rent and deposit shares, who pays which bills and when, what counts as a shared item, guest and overnight limits, quiet hours, a chores list with a rotation, and a moving-out section covering notice and the deposit. Keep it to one page and have everyone sign it.

Is a roommate agreement legally binding?

Not in the way a lease is. A lease is between you and the landlord; a roommate agreement is between you and each other, and it will not get anyone evicted. Treat it as a written record of what you all agreed, and ask a tenants’ rights service or a lawyer if you need something enforceable.

How do you split chores in a roommate agreement?

List the shared-space chores only, give each one an effort size (S = 1, M = 2, L = 3 points), and rotate the big ones weekly so nobody is stuck with the bathroom. Leave daily jobs like dishes open to anyone, and compare each person’s points with their fair share once a month.

What happens if a roommate breaks the agreement?

Follow the step you wrote down in advance: usually a direct conversation first, then a house meeting with the agreement on the table. The point of the document is that you are pointing at a shared page, not at a person. If it keeps happening, the moving-out section tells you how to part ways cleanly.