Free area data vs paywalls
Acreright is free and needs no account. Many UK area-data sites are free too — but some place parts of what they show behind a subscription or a signup. This is a factual snapshot, as of July 2026, of what's commonly gated versus what Acreright shows free. We only state what is publicly verifiable on each service's own pricing pages at the time of writing; where we couldn't verify a claim, we don't make it.
What's free on Acreright
| Data | Acreright | Elsewhere |
|---|---|---|
| Sold prices (Land Registry) | Free — full history per area, per street, and per postcode | Free on most; a few require a signup for alerts |
| Deprivation (IMD) detail | Free — the overall decile, the 7 domains, and the national percentile | Sometimes summarised only, or behind an upgrade |
| Demographics depth (occupations, qualifications) | Free — from the ONS Census | Sometimes behind a subscription |
| Crime (street-level) | Free — 12 months from police.uk, mapped + by category | Free on most |
| EPC + improvement recommendations & costs | Free | Rarely shown; sometimes behind a login |
| Planning constraints (green belt, conservation, listed, flood) | Free | Rarely shown |
| Commute times from the real timetable | Free — AM-peak direct times from the National Rail timetable | Usually a straight-line radius, not real times |
| Rental yields per area | Free | Sometimes behind a Pro/agent tool |
| Machine-readable data (.json per page) | Free — every page has a JSON twin (CORS-open) | Rarely offered; sometimes a paid API |
| Accounts / signup | None — nothing is gated behind a login | Varies |
| Display ads | None | Common |
The middle column is our own product, so we can stand behind every cell. The right-hand column is deliberately general — the specific, named cases we could verify are below.
What we checked (July 2026)
- Crystal Roof (crystalroof.co.uk) runs a freemium model: much of its report is free, but derived views — including occupations, qualifications, the noise section and some map overlays — sit behind a subscription (advertised around £7.99/week to £12.99/month) as of July 2026. In ~March 2026 it acquired StreetCheck and now redirects StreetCheck's pages into its own. The census-derived detail StreetCheck used to show free is the kind of data Crystal Roof gates; on Acreright that detail is free (see the report's "Who lives here" chapter).
- nethouseprices.com lets you browse sold prices free; a free registration unlocks price alerts, and asking-price data is part of a paid "Nethousepricesplus" tier, as of July 2026. Sold prices on Acreright need no account.
- Several open, free-data peers exist and deserve credit — doogal.co.uk, findthatpostcode.uk and streetlist.co.uk publish area data (and, in doogal's case, bulk data + an API) for free. Acreright's angle is depth in one place: prices, deprivation, crime, schools, health, environment, planning constraints, EPC costs and real commute times per area, each figure sourced and dated.
We describe competitors factually and only where their pricing is public; nothing here is an adjective about them. If any of this is out of date, the fault is ours — the date above is when we checked. How we compute our own figures is on the methodology page, and every dataset is credited on the attribution page.
Why free
Acreright aggregates already-public UK open data and credits each source — we don't own the underlying datasets, so gating them would be charging for public information. Every figure shows its source, date and coverage; where the data runs out, we say so. Start with any place in England or read how it's built.