What a renter can and cannot install
Worth being concrete, because the boundary is not where people assume. Almost everything in modern DIY security is adhesive-mounted and battery-powered, which puts it firmly in the “no permission needed” category. The things that genuinely require a conversation with your landlord are the ones that alter the building or its fixed wiring.
| Renter-safe? | Why |
|---|
| Adhesive door/window sensors | Yes | Peel and stick, no holes |
|---|
| Battery keypad and base station | Yes | Sits on a shelf or table |
|---|
| Plug-in indoor camera | Yes | Uses an outlet, moves with you |
|---|
| Retrofit smart lock (interior side) | Usually | Exterior hardware and keys unchanged |
|---|
| Full deadbolt replacement | Ask first | Changes the lock the landlord holds a key to |
|---|
| Wired doorbell camera | Ask first | Touches the building's low-voltage wiring |
|---|
| Drilled outdoor cameras | Ask first | Holes in the exterior |
|---|
The middle row is the interesting one and it is why the August lock is on this list. A retrofit lock mounts on the insideof the deadbolt you already have. The exterior looks untouched, the landlord’s key still works, and removing it leaves no trace. That is a completely different proposition from swapping the deadbolt, which most tenancy agreements have an opinion about. Our August vs Level comparison covers the two retrofit options in detail, and the renters guide covers the same logic across the whole smart home.
How to build the setup, in order
You do not need all of this at once, and the order matters more than the budget.
1. The alarm kit first
Sensors on the door and the accessible windows, plus a base station and keypad, cover the actual risk: someone coming in while you are out. An eight-piece kit is generous for most apartments — SimpliSafe publishes that its eight-piece suits an apartment or small home — and a five-piece is plenty for a studio or one-bedroom. Both of the alarm picks above self-monitor for free, meaning the app alerts you without anyone paying a monitoring company.
2. One indoor camera
Point it at the entrance, not the living space. In a flat the front door is usually the only realistic entry route, so a single camera covering the hallway does most of the work a four-camera house setup would. A camera that records to a memory card keeps the footage in the flat rather than on a company’s servers — see our indoor camera picks for the full comparison.
3. The lock, if the door is yours to fit
Worth it mainly for the access control: codes and app access mean you can let a friend or a cleaner in without cutting a key, and take that access away afterwards. On a shared-entrance building, remember the street door is not yours — a smart lock secures your flat, not the block.
What renters should not bother with
Professional monitoring is the big one. A monitored system dispatches a response to an address, which involves a contract, sometimes a permit, and a monthly fee — and it is tied to a property you will leave. In an apartment building where a neighbor is thirty feet away and often home, the marginal value over a loud siren and a phone alert is small. Our self-monitoring versus professional monitoring comparison lays out where the paid service does earn its keep, which is mostly larger detached homes.
Also skip anything that depends on the building’s infrastructure. Wired doorbell cameras, outdoor floodlight cameras and anything needing a hole in an exterior wall are house purchases. And be wary of buying deep into a single brand’s expandable system if you might move somewhere with different needs — a kit that comes apart and goes back together is worth more to you than one that scales to twenty sensors.
The moving-out test
Here is the check we would apply to any renter purchase: if you had to leave in a month, how long would it take to remove, and what would you leave behind? Adhesive sensors peel off. A base station and keypad are unplugged and boxed. A plug-in camera comes off the shelf. A retrofit lock unscrews from the inside of the door and the original hardware is already there.
Everything on this page passes that test, which is why it is here. Anything that fails it is a purchase for the building rather than for you, and the building is not yours. That is also the reason we weight no-fee systems so heavily on this page: an ongoing subscription attached to a flat you will leave is the worst possible shape for a renting household’s money. Our no-subscription systems roundup and the cost guide both work through that arithmetic in full.
