How Score a Lease Works
We know handing over your lease can feel like a big ask. Here's exactly what happens when you upload your lease, and how we keep your information safe.
How We Calculate Your Score
Your lease score is based on 12 checks derived from Seattle landlord-tenant law as of December 2025, and also comparisons with other leases in our dataset. These checks evaluate whether your lease includes the protections you're entitled to as a renter in Seattle. They fall into two categories:
Financial Checks
We look at the numbers in your lease to make sure fees are reasonable:
- Security deposit & move-in fees — Are the combined costs within one month's rent?
- Move-in fees — Are non-refundable fees under 10% of your rent?
- Late payment fee — Is the late fee less than $10?
- Pet deposit — If you have a pet deposit, is it under 25% of rent?
- Notice fees — Does your landlord charge you to send notices?
- Early termination fee — If there is one, is it less than one month's rent?
Lease Language Checks
We look for clauses required or recommended under Seattle and Washington State law, and compare the wording in your lease to what is standard in other leases in our dataset.
- Renewal notice — Does your landlord have to give you 60-90 days notice before the lease ends, or does it convert to month-to-month?
- Roommate policy — Can you add roommates up to legal occupancy limits?
- Entry notice — Must your landlord give you 48 hours notice for repairs and 24 hours for showings?
- Emergency entry — Is landlord entry without notice limited to true emergencies only?
- Late fee grace period — Do you get at least 5 days before late fees kick in?
- Refundable security deposit — Is your deposit explicitly stated as refundable?
Your Score
Your score is simply the percentage of checks your lease passes. A score of 75 means your lease passed 75% of the checks we ran. Higher is better!
What Happens to Your Lease
Step 1: We Remove Personal Information
Before we analyze anything, we automatically scrub your lease to remove personal as much personal information as we can.
| What we remove | What it becomes |
|---|---|
| Email addresses | [EMAIL] |
| Phone numbers | [PHONE] |
| Street addresses | [ADDRESS] |
| Apartment/unit numbers | [UNIT] |
| ZIP codes | [ZIP_CODE] |
We use a combination of pattern matching and AI-powered name detection to find and replace as much of this information as possible.
Step 2: We Extract the Data
We send your lease text to Google's Gemini AI to extract the financial details (like rent amount and deposit) and evaluate the tenant protection clauses.
Important: Google's Gemini API does not store or train on data sent through the API. Your lease text is processed and immediately discarded by their system. They don't keep it, and neither do we.
Step 3: What We Store
We only save the numeric financial data from your lease—things like:
- Monthly rent amount
- Security deposit amount
- Various fees (if any)
We do not store:
- Your lease text (scrubbed or otherwise)
- Your name or personal details
- The original PDF file
The PDF you upload is processed in memory and deleted immediately after.
Our Commitment to Your Privacy
- ✓ Your personal information is removed before any analysis
- ✓ Your lease text is never stored on our servers
- ✓ The AI that analyzes your lease doesn't keep your data either
- ✓ We only keep anonymized numbers to calculate your score
- ✓ Your uploaded PDF is deleted immediately after processing
We built Score a Lease to help renters. If you have questions about how we handle your information, we're happy to chat.