Kepler's work only paid rent because he had access to Tycho's extremely precise observations over the course of many years. There are ways that Kepler's system pays rent also that Ptolemy can't at all, such as the transit of Venus across the sun but that only happens twice every hundred years. To a naive observer, or even to a naked eye astronomer, all three give pretty decent predictions over the course of a few decades.

Tycho was a naked eye astronomer. No telescopes, just money and awesomeness.