How much will my student loan payment be?
Enter your loan balance, APR and term to get your fixed monthly payment, total interest and total cost — plus a year-by-year amortization table you can download as CSV.
Source: U.S. Department of Education, announced June 2026. Federal rates are fixed for the life of each loan and depend on your disbursement year — check your promissory note for your actual rate. These presets are starting points, not quotes.
Year-by-year amortization schedule
See how each year's payment splits between principal and interest — early payments are mostly interest; later payments are mostly principal.
| Year | Principal paid | Interest paid | Balance end |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calculate above to generate the schedule. | |||
Student loan payoff calculator with extra payments
How fast can you be debt-free? Add a fixed extra amount each month and see your new payoff date, months saved, and interest avoided — with a month-by-month payoff path.
Tip: if you don't know your required payment, compute it in the Payment tab first.
Payoff path — balance over time
Balance at the end of each year, standard plan vs your accelerated plan.
| Year | Standard balance | Accelerated balance |
|---|---|---|
| Calculate above to generate the path. | ||
Federal vs private student loans — what do you give up by refinancing?
Refinancing federal loans into a private loan can lower your rate — but it permanently converts a federal loan into a private one. Compare the protections side by side before you decide.
🏛️ Federal Direct loans
- Fixed rate, same for everyone — 6.52% undergrad / 8.07% grad / 9.07% PLUS (2026–27 vintage; source: U.S. Dept. of Education). No credit check pricing tiers.
- Income-driven repayment (IDR) — payments capped at 10–15% of discretionary income; forgiveness after 20–25 years (existing borrowers).
- Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) — new IDR plan for loans first disbursed after Jul 1, 2026; payments from $10/mo up to 10% of AGI.
- Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) — tax-free forgiveness after 120 qualifying payments in public service. Eligible on federal loans only.
- Deferment & forbearance — pause payments during hardship, unemployment, or school; subsidized loans accrue no interest in deferment.
- No prepayment penalty — pay extra anytime.
- Death/disability discharge — federal loans are discharged on death or total permanent disability.
🏦 Private student loans / refinance
- Rate depends on your credit — strong borrowers can beat federal rates (refinance offers commonly ~4–8% fixed in 2026); weak credit pays far more, up to ~14%+.
- No IDR, no PSLF — once refinanced, federal protections are gone permanently. You cannot convert back.
- Limited hardship options — forbearance exists at some lenders but is shorter, discretionary, and interest usually keeps accruing.
- Cosigner often required — many borrowers need a creditworthy cosigner; cosigner release is possible at some lenders after on-time payments.
- Usually no origination fee — unlike federal PLUS (4.228%) and Direct (1.057%) fees.
- Variable-rate risk — some private loans are variable; the rate (and payment) can rise after you borrow.
Quick payment comparison
Same $30,000, 10-year term. Federal 2026–27 undergrad rate vs a hypothetical private refinance rate.
| Scenario | APR | Monthly | Total interest | Total cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Calculate to compare. | ||||
Income-driven repayment (IDR) calculator
Estimate your payment under IBR, PAYE, or the new Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) — and see the forgiveness timeline. Uses the official 2026 HHS poverty guidelines.
Use your most recent tax return AGI. IDR uses AGI, not take-home pay.
IDR payments depend on income, not balance — balance only affects the forgiveness projection.
📋 HHS 2026 poverty guidelines used by this calculator (vintage + source)
| Family size | 48 contiguous + DC | Alaska | Hawaii |
|---|
Source: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 2026 Poverty Guidelines (Federal Register document 2026-00755, published Jan 15, 2026). Discretionary income = AGI − 150% × poverty guideline. Figures are editable assumptions in the calculator's code defaults — the tool computes from your inputs.
PSLF quick check — Public Service Loan Forgiveness
PSLF forgives your remaining federal Direct loan balance tax-free after 120 qualifying monthly payments (10 years) while working full-time for a qualifying employer (government or 501(c)(3) nonprofit). Use the estimator below for a rough timeline.
Should I refinance my student loans? — break-even calculator
A lower rate isn't automatically a win if there's an origination fee or a longer term. Enter your current loan and the refinance offer — the calculator finds the break-even month and lifetime net savings.
Current loan
Refinance offer
⚠️ Extending the term lowers the payment but can increase total interest even at a lower rate. Compare "total cost", not just the monthly payment.
| Monthly payment | Total interest | Total cost (incl. fee) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calculate to compare. | |||
Worked examples — see the math, not just the answer
Three real-number examples, each reproducible with the tabs above. Formulae and assumptions are shown transparently.
Example 1 — The $30,000 undergraduate loan
Borrow $30,000 at 6.8% APR on a standard 10-year (120-month) term.
Over a quarter of what you pay is interest — that's the cost of stretching repayment to 10 years.
Example 2 — Extra $100/month payoff accelerator
Same $30,000 / 6.8% loan, but you pay $445.24/month instead of $345.24.
Small, consistent extra payments compound: each extra dollar kills principal that would have earned interest for years.
Example 3 — IDR payment on a $50,000 salary
Single borrower (family size 1), AGI $50,000, on IBR-new-borrower (10% of discretionary income).
That's $128 less per month than the $345.24 standard payment in Example 1 — but the loan runs up to 20 years and any forgiven balance may be taxable. Reproduce it live in the IDR tab.
Methodology — exactly how this calculator works
No black boxes. Every number on this page comes from these formulae.
1. Monthly payment (amortizing loan)
2. Extra-payment payoff simulation
Month-by-month loop: each month, interest = balance × r is added, then your payment (required + extra) is subtracted. The loop stops when the balance hits zero. This handles any extra amount and lump sums exactly — no closed-form approximation.
3. Income-driven repayment
Poverty guidelines: HHS 2026 (Federal Register 2026-00755, published Jan 15, 2026). Forgiveness amount is projected by simulating the IDR payment against the balance at your entered rate — a simplified projection, since real IDR recertifies income yearly and interest subsidies vary by plan.
4. Refinance break-even
Break-even is undefined if the new payment isn't lower (no monthly saving to recover the fee). A longer new term can flip the verdict even at a lower rate — the total-cost comparison catches that.
5. What this calculator does NOT do
- It doesn't pull your actual loan data — servicer balances, capitalized interest, and variable rates must be entered by you.
- It models one loan at a time — if you have multiple loans, run each one separately and add the monthly payments together.
- It doesn't model graduated/extended federal plans, interest subsidies during deferment, or tax effects of forgiveness.
- Federal program rules change (the SAVE elimination and RAP introduction in 2026 are recent examples) — verify current rules at studentaid.gov.