Credit Card Payoff Calculator

How long will it take to pay off my credit card?

It depends on three numbers and nothing else: what you owe, the rate you are charged, and what you actually pay each cycle. The third is the only one you control month to month, and it does most of the work.

Take $6,400 at 22.99% APR — the example this article follows throughout. Paying a fixed $250 a cycle clears it in 3 years and costs $2,483 in interest. Leave the same balance on the statement minimum instead and it runs for 21 years 5 months at a cost of $11,171. Same debt, same rate: the difference is entirely in what you send.

Enter your own cards above and the tool answers this for you, including the calendar month you would be finished. This calculator is specifically designed for credit-card debt — revolving balances, statement minimums that shrink as the balance falls, and rates that can change when a promotion ends. For instalment debt with a fixed term, a loan payoff tool is the better fit.

How credit card interest works

Your APR is an annual rate, but interest is applied every billing cycle. This calculator uses the standard monthly planning model: one interest charge per cycle at APR ÷ 12. On 22.99% that is a monthly rate of 1.9158%, so the first cycle on $6,400 costs $122.61 — and of a $250 payment, only $127.39 reaches the balance.

Most issuers do not work that way internally. They publish a daily periodic rate — APR ÷ 365, or 0.0630% here — and apply it to your average daily balance: the balance on each day of the cycle, averaged across the cycle. Two consequences follow. A payment made early in the cycle lowers more daily balances than the same payment made on the due date, so when you pay matters a little. And because cycles are not all the same length, a 31-day cycle carries more daily interest than a 28-day one at the same rate.

Three further wrinkles are real and are not modelled here. Posting timing — the day a purchase or payment is credited, which is not always the day you made it. Variable APRs — most U.S. general-purpose cards set the rate as an index plus a margin, so it moves when the index does. And multiple balance categories — purchases, balance transfers and cash advances can sit on one account at three different rates simultaneously, each with its own treatment.

The monthly model is deliberately chosen: it is transparent, it can be checked by hand, and over a full payoff it lands within a few dollars of a statement. It is a planning estimate, not a reproduction of your issuer's ledger. What makes your statement differ sets out every reason it can.

How much should I pay each month?

Work backwards from a date rather than forwards from a number. Decide when you want to be finished and the tool solves for the payment that gets you there: that is the Payoff by date mode above.

On the example, being debt-free in two years takes $335.16 a cycle, against $250 for the 3 years plan. The solver searches to the cent: a penny less does not reach the target.

Pick the largest figure you can actually sustain every cycle, not the largest you can manage once. A payment you keep up beats a payment you abandon in month four, and the strategy comparison above assumes the amount holds steady.

What happens if you pay only the minimum

A statement minimum is not a smaller version of a fixed payment. It is usually a percentage of what you owe — so it shrinks every cycle as the balance falls, and progress slows exactly as you make it.

On the example, the minimum in the first cycle is $186.61, not far below the $250 fixed payment. But holding $250 steady clears the card in 3 years for $2,483, while following the minimum down takes 21 years 5 months and costs $11,171 — roughly 4.5 times the interest. The gap is the shape of the payment, not its size.

Issuers do not share one minimum-payment rule. Each sets its own and discloses it in the cardholder agreement; common shapes are a percentage of the balance with a dollar floor, or that cycle's interest plus a percentage of the balance with a floor. The tool offers all three per card, because using the wrong one produces the wrong answer.

You do not have to take our word for the cost. Under Regulation Z, your periodic statement must carry a repayment disclosure: how long the balance would take to clear at the minimum, what it would cost, and the payment that would clear it in 36 months instead. Compare that box with the Minimum payment mode above — they are answering the same question.

Debt avalanche vs debt snowball

With more than one card, both methods pay every minimum and put everything left over against one card at a time. They differ only in which card that is.

Avalanche targets the highest rate first. Under the model this calculator states, it minimises total interest — not as an opinion but as a property of the arithmetic: with a fixed monthly amount, every spare dollar removes the most future interest where the rate is highest. Snowball targets the smallest balance first. It clears an account sooner, which is a real benefit if seeing an account close is what keeps you going, and it costs more interest.

How much more depends entirely on your numbers. On three cards — $900 at 15.99%, $3,200 at 26.99% and $5,100 at 19.99%, with $450 a cycle — avalanche costs $2,249 and finishes in 2 years 2 months; snowball costs $2,380 and finishes in 2 years 2 months. That is $132 more interest for snowball, in exchange for clearing Card A in cycle 4 instead of Card B in cycle 12.

Neither is the right answer in general. Run both on your own cards in the comparison above: if the difference is small, pick the one you will stick to; if it is large, you now know what the easier start costs.

Why extra payments work so hard

Every extra dollar of principal removes the interest that dollar would have generated for the whole remaining life of the debt. Early in a payoff that is a long time, which is why small increases move the date so much more than they seem they should.

On the example, raising the payment from $250 to $300 — one more $50 a cycle — cuts the payoff from 3 years to 2 years 4 months and the interest from $2,483 to $1,907: $576 saved for $1,400 of extra payments. The extra-payment table above runs the same test on your own cards.

The same mechanism runs in reverse. New spending on a card you are paying down is financed at that card's rate and pushes the date out, which is why the calculator lets you model recurring charges rather than assuming they are zero.

Should I use a balance transfer?

Only when two things are true at once: the interest you avoid exceeds the fee you pay to avoid it, and you can realistically clear the transferred balance before the promotional rate ends. The second is where most transfers go wrong.

On the running example — $6,400 at 22.99% paying $250 a cycle, which costs $8,883 in total — moving it to a card offering 0% for 18 cycles with a 3.00% fee costs $192 up front, leaves $2,092 owing when the window closes, for $6,844 in total — $2,038 less. The transfer stops being worth it above a fee of about 26.38%. The module below computes both figures for your own cards.

An ordinary promotional rate is not deferred interest. With a promotional APR, the go-to rate applies to whatever is left, going forward only. With deferred-interest financing — common on store and medical cards, usually worded "no interest if paid in full by" a date — interest is charged retroactively if any balance remains at the deadline, or if you fall more than 60 days behind. The CFPB describes the usual calculation as the balance owed in each month since the purchase. On the same $6,400 at 26.99% over 18 cycles at $250, $1,900 would still be owing and the retroactive charge would be roughly $1,731, up to $2,591 if billed on the full original amount. This tool models promotional transfers only — check which product your agreement describes.

Should I consolidate?

A consolidation loan clears the cards and replaces them with one instalment loan at a fixed rate over a fixed term. Four numbers decide whether it helps: the APR, the origination fee, the term, and the total the three of them produce. Only the last one is the answer.

The trap is that a longer term lowers the payment while raising the cost, and the lower payment is the part you notice. On the running example, a 12.50% loan with a 5.00% origination fee over 36 months costs $225 a month and $8,113 in total. Stretch the same loan to 84 months and the payment falls to $121 while the total rises to $10,141. The rate did not change; the term did.

A lower payment is still worth buying when it is the difference between keeping up and falling behind — but it is a purchase, and you should see the price. The module below states that price in dollars whenever the payment falls and the total rises, and never calls a smaller payment a saving.

Two things the arithmetic cannot tell you. A consolidation loan only helps if the cards stay clear afterwards; paying them off and running the balances back up leaves you owing both. And an origination fee is normally taken out of what the lender advances, so clearing a given amount of card debt means borrowing more than that amount — the module models this convention and the alternative explicitly.

Why your statement may differ

This calculator is a planning model, and it says so. Over a full payoff it usually lands within a few dollars of a real statement, but the two are not computed the same way. Every difference below is a genuine one:

• Daily periodic rate and average daily balance. Most issuers apply APR ÷ 365 to the average of your daily balances across the cycle. This tool applies APR ÷ 12 once per cycle to the balance at the start of it.
• Cycle length. Billing cycles run roughly 28 to 31 days. A longer cycle carries more daily interest at the same rate; the monthly model treats every cycle as identical.
• Transaction posting. A purchase or payment is credited on the day it posts, which is not always the day you made it. Paying earlier in the cycle lowers more daily balances than paying on the due date.
• Fees. Late fees, cash-advance fees, foreign-transaction fees and over-limit charges are not modelled. An annual fee is, if you enter one.
• Variable rates. Most U.S. general-purpose cards price as an index plus a margin, so the APR moves with the index. This tool holds each rate where you set it, apart from a promotional rate expiring into the go-to rate you enter.
• Multiple APR buckets. Purchases, balance transfers and cash advances can sit on one account at different rates, with their own grace-period treatment and payment-allocation rules. This tool models one rate per card.
• Your issuer's minimum-payment formula. There is no standard one. If the rule you select does not match your cardholder agreement, the minimum-payment figures will not match your statement.
• Grace period. The model assumes you are carrying a balance, which is the only situation in which a payoff plan is needed. If you clear the statement balance in full each cycle, purchases normally carry no interest at all.

If a figure here and a figure on your statement disagree, the statement is right. Use this to plan and compare; use the statement to reconcile.

Methodology

The full model, so you can check it rather than trust it. The same code produces the numbers on this page, in your browser and in the automated tests that gate every release.

Simulation

A discrete monthly simulation, one to twenty cards, capped at 600 billing cycles. For each active card, in each cycle, in this order:

Then once for the whole portfolio: every active card is paid its minimum; whatever remains of the monthly amount is applied to one card at a time in the selected order, capped at each card's payoff amount and cascading to the next when a card is satisfied; balances settle; cards that reach zero are recorded and closed.

APR transitions

Cycles 1 to N use the promotional APR; cycle N+1 onward uses the go-to APR, applied to the remaining balance going forward only. Deferred-interest financing, in which unpaid promotional balances are charged retroactively, is a different product and is quantified separately, never folded into these figures. Penalty APRs and variable-rate movement are not modelled.

Minimum payments

Three rules are offered per card, because issuers do not share one: a fixed dollar amount; a percentage of the balance with a dollar floor; or that cycle's interest plus a percentage of the balance with a floor. The rule is recalculated every cycle, and the result is capped at the amount needed to clear the card.

Allocation, ordering and rollover

Order is re-derived every cycle, because balances change and a promotional rate can expire mid-plan. Ties are broken deterministically and in a stated sequence:

• Avalanche — effective APR descending, then balance ascending, then the order you entered the cards.
• Snowball — balance ascending, then effective APR descending, then the order you entered the cards.
• Custom — your priority number, then the order you entered the cards.
• Current plan — each card keeps its own declared payment; nothing is redirected between cards.

Rollover is emergent, not additive. When a card clears, its minimum stops being subtracted from your monthly amount, so the money it was absorbing is available to the next card automatically. Your total monthly outlay never rises above the figure you entered. Turning rollover off withholds that freed amount instead, and the outlay falls.

Payoff-by-date solver

A bisection on the monthly amount, in whole cents, over a monotone predicate — more money never lengthens a payoff. The result is then verified downward so the figure reported is the smallest that meets the target: one cent less does not.

Rounding and final payments

Every figure is computed in whole cents. Interest is rounded half-up each cycle. Because of that, each cycle closes exactly:

No payment ever exceeds what is owed, so the final payment on each card is clipped to the balance and is normally smaller than the others.

Safety limits

If a portfolio does not clear within 600 cycles — because a payment does not cover interest and charges, for instance — the calculator reports that fact and shows no totals at all. It does not publish the sum of 600 cycles of a balance that is growing; that number would be arithmetically real and completely meaningless.

Balance transfer assumptions

The transfer fee is a percentage of the amount moved, charged once and added to the new card's opening balance. The transferred amount is drawn from the selected cards in the order you entered them. The new card carries the promotional rate for the stated number of cycles and the go-to rate thereafter, with no recurring charges or annual fee unless you add them. The "keep the debt where it is" side of every comparison is the planner's own result on the same monthly amount, not a separate model.

Consolidation assumptions

A fixed-rate instalment loan with equal payments, rounded up to the cent, over the term you set; the final payment is clipped. The origination fee defaults to being deducted from what the lender advances, which is the normal personal-loan convention and means clearing a given amount of card debt requires borrowing more than that amount; the add-to-balance convention is also available. Consolidated cards are cleared to zero and cannot also remain outstanding. Any card left out of the loan keeps running on its minimum alongside it.

Not modelled

Average-daily-balance and daily-compounding interest; billing-cycle length; transaction posting dates; grace periods; penalty APRs; variable-rate movement; late, cash-advance, foreign-transaction and over-limit fees; multiple balance categories at different rates on one account; payment-allocation rules across those categories; deferred-interest financing as a payoff simulation; credit-score effects; and the tax treatment of any of it.

This is an educational calculator, not financial advice, and it neither recommends nor sells any product. The terms of your own cardholder or loan agreement govern.