Personal Loan Calculator

Personal loan rates — Federal Reserve data

There is exactly one market rate on this page, and this is it: the average finance rate on 24-month personal loans at commercial banks, published by the Federal Reserve in the G.19 consumer credit release. It is a national average of rates actually written, which makes it a useful neutral scenario when you have no offer in hand — and a poor substitute for one when you do.

How the benchmark has moved

20 published observations, exactly as the series reports them. This series is published quarterly; quarters with no published figure are not interpolated, smoothed or carried forward.

Payment examples by loan amount

What a personal loan costs per month at the benchmark rate, for the amounts people actually borrow. Read across for the effect of the term; read down for the effect of the amount.

Every cell is the amortization formula applied at one stated rate. Your own rate will differ, and the payment moves with it — the calculator above uses whatever rate you enter.

How term changes payment and total interest

A longer term is not cheaper. It is smaller instalments bought with more interest, and the exchange rate between the two is worth seeing before you sign for the longer one.

• Extending this loan from 2 to 3 years lowers the payment by $208.04 but adds $900.09 in total interest.
• Extending this loan from 3 to 5 years lowers the payment by $164.94 but adds $1,889.27 in total interest.
• Extending this loan from 5 to 7 years lowers the payment by $69.30 but adds $2,006.09 in total interest.
• Extending this loan from 7 to 10 years lowers the payment by $50.21 but adds $3,220.73 in total interest.

The same table is rendered live for your own amount and rate in the results above, and it moves as you type.

How interest rate changes your cost

On an unsecured loan the rate is the single largest lever, and it is the one you have least direct control over. The calculator prices the loan at two points either side of the rate you entered, so you can see what a point is worth before you go looking for one.

On $15,000 over 36 months, the difference between 11.00% and the Federal Reserve average of 11.86% is $6.13 a month and $220.73 of interest across the loan.

A rate is never dropped below 0% in the sensitivity ladder: a negative rate is not a loan this calculator models, and a rung that would go below zero is held at 0% and labelled rather than quietly skipped.

Interest rate vs APR vs fees

Three different things, routinely conflated, and the confusion costs money on personal loans specifically because origination fees are large and common.

• Interest rate (note rate). The contractual rate that accrues on the balance. This is what the payment is built from. Dividing an APR by 12 to get a monthly rate overstates the payment whenever there are fees — this calculator never does it.
• Fees. An origination fee is typically 1%–10% of the amount borrowed on an unsecured personal loan. It can be deducted from your cheque, added to the balance you finance, or paid separately. Each route gives a different amount of cash in hand and a different total cost, and this calculator keeps all four quantities apart: amount borrowed, financed balance, cash received, and cash paid at closing.
• APR. The rate that reconciles the money you actually received with every instalment you actually pay. It is a cost measure, not an accrual rate. Because it carries the fees, it is the number that makes two offers with different fee structures comparable.

Worked example. $15,000 at 11.00% over 36 months pays $491.08 a month and has an Estimated APR of 11.000% — the same as the rate, because there are no fees. Add a 5% origination fee deducted from the proceeds and the payment does not change at all, but only $14,250.00 reaches your account and the Estimated APR becomes 14.584%. Same payment, materially more expensive loan.

Not every charge belongs in the APR. Regulation Z defines the finance charge narrowly, and some lender charges sit outside it. That is why each fee on this page carries its own switch: you decide whether a given charge is a cost of credit, rather than the calculator quietly deciding for you and reporting a number your lender would never disclose.

Estimated APR. Estimated from the cash flows and fees you entered. This is not a lender’s official Regulation Z disclosure.

How personal loan payments are calculated

A fixed-rate personal loan is a level-payment annuity. The payment is the amount financed divided by the annuity factor for the number of payments at the periodic rate:

M = P · r / (1 − (1 + r)⁻ⁿ)

• P — the amount financed: what you borrow, plus any fee you chose to finance.
• r — the monthly rate: the annual note rate divided by 12.
• n — the number of monthly payments.

The zero-rate branch. At r = 0 the formula divides by zero, so it is not used. A 0% promotional loan repays M = P / n exactly, and this calculator returns exactly that: total interest of precisely zero, not a rounding artefact.

Worked example. $15,000 at 11.00% over 36 months: r = 0.916667% a month, n = 36, so M = $491.08. Across the loan that is $2,678.91 of interest, or $178.59 for every $1,000 borrowed.

Load this example Puts these figures into the calculator above.

Amortization schedule explained

Every instalment is the same size, but its contents are not. Interest is charged on the balance outstanding, so the first payment is mostly interest and the last is almost entirely principal. On a three-year personal loan that shift is fast; on a seven-year one it is slow, which is most of why the longer loan costs so much more.

The schedule above shows, for every payment: the opening balance, the scheduled payment, any extra payment, the split into principal and interest, the closing balance, and both cumulative columns. The final instalment is adjusted so the balance closes at exactly zero — level-payment arithmetic leaves a few cents over a long schedule, and lenders settle it in the last payment rather than carrying it.

Above the full schedule you get the year-by-year summary first, because that is the view most people actually want, and the principal milestones — the payments at which 75%, 50% and 25% of the balance is still owed, and the one that clears it.

Extra payments and early payoff

An extra payment goes entirely to principal, after that period's interest has been charged. It therefore reduces the balance that accrues interest in every later month — which is why a small recurring amount early in the loan is worth far more than the same money later.

The Extra payments mode models four kinds at once: an extra amount on every instalment, a lump sum once a year, a single one-off payment, and dated payments tied to a specific instalment. It reports the original payoff against the new one, the time saved, the interest saved, the cumulative extra cash you actually had to find, and — where one applies — the prepayment penalty netted off, so the figure you read is the net saving rather than the gross one.

You can also set a goal instead of an amount: pay off by a date, pay off a number of months earlier, or save a target amount of interest. The calculator solves the smallest extra payment that reaches it, and says so plainly when a goal is not reachable rather than returning a number that does not work.

How much can I afford to borrow?

Two ways round, both of them budgeting arithmetic. From a payment you are willing to make, the calculator solves the largest amount that payment repays over the term at your rate. From income and existing debt payments, it works out the room left in your budget under a percentage cap that you choose, and then how much that room borrows.

The percentage is deliberately yours to set. There is no universal debt-payment limit: lenders use different ones by product and by institution, and printing a single figure here would read as a rule this page is in no position to state.

This is a budgeting estimate, not a lender qualification or approval decision.

How to compare personal loan offers

Comparing headline rates is how people end up with the more expensive loan. Four things actually decide it:

1. The cash you receive. Two $20,000 offers are not the same loan if one takes a 6% fee out of the cheque. Switch the comparison to Same cash actually received and the calculator solves each amount borrowed so every offer hands you the same money — which is the only way to compare fee structures honestly.
2. The Estimated APR. Rate plus fees, in one number. It is the closest thing to a like-for-like measure, and it is why the comparison shows it beside the note rate rather than instead of it.
3. The full-term cost. Interest plus fees over the whole loan. A lower payment on a longer term regularly costs more here.
4. What happens if you clear it early. Fees are paid on day one and interest is not, so a high-fee, low-rate offer can be the dearer loan for two years and the cheaper one after that. The comparison prices every offer at 12, 24 and 36 months and at full term, and names the month where two offers cross.

The comparison reports the lowest payment, the lowest full-term cost, the highest cash received and the lowest Estimated APR as four separate facts. It does not name a best loan: which of those matters depends on what you are borrowing for and how long you expect to keep the loan, and no calculator can know that.

Check a lender quote below reproduces a specific quoted payment and APR from the assumptions you enter, and tells you whether they reconcile — useful before you sign, and better than guessing why two numbers differ.

Fixed vs variable personal loans

The overwhelming majority of US personal loans are fixed-rate: the rate is set at origination and the instalment never moves. That is what this calculator models, and it is why the schedule can be produced in full on day one.

Variable-rate personal loans exist — more commonly outside the US, and on personal lines of credit rather than closed-end instalment loans — where the rate is tied to a published index plus a margin and resets periodically. This page does not model them, because a schedule that depends on future index values is a forecast rather than a calculation, and presenting one as a schedule would be misleading. If you have a variable offer, the honest use of this tool is to price the loan at several fixed rates and see the range you would be exposed to.

Unsecured, secured and signature personal loans

A signature or unsecured personal loan is backed by nothing but the promise to repay. There is no collateral for the lender to take, so the rate carries the whole of the credit risk — which is why unsecured rates sit well above secured ones for the same borrower.

A secured personal loan pledges something: a savings account, a certificate of deposit, a vehicle. The rate is lower because the lender's exposure is lower, and the trade is real — default means losing the pledged asset, not just the credit damage.

The arithmetic on this page is identical either way: an amount, a rate, a term and a fee schedule produce the same payment whether or not anything is pledged. What changes is the rate you are offered, which is an input here and not something this calculator can predict.

Can this calculator estimate my rate from my credit score?

No — and the reason is worth stating plainly rather than burying. There is no government-published, authoritative mapping from a credit score to a personal loan rate. Score-to-rate tables that appear on comparison sites are marketing estimates built from that site's own lending panel; they are not a standard, they differ wildly between publishers, and they go out of date quietly.

CalcDomain will not invent one. What this page offers instead is two honest routes to a rate you can actually calculate with:

• Use a real offer. A pre-qualification or a firm offer states the rate and the fees. That is the input this calculator is built for, and the quote checker below will reconcile it for you.
• Use the Federal Reserve benchmark as a neutral scenario. The G.19 average above is a real, published, dated figure. It is not your rate, and it is not a prediction of your rate — but as a starting scenario it is sourced, and it is the same for everybody.

Methodology

Payment formula

Level-payment annuity on the amount financed: M = P·r / (1 − (1 + r)⁻ⁿ), with r the annual note rate divided by 12 and n the number of monthly payments. The note rate is used, never the APR.

Zero-rate branch

At r = 0 the annuity factor is n, so M = P / n exactly and total interest is exactly zero. The zero case is a separate branch, not a limit approached numerically.

Rounding

Full floating-point precision is carried through every calculation. Rounding happens only at the display, copy and export boundary, so no rounded figure is ever fed back into another calculation.

Final payment

The last instalment is adjusted to bring the balance to exactly zero. Over a long schedule level-payment arithmetic leaves a residue of a few cents; it is settled in the final payment rather than carried, which is what lenders do.

Fees

Four quantities are kept separate throughout: the amount borrowed on the note, the financed balance interest accrues on, the cash that reaches you, and the cash you pay at closing. A fee is deducted from proceeds, financed into the balance, or paid separately, and each route produces a different answer.

Estimated APR

The actuarial rate that discounts every instalment back to the net cash received at closing, following the method of Regulation Z Appendix J. It is solved from the cash flows, not approximated. Each fee carries its own in-or-out switch: a fee marked outside the APR is treated as money retained by the borrower for APR purposes and is added back to the net cash. It remains an estimate from your figures, not a lender's disclosure.

Extra-payment ordering

An extra payment is made with the scheduled instalment of its period, after that period's interest is charged and the scheduled principal credited. It therefore reduces the balance accruing interest in the following period, never the current one — the standard principal-curtailment treatment. An extra larger than the balance still owed is cut to exactly the balance.

Payoff date convention

The first payment falls one month after the disbursement date unless a first payment date is given. Dates advance by whole calendar months and are not adjusted for weekends, holidays or day-count conventions. No date appears anywhere unless you supplied one.

Unsupported cases

Variable and adjustable rates, interest-only and balloon structures, non-monthly payment frequencies, daily interest accrual, taxes, insurance and escrow are not modelled here. Several of them are available on the general Loan Calculator.

Model version

general-loan-engine-1.0.0+personal-loan-offers-1.0.0

Calculation assumptions

• A fixed-rate, fully amortizing, unsecured personal instalment loan repaid monthly.
• Interest accrues per monthly period on the outstanding balance; it is not accrued daily.
• Every instalment is paid in full and on its scheduled date.
• The rate entered is the contractual note rate, not the APR.
• Fees entered are lender fees charged at origination; nothing is assumed about fees you did not enter.
• The Estimated APR is derived from the cash flows entered and is not a Regulation Z disclosure.
• Nothing on this page is a lender quotation, an eligibility test, an approval decision or financial advice.

Reference test cases

Each row is computed by the engine that runs this page, and each is separately pinned by an automated test. If the arithmetic ever changed, these figures would change and the test suite would fail before the page shipped.