Student Loan Calculator and Repayment Planner

Calculate your student loan payment

A fixed student-loan payment is set so that the balance, plus all the interest that will accrue over the term, is fully repaid by the last payment. The calculation needs only three numbers: the balance, the annual interest rate and the repayment term. For a $30,000 balance at 6.5% over 10 years, the required payment is $340.64 per month and the loan costs $10,877.27 in interest — about 36 cents of interest for every dollar borrowed. At the 2026-27 undergraduate rate of 6.52% the numbers are nearly identical; at the 9.07% PLUS rate, the same balance costs roughly half again as much interest.

Two details separate a careful estimate from a rough one. First, the split inside each payment changes over time: the first payment on that $30,000 loan is $162.50 interest and $178.14 principal, while the last payment is almost all principal. That is why extra payments early in the term save far more than the same dollars later. Second, if you already have accrued unpaid interest — common right after a grace period or forbearance — your payments cover that interest before touching principal, so your effective progress is slower than the schedule suggests. The calculator accepts an accrued-interest amount and shows the difference explicitly.

The advanced options let you match your servicer's mechanics: simple daily interest on a 365 or 365.25-day basis instead of the monthly approximation, an autopay rate reduction (typically 0.25%), an origination fee, the day of month your payment posts, and a target payoff date — which turns the question around and computes the payment needed to be done by a date you choose.

Estimate your balance at graduation

Most borrowers do not take out one loan — they take one or two per academic year, and on unsubsidized loans interest starts accruing the day each disbursement arrives. A first-year loan accrues interest for roughly four years before repayment begins; a senior-year loan for barely one. Estimating the balance at graduation by multiplying the yearly amount by four therefore understates the real number, sometimes by thousands of dollars.

The Balance at graduation mode does this properly. Each disbursement accrues simple daily interest from its own date. Direct Subsidized disbursements accrue nothing while you are in school or in grace, because the government pays that interest. Origination fees (1.057% on Subsidized and Unsubsidized loans, 4.228% on PLUS loans, for current disbursements) are deducted from what you receive, while you repay the gross amount — the calculator reports gross borrowed, fees and net proceeds separately so the true cost of borrowing is visible.

What happens to the accrued interest when repayment starts matters more than most borrowers expect. Since a July 2023 federal rule change, Direct Loans no longer capitalize interest at the end of the grace period: the unpaid interest stays as an interest balance your first payments clear before principal. Many private lenders still capitalize, adding the accrued interest to principal where it then earns interest itself. The calculator supports both treatments and shows the capitalized amount when it applies. It also quantifies the quiet win of paying even $25 a month while enrolled: small in-school payments mop up accruing interest so the balance that enters repayment is close to what you actually borrowed.

Compare student loan repayment options

Federal borrowers choose between fixed plans, which amortize the balance over a set term, and income-based plans, which set the payment from income and forgive whatever remains at the end. As of 2026 the fixed side has two variants. Loans first disbursed before July 1, 2026 use the classic Standard plan: a fixed payment over up to 10 years. Loans first disbursed on or after that date use the Tiered Standard plan under P.L. 119-21: the term is set by the total balance — 10 years below $25,000, 15 years from $25,000, 20 years from $50,000 and 25 years from $100,000.

The income-based side is now the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP), available since July 1, 2026. RAP payments come from a statutory table: an annual amount from $120 (AGI up to $10,000) scaling from 1% to 10% of AGI, divided by 12, minus $50 per dependent, never below $10 a month. Two features distinguish it from earlier income-driven plans: interest your payment does not cover is simply not charged, so the balance cannot grow, and a full on-time payment always reduces principal by at least $50 because the government matches the difference. The remaining balance is forgiven after 360 qualifying payments, or after 120 under Public Service Loan Forgiveness. Parent PLUS loans and consolidations that repaid Parent PLUS debt are excluded.

The comparison table shows every plan's eligibility, first payment, highest projected payment, payoff or forgiveness date, totals and estimated forgiveness, sortable by whichever criterion matters to you. It deliberately never crowns a single "best plan" — lowest payment, lowest lifetime cost and fastest payoff are different goals, and the right choice depends on which one is yours. Plans whose formulas this tool has not verified against primary sources (PAYE, IBR, ICR, Graduated, Extended) appear without numbers rather than with guesses.

How extra payments change student loan repayment

Neither federal nor mainstream private student loans carry prepayment penalties, so every dollar above the required payment is pure principal reduction — once outstanding interest is satisfied. The effect compounds in your favor: principal removed today stops accruing interest every day afterward. On the standard $30,000 / 6.5% / 10-year loan, $100 extra per month clears the loan 34 months early and saves $3,346.98; a single $5,000 lump sum in month 12 saves $3,399.68 and two full years. As a rule of thumb, $100 of principal removed from a 6.5% loan saves about $6.50 per year for every year the balance would have remained.

With several loans, where the extra dollar goes matters. Directing it at the highest effective rate (avalanche) minimizes total interest; directing it at the smallest balance (snowball) buys earlier psychological wins and freed-up cash flow at a modest interest cost. The multi-loan planner runs both against your actual portfolio, along with a custom order and a required-only baseline, and generates copy-ready servicer instructions — important because some servicers otherwise apply overpayments to future installments (advancing the due date) instead of reducing principal.

One caution: extra payments are irreversible. Money sent to a low-rate loan cannot later cover an emergency, and borrowers pursuing forgiveness under RAP or PSLF usually should not prepay at all, since forgiveness makes reducing the balance early a pure loss. The comparison tables here always show the baseline so you can see exactly what a dollar of prepayment buys before committing it.

How student loan interest works

Federal student loans use simple daily interest: each day, the outstanding principal is multiplied by the annual rate divided by 365. A $30,000 balance at 6.52% accrues about $5.36 every day. Nothing compounds day to day — interest accrues only on principal — but unpaid interest still costs you, because payments always satisfy accrued interest before reducing principal. Skip a month (in a deferment, say) and your next payment makes less progress.

The rate on a federal loan is fixed for life and set by its disbursement cohort: each July, new loans get the 10-year Treasury auction high yield plus a statutory add-on (2.05 points for undergraduate loans, 3.60 for graduate unsubsidized, 4.60 for PLUS), subject to caps. That is why a borrower with four years of loans holds four different rates — 2023-24 undergraduate loans carry 5.50% while 2024-25 loans carry 6.53% — and why the avalanche strategy needs per-loan rates, not an average. Private loan rates are set by the lender, may be fixed or variable, and often differ by multiples between applicants depending on credit.

The monthly-amortization formula used by most published calculators (rate ÷ 12) is a close approximation of daily accrual and matches the figures your servicer quotes for a level payment plan. The difference shows up at the edges: months of different lengths accrue different daily interest, paying on the 28th versus the 1st shifts a few dollars, and a leap year adds a day of accrual. This calculator offers both models and labels every result with the one used, so a number can always be traced to its formula.

Federal vs private student loans

Federal loans are made under the Higher Education Act with terms set by statute: fixed cohort rates, income-based repayment, deferment and forbearance rights, discharge on death or total-and-permanent disability, and forgiveness programs including PSLF. Private loans are bank contracts: rates and hardship options are whatever the promissory note says. The same calculator math applies to both — a balance, a rate and a term produce a payment — but the surrounding rights differ completely.

The differences that matter for planning: federal rates are the same for every borrower in a cohort regardless of credit, while private rates are credit-priced; federal loans charge an origination fee while most private loans do not; federal unsubsidized interest does not capitalize at repayment start since July 2023, while private terms often still capitalize; and only federal loans can end in forgiveness. Refinancing federal loans into a private loan trades those statutory protections for a rate, permanently — it can be rational for high-income borrowers who would never use income-based repayment, and costly for anyone who later needs it.

This page's four modes treat the distinction explicitly: the payment and graduation modes work for either loan type, the repayment-plan mode models federal plans only from verified federal rules, and the multi-loan planner handles mixed portfolios, using each loan's own rate and letting you keep federal and private loans strategically separate.

Student loan repayment rules in 2026

2026 is a transition year for federal repayment. P.L. 119-21 (enacted July 2025) rebuilt the plan lineup effective July 1, 2026: new Direct Loans now choose between the Tiered Standard plan and the Repayment Assistance Plan, and graduate and professional students generally can no longer take new Grad PLUS loans (a limited exception covers students already enrolled and borrowing for the same program as of June 30, 2026). Existing borrowers keep access to their legacy plans for existing loans, subject to the Department of Education's transition rules.

Separately, the SAVE plan ended under a court-approved settlement. Servicers began sending affected borrowers individual transition notices on July 1, 2026, each opening a borrower-specific 90-day window to choose another eligible plan. If you received one, the deadline in your own notice — not any general date — governs.

Rates for the 2026-27 cohort (loans first disbursed July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027) are 6.52% for undergraduate Subsidized and Unsubsidized loans, 8.07% for graduate Unsubsidized and 9.07% for PLUS, from the May 2026 Treasury auction plus statutory add-ons. Origination fees remain 1.057% and 4.228%. Every one of these figures on this page comes from a versioned dataset with its primary source recorded; when a dataset record expires or fails verification, the tool disables the affected preset or plan rather than silently using a stale number.

How to use the calculator

Start with the question you actually have. "What will this loan cost me per month?" — stay on Monthly payment, enter balance, rate and term, and read the payment, payoff date and total interest; open Advanced options only if you need daily interest, fees, extras or a target date. "What will I owe when I graduate?" — switch to Balance at graduation; the simple estimate needs one yearly amount, the year-by-year form takes each disbursement separately. "Which federal plan fits me?" — Repayment plans compares them on your loans and income. "How do I attack several loans?" — Multiple loans & extra payments imports your StudentAid.gov file or takes up to 30 manual entries.

Every result ends with a calculation receipt: the engine and dataset versions, interest model, day-count convention, the assumptions applied and the factors excluded, plus your inputs and outputs. Copy it, print it, export the schedule as CSV, or — after an explicit confirmation, because the URL will contain your numbers — share a scenario link. Nothing you enter or import is uploaded; every calculation runs in your browser.

Formula and methodology

Fixed payments use the standard amortization formula M = P·r / (1 − (1 + r)⁻ⁿ), where P is the balance (including any capitalized interest), r the annual rate divided by 12 and n the number of months; a 0% rate divides evenly. Daily-interest simulations accrue principal × APR ÷ day-basis × elapsed days between payment events on UTC dates. Payments apply to accrued interest first, then principal; extra payments target the highest effective APR first; the final payment is capped at what is owed, so no schedule ever shows a negative balance. Annual schedules are aggregations of the same monthly rows — never a second computation that could disagree.

RAP projections take the payment from the statutory AGI table recorded in the verified rules dataset, apply the $50-per-dependent reduction and $10 floor, waive unpaid monthly interest, apply the $50 principal match, and stop at forgiveness. Income growth is a user assumption, stated on the receipt. All engines run at full floating-point precision internally and round to cents only for display; monthly schedules reconcile with the displayed totals to within $0.01. The same engine source code runs in this page and in the build's test suite, where golden tests pin the published examples and invariant tests verify that extra payments can never lengthen a loan, that balances never go negative, and that the browser and server produce identical results.

What this calculator cannot determine

All results are educational estimates, not financial advice. CalcDomain is not affiliated with the U.S. Department of Education.

Federal vs private loans — and where this tool fits

Federal student loans carry statutory protections and programs including income-driven repayment options, deferment and forbearance rights, discharge upon death or total-and-permanent disability, and Public Service Loan Forgiveness for eligible Direct Loan borrowers. Private loans are governed by the lender's contract, so rates, repayment terms and hardship options vary.

Refinancing a federal loan into a private loan permanently replaces the federal loan and generally gives up federal repayment options, forgiveness eligibility and statutory protections in exchange for the private lender's terms.

This planner treats each entry as a fixed-rate balance and answers a specific operational question: given a set of existing loans and a fixed extra-payment budget, how should the extra money be allocated each month to reach payoff most efficiently? That question has the same answer regardless of whether the loans are federal or private.

Federal repayment context (2025–2026)

The Repayment Assistance Plan became available on July 1, 2026 for eligible Direct Loans under P.L. 119-21. Parent PLUS Loans and Direct Consolidation Loans that include Parent PLUS debt are not eligible for RAP. The SAVE plan ended under a court-approved settlement; federal loan servicers began sending affected borrowers individual transition notices on July 1, 2026, each with a borrower-specific 90-day deadline to select another eligible repayment plan.

For a personalized comparison of federal income-driven options, use the official Loan Simulator at studentaid.gov. This planner is not a substitute for that tool when federal plan eligibility matters.

Why extra payments punch above their weight

With simple daily interest, every dollar that reduces principal immediately reduces future daily interest accrual. Extra payments applied early in the life of a loan prevent the most future interest because the balance is largest and the remaining term is longest.

With multiple loans, the avalanche strategy directs extra payments to the highest-rate loan first because that is where each dollar of principal reduction prevents the fastest rate of daily interest accrual. After the first loan is cleared, its freed required payment rolls over — effectively compounding the extra-payment effect on the remaining loans.

Payment-first instead of term-first?

This planner starts from your existing loans and finds the optimal allocation of extra payments. If you want to know how long a single fixed payment takes to retire a given balance, use the Student Loan Payoff Calculator, which starts from your chosen monthly payment instead.