Personal Loan Calculator

Personal loan calculator — monthly payment and total cost

This free personal loan calculator shows your monthly payment, total interest, and total repayment amount in real time. Enter the loan amount, annual interest rate (APR), and loan term in months or years — results update instantly. Expand the amortization schedule to see every payment broken down into principal and interest, so you know exactly how each dollar is applied across the life of the loan.

Unlike lender-branded calculators on Bankrate or NerdWallet — which exist to funnel you toward partner lenders and which often pre-fill rates to favor advertisers — this tool has no agenda. Enter your own numbers, explore trade-offs, and review the schedule. Everything runs in your browser; nothing you type is transmitted anywhere. No sign-up, no limit on scenarios, no ads in the calculator itself.

How to use the loan calculator

Step 1: Enter the loan principal — the amount you want to borrow. Step 2: Enter the APR (Annual Percentage Rate) — use your offer letter for an actual loan, or a benchmark rate for planning. Step 3: Set the loan term in months or years. Step 4: Read the results: monthly payment, total interest, and total repaid. Step 5: Click 'Show amortization schedule' to see every payment individually.

Run 3–4 scenarios before you talk to any lender. Doubling the term roughly halves the monthly payment — but it often triples or quadruples total interest paid. That trade-off looks very different depending on whether cash flow or long-term cost is your priority. Five minutes with this calculator can save you from taking the wrong term length just because a lender presents it first.

Personal loan rates in 2025 — what to expect by lender

Personal loan APRs in 2025 range from roughly 6% for top-credit borrowers to 36% for subprime. Major banks like Chase, Wells Fargo, and Citibank typically land in the 10–20% range for good-credit customers. Online lenders compete hard for prime borrowers: SoFi runs 8–26% APR, LightStream offers 6–20% with no origination fee, and Marcus by Goldman Sachs sits around 6–22%. Credit unions consistently beat banks by 2–5 percentage points and are often overlooked — worth checking your local credit union before applying anywhere else.

Watch for origination fees: Upstart charges 1–8% deducted from your disbursement, Avant charges 1–4.75%, and OneMain Financial often charges the maximum allowed by your state. A $10,000 loan with a 5% origination fee means you receive $9,500 but owe $10,000 — and the APR shown in your offer letter already accounts for this. Always compare lenders by APR, not the stated interest rate, and always check for prepayment penalties before signing.

How amortization works — why your early payments are mostly interest

On a standard amortizing loan, your monthly payment stays constant but the interest/principal split changes every month. Interest is charged on the remaining balance — so in month 1, when the balance is at its highest, you pay the most interest. As you chip away at the balance, less goes to interest and more to principal reduction.

Example: $15,000 at 9% for 48 months = $373/month. Month 1: $112 interest + $261 principal. Month 24: $68 interest + $305 principal. Month 48: $3 interest + $370 principal. The amortization table in this calculator shows every row so you can verify any lender's figures, see the exact payoff balance at any date, or calculate exactly how much interest an extra payment would save. Print or export the schedule to keep alongside your loan documents.

Personal loan vs. credit card, home equity, and BNPL — which is cheaper?

Personal loan vs. credit card: Personal loans nearly always carry lower APRs than credit cards, which average 20–30% in 2025. If you carry $5,000+ in revolving card debt, consolidating into a personal loan at 10–14% APR saves hundreds per year — and the fixed payoff date keeps you on track. Personal loan vs. home equity loan: HELOCs and HELs offer lower rates (often 7–9% in 2025) but use your home as collateral. Personal loans are unsecured — higher rate, but no risk to your property. Personal loan vs. BNPL: Buy Now Pay Later services like Affirm, Klarna, and Afterpay advertise 0% but revert to 20–36% after the promotional window. For any purchase you can't repay within 3–4 months, a personal loan is almost certainly cheaper and more predictable.

Use this calculator to model any of those comparisons. Enter the principal, rate, and term for whichever scenario you're evaluating — the formula is identical across loan types. The total interest field makes it easy to see at a glance which option costs less over the full repayment period, without having to trust a lender's estimate.

Types of personal loans — and which one fits your situation

Unsecured personal loans are the most common type. They require no collateral, which means approval rests entirely on your credit score and income. That added risk to the lender translates into higher rates: unsecured personal loans typically carry APRs between 6% and 36% in the US. Secured personal loans are backed by collateral — a savings account, a certificate of deposit, or sometimes a vehicle. Because the lender can seize the asset if you default, rates are meaningfully lower. The trade-off is real: missing payments on a secured loan can cost you the asset you pledged, so they make sense only when you have a stable repayment plan.

Debt consolidation loans serve a specific strategic purpose: you use one personal loan to pay off multiple high-rate debts simultaneously. When credit card APRs sit at 20–29% and a personal loan is available at 8–14%, rolling balances into a single fixed-rate installment loan saves hundreds or thousands in interest over the repayment period — and replaces five minimum payment deadlines with one predictable monthly figure. Medical and home improvement loans are functionally identical to standard personal loans, just marketed for a specific purpose. The main alternative for home improvement is a HELOC (home equity line of credit), which carries lower rates because your home backs the debt — but it requires existing equity and puts your property at risk. If you don't have equity or prefer not to encumber your home, an unsecured personal loan is the cleaner path.

At the far end of the cost spectrum sit payday loans: short-term cash advances that annualize to 400–700% APR. On a two-week $500 payday loan with a $75 fee, that fee represents a 391% APR — and the trap is structural. Borrowers who cannot repay in full on their next payday roll the loan over, stacking new fees each cycle. Even a high-rate personal loan at 36% is dramatically cheaper than a payday loan, and most online lenders now offer small-dollar personal loans of $1,000–$2,000 to borrowers who would previously have relied on payday lending. If you are weighing any short-term emergency loan, use this calculator to compare the true annualized cost before committing.

APR vs. interest rate — the real cost of borrowing

The interest rate is the annual cost of borrowing the principal, expressed as a percentage. The APR (Annual Percentage Rate) is a broader figure that wraps the interest rate together with lender fees — origination charges, application fees, and certain other costs — into a single annualized number. By law, lenders in the US must disclose APR under the Truth in Lending Act, which is why APR is the correct metric for comparing any two loan offers. A lender advertising 8% interest but charging a 5% origination fee does not actually cost 8% — the origination fee is collected on day one, reducing your received funds while leaving your repayment obligation unchanged.

The math on origination fees is worth understanding concretely. On a three-year personal loan, a 5% origination fee adds approximately 2.5–3 percentage points to the effective interest rate, because you are paying financing charges on money you never received. A $10,000 loan with a 5% origination fee disburses $9,500 but amortizes on a $10,000 principal — you pay interest on the full $10,000 over 36 months. LightStream and SoFi advertise no origination fees, making their quoted rate and APR nearly identical. Upstart and Avant charge 1–8%, creating a gap that matters significantly on mid-size loans. Always request the APR and the total of all payments before comparing offers side by side.

The most reliable way to compare two loan offers is to calculate the total cost of borrowing: multiply the monthly payment by the number of payments, then add any origination fee paid upfront. That number represents every dollar you will hand to the lender. This calculator's total interest field covers the interest portion; add the origination fee separately to arrive at the true all-in cost. A loan with a slightly higher APR but zero origination fee can be cheaper in absolute terms than a lower-APR loan with a large upfront fee, depending on the term length.

How your credit score determines your loan rate

FICO scores are the primary risk signal most US personal lenders use during underwriting. Borrowers with a score of 760 or above typically qualify for prime rates — the lowest tier a lender offers. Scores in the 620–679 range are classified as near-prime or subprime, and rates at this level are often 2–3 times higher than what prime borrowers receive. Below 580, many mainstream lenders will decline entirely, leaving applicants with high-rate specialty lenders or secured loan options. Even a 50-point improvement in your FICO score — achieved through six to twelve months of on-time payments and reduced credit utilization — can shift you into a meaningfully cheaper rate band and save hundreds of dollars on a mid-size loan.

FICO scores are calculated from five weighted factors: payment history (35%) is the largest component — a single 30-day-late mark can drop a score by 50–100 points. Credit utilization (30%) is the ratio of revolving balances to credit limits; staying below 30% is the standard guidance, but the lowest-score borrowers tend to keep it under 10%. Length of credit history (15%) rewards older accounts; closing an old credit card can shorten your average account age and nudge the score down. Credit mix (10%) reflects whether you hold a variety of account types — revolving (cards), installment (loans), mortgage. New credit inquiries (10%) account for recent applications for credit.

When shopping for a personal loan, you will encounter two types of credit checks. A soft inquiry — used for pre-qualification checks or when you check your own score — does not affect your credit score and leaves no record visible to other lenders. A hard inquiry occurs when you formally apply and the lender pulls your full credit file; it typically reduces your score by 3–5 points temporarily. Critically, multiple hard inquiries for the same loan type within a 14–45 day window are treated as a single inquiry by all three major bureaus. The bureaus recognize comparison shopping and the FICO model specifically accounts for it. This means you can — and should — submit full applications to three or four lenders within a two-week period to obtain real rate offers without any meaningful score penalty.

Debt avalanche vs. debt snowball — which payoff method wins

Once you have a personal loan (or are managing several debts alongside one), the debt avalanche method is the mathematically optimal repayment strategy. You make minimum payments on every debt, then direct all surplus income toward the account carrying the highest interest rate first, regardless of balance size. When that debt is eliminated, the payment you were making on it rolls entirely to the next highest-rate account. The avalanche minimizes total interest paid across the portfolio — on a $30,000 debt load spread across three accounts at varying rates, the avalanche typically saves $1,200–$3,000 in interest compared to a less structured approach.

The debt snowball, advocated prominently by Dave Ramsey, reverses the targeting logic: you attack the smallest balance first, regardless of interest rate. The financial cost is slightly higher — you carry high-rate debt longer — but the psychological benefit is tangible. Paying off a small account completely and eliminating a monthly obligation delivers a concrete sense of progress. Research in behavioral economics supports the idea that early wins improve follow-through: borrowers who might lose motivation and stop making extra payments on an avalanche plan sometimes maintain discipline longer on a snowball plan. If the difference between saving $2,000 and saving $1,400 is actually completing the payoff versus stalling out, the snowball wins in practice.

The right choice depends on your own psychology and the interest rate spread across your debts. If all your debts carry similar rates (within 2–3 percentage points of each other), the dollar difference between strategies is small enough that the snowball's motivational edge makes it the better pick. If you carry a 29% credit card balance alongside an 8% personal loan, the avalanche's savings are too large to ignore — the high-rate card should absorb every available dollar until it is gone. You can model either approach with this calculator: run the highest-rate account first to approximate the avalanche, or run the smallest balance account first to approximate the snowball, and compare the total interest across scenarios.