Personal Loan Calculator
↻ Updated 2026Enter a loan amount, APR, and term to see your monthly payment, total interest, and how the balance falls over the life of the loan.
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Runs entirely in your browser — nothing you enter is sent to us.How this works
How to read your personal loan payment
$395.01 a month for four years retires $15,000 and costs $3,960.36 — you repay 26% more than you borrowed. The payment is fixed, but what it buys changes every month: $150 of your first payment is interest and only $3.91 of your last one is. That drift is the whole character of an amortizing loan.
How a fixed-rate loan payment is derived
One formula does the work, and it answers a specific question: what constant monthly payment, made for the whole term, exactly retires the balance while covering interest on whatever is left along the way? That's the standard amortization formula, and everything else on the page — the schedule, the total interest, the balance curve — falls out of running it forward.
The intuition behind the shape of it: each month you're charged interest on the outstanding balance, and whatever your payment covers beyond that reduces the balance. Because the balance shrinks, next month's interest is smaller, so more of the same payment goes to principal. The split moves steadily in your favour without the payment ever changing — the loan is front-loaded with interest not by design or trickery, but because that's when you owe the most money.
r = APR ÷ 12 payment = amount × r ÷ (1 − (1 + r)^−n) then each month: interest = balance × r principal = payment − interest balance = balance − principal total interest = payment × n − amount
- amount
- The principal you borrow — assumed to be what lands in your account; an origination fee deducted from the proceeds means you receive less than this
- APR
- The annual rate, converted to a monthly rate as APR ÷ 12 — fixed for the term — the model has no variable-rate mode
- n
- The number of monthly payments in the term — 48 by default; it drives the payment more strongly than the rate does
- payment
- The constant monthly amount that clears the loan in exactly n months — $395.01 on the defaults — unchanged for all 48 months
- balance
- What's left to repay, falling a little faster each month — the curve on the chart above; it's convex, not a straight line
The `(1 + r)^−n` term is what makes this formula look worse than it is. Read it as discounting: the payment is set so that the present value of all n payments equals the amount borrowed. At a 0% rate the whole expression collapses to amount ÷ n, which is exactly what you'd expect — $15,000 over 48 months would be $312.50 a month, and the $82.51 difference between that and the real $395.01 is what 12% costs you.
Because the payment is fixed by the schedule, paying more than it doesn't reduce next month's bill — it shortens the loan instead. The extra payment calculator prices that on the same engine.
Worked examples
Example: $15,000 at 12% APR over 48 months
The calculator's defaults, followed through the schedule to show how a fixed payment changes what it does over time.
| Monthly paymentfixed for all 48 months | $395.01 |
| Month 1 split38% of the payment is interest | $150.00 interest · $245.01 principal |
| Balance after month 1down $245.01 | $14,754.99 |
| Month 24 split22% interest — halfway through | $86.99 interest · $308.01 principal |
| Month 48 split1% interest — the last payment | $3.91 interest · $391.10 principal |
| Total interest26% of the amount borrowed | $3,960.36 |
| Total repaidon $15,000 | $18,960.36 |
The same $395.01 buys $245.01 of progress in month one and $391.10 in month 48. That's amortization: the payment is level, the composition is not. Total interest of $3,960.36 on $15,000 sounds like 26% — but that's 26% over four years, not per year. The rate is 12%; the 26% figure is what compounding a 12% rate over a four-year average balance adds up to.
Example: the same $15,000 stretched to 84 months
Move the term slider from 48 months to 84 — seven years instead of four. The rate and the amount don't change.
| Monthly payment$130.22/mo lower than $395.01 | $264.79 |
| Total interestup from $3,960.36 | $7,242.44 |
| Extra interestfor the same $15,000, at the same 12% | $3,282.08 |
| Total repaidvs $18,960.36 | $22,242.44 |
| Interest as % of amountup from 26% | 48% |
A third off the monthly payment for 83% more interest. Nothing about the loan got worse — same rate, same lender, same money. You're simply borrowing it for three more years, and interest is rent on time. This is the single most useful thing the term slider has to show you, and it's the mechanism behind every offer that leads with a low monthly payment.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good APR for a personal loan?
Rates are set per borrower rather than posted, so there's no threshold we'd publish as a standard. The observable shape of the market is a wide band — roughly single digits at the top of the credit spectrum out to the high twenties or 36% at the bottom — and where you land is driven by credit score, income and existing debt rather than by shopping skill.
What the calculator can tell you exactly is what any given rate costs. At $15,000 over 48 months, the difference between two offers is best measured in total interest, not in rate: the payment row flatters short rates and long terms alike. And compare APRs, not interest rates — an origination fee can make a lower-rate loan the more expensive one.
Is a personal loan better than a credit card?
They're different instruments and the comparison depends on the horizon. A personal loan has a fixed rate, a fixed payment and a date it ends — the schedule above is contractual. A credit card has a variable rate, a minimum payment that shrinks with the balance, and no end date at all as long as you keep paying it.
For debt you intend to carry for years, the loan's structure is doing most of the work: the fixed payment is what forces the payoff. Cards typically also carry higher rates — the Fed's G.19 release put the average on card accounts assessed interest at 22.15% in Q2 2026 against the 12% default here. For anything you'll clear inside a month, a card charges nothing thanks to the grace period, which no loan can match. See the credit card payoff calculator for the other side of that comparison.
What credit score do you need for a personal loan?
There's no single cutoff — every lender sets its own, and approval weighs income and existing debt alongside the score. The pattern reported across the market is that most mainstream lenders look for something in the low-to-mid 600s at minimum, with the sharpest pricing reserved for scores in the 700s and above.
The more useful framing is that the score doesn't just gate approval, it sets the rate — and the rate is the entire product. A borrower offered 12% and one offered 28% on the same $15,000 over the same 48 months are buying quite different things: $3,960.36 of interest versus far more. Run your quoted rate rather than a hoped-for one.
How does a personal loan origination fee work?
It's a percentage of the loan, commonly deducted from the proceeds rather than billed — so a $15,000 loan with a 5% fee puts $14,250 in your account while you owe and pay interest on the full $15,000. Some lenders instead add it to the balance. Either way you pay interest on money you never received.
This calculator ignores fees entirely: it assumes $15,000 borrowed, $15,000 received. That's why the APR field matters — a properly disclosed APR under Truth in Lending already folds the origination fee into the rate, which is what makes it comparable across offers. If you have a quoted rate and a separate fee, the APR calculator converts them into the single number you should be comparing.
Can I pay off a personal loan early?
Usually, and on most US personal loans there's no prepayment penalty — but it's a term to check rather than assume, and this calculator has no field for it. Paying early on a simple-interest amortizing loan works exactly as you'd hope: interest is charged on the outstanding balance each month, so a smaller balance means less interest, immediately.
What early payment doesn't do is lower your monthly payment. The $395.01 is fixed by the schedule; extra money shortens the term instead. Some lenders will re-amortize (recast) a loan after a large lump sum to lower the payment over the remaining term, but that's a service they choose to offer, not a right.
What this loan model leaves on the table
The amortization is exact — it's the same formula your lender uses. What's missing is everything around it.
- No origination fee — The model assumes you receive every dollar you borrow. Personal loan origination fees commonly run from 1% to around 10% and are usually taken out of the proceeds, which raises your true cost above the quoted rate without changing the payment.
- No late fees, and no default — Every payment is assumed made, in full, on time, for the entire term. Late fees, the credit damage from a missed payment, and what happens if the loan is secured by something you'd rather keep are all outside the model.
- The rate is fixed and known — You type in an APR. In reality it's the output of an underwriting decision you haven't had yet, and the rate you're quoted may differ from the rate you assumed when you planned around it.
- Monthly compounding, and no daily-interest quirk — Interest is charged once a month at APR ÷ 12. Some lenders accrue daily, which means the timing of your payment within the month slightly changes what you owe — paying a few days early saves a little, paying late costs more than the fee alone.
- It doesn't ask whether you should borrow — The tool prices a loan; it has no view on the purpose. Consolidating 22% card debt at 12% and financing a holiday at 12% produce identical schedules and are not the same transaction.
- ·Standard loan amortization formulas
Rates, brackets and limits here are checked against primary sources. If a number still looks off, email support@realmoneyiq.com and we'll review and fix it.
RealMoneyIQ provides free educational calculators, not financial, tax, investment or legal advice. Results are estimates based on the assumptions you enter and publicly published rates; your actual outcome will differ. Always confirm decisions with a licensed professional who knows your full situation.