Student Loan Payoff Calculator
↻ Updated 2026See how long until your student loans are gone, how much interest you'll pay, and how much faster you'd finish with an extra monthly payment.
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Runs entirely in your browser — nothing you enter is sent to us.How this works
How to read your student loan payoff result
Time to payoff is the headline, but total interest is where the decisions are. On the defaults — $35,000 at 6.5% over ten years — the scheduled payment is $397.42 and the interest comes to $12,690.15, or 36% of what you borrowed. You repay $47,690.15 to borrow $35,000.
How your payoff date and total interest are calculated
Two steps. First, the scheduled payment: the fixed monthly amount that retires the balance in exactly the term you chose, no more and no less. Then the schedule runs month by month — charge interest on what's left, apply the rest of the payment to principal, repeat until the balance hits zero.
Interest is charged on the outstanding balance, so it shrinks as you pay. That's the whole reason the interest and principal split inside a fixed payment shifts over the term while the payment itself never moves. Nothing about the payment changes; what it buys does.
r = APR ÷ 12 scheduled payment = balance × r ÷ (1 − (1 + r)^−n) repeat each month until the balance reaches zero: interest = balance × r balance = balance − (scheduled payment + extra − interest) total interest = every monthly interest charge, added up
- balance
- What you currently owe in principal — what you owe today, not what you originally borrowed — any interest that has already capitalized is part of it
- APR
- The annual interest rate on the loan — fixed at disbursement for federal loans; the 6.5% default sits near the 6.52% set for undergraduate Direct Loans first disbursed on or after July 1, 2026
- r
- The monthly rate — the APR divided by twelve — simple division, not a compounding conversion — the standard convention for US amortized loans
- n
- The term in months — your chosen repayment term × 12 — only used to derive the scheduled payment; in "By payment" mode the term falls out instead
- scheduled payment
- The fixed monthly amount that clears the balance in n months — $397.42 on the defaults — shown under the term slider as you drag it
- extra
- Anything you pay above the scheduled amount — the model sends 100% to principal, which real servicers do not do by default — see the FAQ
- interest
- The month's interest charge — recomputed every month on the balance that's actually left
- total interest
- The lifetime cost of borrowing — what the payoff date is really a proxy for
The model charges interest monthly on the outstanding balance. Federal loans actually use daily simple interest — the servicer multiplies the balance by a daily factor and accrues every calendar day — so a real statement will differ from this page by small amounts depending on the length of the month and the day your payment lands. Over a full term the two land within a few dollars. Not the same arithmetic, but nothing here turns on the difference.
What the model does not do is capitalize. It assumes you pay every month without interruption, so accrued-but-unpaid interest never gets folded into principal — right for a loan in ordinary repayment, wrong for one coming out of deferment, forbearance, or an income-driven plan with a payment below the interest charge.
Worked examples
Example: $35,000 at 6.5% over 10 years
The calculator's defaults, in "By term" mode with no extra payment. This is roughly the standard federal repayment plan: a fixed payment, a ten-year term, no forgiveness at the end.
| Scheduled paymentthe payment that clears $35,000 in exactly 120 months | $397.42 |
| Month 1 — interest$35,000 × 6.5% ÷ 12 | $189.58 |
| Month 1 — principal$397.42 − $189.58 — barely half the payment | $207.83 |
| Time to payoff120 payments, by construction | 10 yr |
| Total interest36% of the balance | $12,690.15 |
| Total paid$35,000 principal + $12,690.15 interest | $47,690.15 |
You repay $47,690.15 to borrow $35,000. The month-one split is the part worth sitting with: 48% of your first payment never touches the debt. That ratio improves every month — by the final year almost the whole payment is principal — which is precisely why an extra dollar paid early is worth several paid late.
Example: the same loan with $100 extra a month
Nothing changes but the extra-payment slider, moved from $0 to $100. Same balance, same rate, same ten-year term, so the scheduled payment stays $397.42 and you now send $497.42.
| Time to payoffdown from 10 yr | 7 yr 5 mo |
| Time saved31 payments you never make | 2 yr 7 mo |
| Total interestdown from $12,690.15 | $9,186.19 |
| Interest savedon roughly $8,900 of extra payments | $3,503.97 |
| At $200 extra instead$5,471.11 saved — double the extra, not double the saving | 5 yr 11 mo |
An extra $100 a month buys back two years and seven months and $3,503.97. Doubling it to $200 saves $5,471.11 — more, but not twice as much, because the second $100 is retiring a balance the first $100 already shrank. Extra payments have decreasing returns, and the returns decrease the more of them you make. The first extra dollar is always the most valuable one.
Frequently asked questions
What is capitalized interest on a student loan?
Capitalization is when unpaid interest gets added to your principal, so you start paying interest on your interest. Federal Student Aid's definition is exactly that mechanical: accrued interest is folded into the balance, and every future charge is computed on the larger number. It's not a fee or a penalty — it's a change to what the balance means.
It happens at specific events rather than continuously: the end of a grace period, the end of a deferment or forbearance, or leaving certain repayment plans. This calculator has no concept of it. Enter a balance that already includes capitalized interest and the math is right; expect the tool to anticipate a capitalization event ahead of you and it can't.
Do extra payments on student loans go to principal or interest?
Not automatically to principal, which is the most expensive misunderstanding on this page. Send more than the amount due and the default treatment is usually to apply it to fees, then accrued interest, then to advance your due date — putting the account in "paid ahead" status rather than shrinking the balance. You prepaid a future payment; you didn't retire principal.
The CFPB's guidance is to instruct the servicer explicitly that overpayments go to principal and that the due date should not advance. This calculator assumes that instruction is already in place: 100% of the extra hits principal in the month you pay it. That's what makes the $3,503.97 above achievable rather than automatic.
Is there a penalty for paying off student loans early?
No, and unusually for consumer credit that's a statutory guarantee rather than a market convention. The Higher Education Act prohibits prepayment penalties on federal student loans, and the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 extended the ban to private student loans by amending the Truth in Lending Act. The CFPB states it plainly: you can pay off a student loan in full at any time without penalty.
So the cost of paying early isn't a fee — it's the optionality you give up. A federal balance you've cleared can never be forgiven, deferred, or put on an income-driven plan. That's a real cost for a borrower on a forgiveness track and no cost at all on the standard plan, which is what this page models.
How long does it take to pay off student loans?
The standard federal plan is built for ten years, which is why this calculator defaults there. The actual average is much longer — commonly cited estimates put typical undergraduate repayment closer to two decades — because borrowers consolidate, switch to extended or income-driven plans, and use deferment along the way.
The gap isn't borrowers failing at arithmetic; it's borrowers choosing lower payments. Every one of those routes lowers the monthly number by lengthening the term, and lengthening the term is the most expensive way to make a payment affordable. Drag the term slider from 10 to 20 years and watch total interest rather than the payment.
What is the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP)?
RAP is the income-driven plan created by the 2025 reconciliation law (P.L. 119-21), available from July 1, 2026. Payments run from 1% to 10% of adjusted gross income depending on income band, less $50 per dependent, with a $10 minimum at the lowest incomes. Any balance left after 360 qualifying payments is forgiven. Unpaid interest is waived rather than capitalized when you pay on time, and the Department contributes up to $50 a month toward principal when your payment wouldn't reduce it by that much.
It's the only income-driven plan available for federal loans borrowed on or after July 1, 2026. Per the Department of Education, borrowers with older loans in phased-out plans have until July 1, 2028 to choose between RAP, the new Tiered Standard plan, and IBR — and SAVE borrowers are being moved off, with 90-day notices going out in batches from July 2026.
This calculator models none of it. Use it for the standard plan, and studentaid.gov's loan simulator for RAP.
Should I pay off student loans early or invest?
The arithmetic everyone reaches for is a rate comparison: paying down a 6.5% loan is a guaranteed 6.5% return, so it beats an investment expected to return less and loses to one expected to return more. That framing is sound as far as it goes, and it goes about half the distance.
It leaves out that the two returns aren't the same kind of thing — loan paydown is certain, a market return is a distribution — that an employer 401(k) match outruns any loan rate, and that for federal borrowers a balance paid off can never be forgiven under RAP or PSLF. The compound interest calculator projects the same monthly amount into a portfolio instead.
What this student loan calculator can't see
This is fixed-rate amortization and nothing more — an accurate model of the standard repayment plan and a poor model of most other things a federal borrower might be doing.
- It knows nothing about federal repayment plans — No RAP, no IBR, no PAYE, no PSLF, no forgiveness at any horizon. Those plans set payments from income rather than from a term, recalculate annually, and in RAP's case waive interest and subsidize principal. A borrower heading for forgiveness is optimizing to minimize payments, not to reach zero — the opposite of what this page computes.
- It doesn't capitalize interest — The schedule assumes uninterrupted payments from today. Deferment, forbearance, a grace period, or leaving a plan can fold accrued interest into principal, and every projection here would then be understated. Enter the balance you owe now, including anything already capitalized.
- One loan, one rate — Most borrowers hold several loans at different rates. Averaging them into one balance approximates the total but hides the ordering question — an extra $100 aimed at the highest-rate loan does more than the same $100 spread evenly.
- A payment below the interest charge produces a nonsense result — In "By payment" mode, a payment that can't cover the monthly interest should read as never paying off. On the default balance, monthly interest is $189.58 — and any payment below roughly $190 currently returns "1 mo" instead. Treat an implausibly short payoff in payment mode as the model breaking, not as a result.
- Monthly interest, not daily — Federal loans accrue daily simple interest; this page charges once a month. Worth a few dollars over a full term, but your payoff date won't match your servicer's to the day.
- No fees, no rate changes, no missed payments — Federal Direct Loans carry origination fees deducted at disbursement — they never appear in a payoff calculation but did reduce what you received. Late fees, collection costs and variable-rate private loans are all outside the model.
- ·Standard loan amortization / compound-growth 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.