See your standard payment — or find your payoff time on a custom payment
💡 Why This Matters Your student loan payment and total interest depend heavily on your term length and interest rate — small differences compound over years. See your standard payment, or find out how a custom payment amount changes your payoff timeline.
Federal student loan interest rates are set annually by Congress and apply to the life of the loan, while private student loan rates can be fixed or variable and depend heavily on the borrower's (or cosigner's) credit history.
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Standard Term mode uses the standard loan amortization formula to find the fixed monthly payment that pays off your balance, at your interest rate, over your chosen number of years. Custom Payment mode works backward, solving for how many months it will take to pay off your balance if you commit to a specific monthly payment instead.
Your monthly payment and total interest show the real cost of the loan over its full term. Total interest can be a meaningful chunk of your original balance, especially on longer terms or higher rates — this is the tradeoff between lower monthly payments and lower lifetime cost.
This calculator models standard fixed-payment amortization only. It doesn't account for income-driven repayment plans, loan forgiveness programs, deferment, forbearance, or capitalized interest — all of which can significantly change your actual payoff picture for federal student loans specifically.
If your standard payment feels tight, use Custom Payment mode to see what a smaller payment does to your timeline — or the reverse, to see how much faster a bigger payment gets you debt-free and how much interest that saves.
Example: Say you have a $30,000 student loan balance at 5.5% APR on a standard 10-year term. Using the loan amortization formula, your monthly payment would be $325.58, and over the full 10 years you'd pay $9,069.46 in total interest — bringing your total cost to just over $39,000 for the original $30,000 borrowed.
More than most people expect, since extra payments reduce principal directly and less interest accrues on every future month. On a typical federal loan, an extra $100/month can cut years off a 10-year term and save thousands in interest — try the Custom Payment mode to see your exact numbers.
Federal undergraduate loan rates are set annually and have recently ranged roughly 5-6%. Private student loans vary much more widely, often 4-14%, depending on credit history and whether the rate is fixed or variable.
No — this calculator models standard fixed-payment amortization only. Income-driven repayment plans, forgiveness programs, and deferment can significantly change your real payoff picture and aren't reflected here.