Personal Loan Payoff Calculator

A personal loan is the loan this engine describes exactly. Fixed rate, fixed term, unsecured, repaid in equal monthly instalments from disbursement to the last one: no escrow, no variable index, no revolving balance, no promotional period that expires halfway through. Most other pages on this site are this same schedule with something bolted beside it — a bi-weekly cadence, an issuer's minimum rule, several balances sharing one budget. Here there is nothing to bolt on.

The one input that usually goes wrong is the first one. Personal loans often carry an origination fee deducted from the amount disbursed, so a $12,000 loan can arrive as $11,400 while $12,000 is what accrues interest and what has to be repaid. The balance to enter is what is owed, not what landed in the account.

Everything below is computed in whole cents, one month at a time, and the full schedule is shown rather than summarised. The payoff date is the date of the last row, not an estimate from a formula. Where the model cannot see something — a prepayment penalty, a late charge — the page says so instead of folding a guess into the total.

Every dollar above the scheduled payment is treated here as reducing the balance on the day it is paid. That is one of two things a lender can do with it. The other is to count it toward your next scheduled payment, which moves the due date forward and leaves the balance where it was — and the saving below is then not smaller, it is zero. The standard mortgage contract lets the lender choose; on a federal student loan choosing for you is the default. Send it as a principal-only payment, in writing, and check the next statement.

The payoff date is the date of the last payment. With nothing extra paid it falls at the end of the stated term: thirty-six monthly payments starting 1 October 2026 end on 1 September 2029. Add anything on top and the two dates separate, and the distance between them is what the extra bought.

Enter what is owed, not what arrived. Where an origination fee was deducted from the disbursement, the loan is written for the larger figure. Entering $11,400 on the example below gives a payment of $381.38 and $2,329.29 of interest; the $12,000 actually owed gives $401.45 and $2,451.94. The gap — $20.07 a month and $122.65 over the term — is the fee earning interest for three years.

The last payment is smaller, and the total interest comes from the schedule. The scheduled payment is rounded up to the next cent so the schedule never runs past the stated term, which leaves the final payment to clear whatever remains: thirty-five payments of $401.45 and one of $401.19. Multiplying $401.45 by 36 and subtracting the balance gives $2,452.20, while the schedule's interest column adds to $2,451.94. The schedule is the one that is right.

Interest saved is measured against the same loan paid to term — same balance, same rate, same scheduled payment, no extra. A prepayment penalty, where an agreement carries one, is not modelled, so the saving shown is the figure before any such charge. The agreement is where to check whether there is one.

Months mode is for when the payment is known and the term is not. It runs the schedule from the payment instead of solving for it, and the row count is the answer. Rounding the payment down matters more than it looks: at $401.45 the example clears in 36 payments, and at $400.00 it takes 37, the last of them $63.33.

M

the scheduled payment, rounded up to the next cent

P

the balance at the start, in cents

r

the periodic rate — the APR divided by 100 and by 12

n

the term, in months

bₖ₋₁

the balance before payment k

iₖ

the interest charged in period k, rounded half-up to the cent

The payment is rounded up so the schedule cannot run past the term. Rounding to the nearest cent instead leaves a stray final payment of a few dollars on a long loan.

The payoff date comes from running the schedule, not from the formula. The two agree on ordinary loans and can differ by several months when the payment barely exceeds the interest.

The rounding rule, the final-payment adjustment and the published test vectors are all on the methodology page.

One loan or several, fixed payment or revolving — that is the real question behind this family of calculators, and it decides which page answers yours.