Loan Calculator
Monthly payment, total interest and amortization schedule.
A loan looks simple until you try to work out what it really costs. This free loan calculator turns amount, interest rate, and term into a monthly payment and a total interest figure you can actually compare. See how a shorter term raises the monthly payment but cuts the total interest, and how a higher rate changes both. It runs in your browser with no account and no signup. Use it for car loans, personal loans, and student loans, and treat the result as an estimate before you sign anything.
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About Loan Calculator
The monthly payment is the number lenders advertise; the total interest is the number that matters. A loan's true price is the sum of every payment you'll ever make minus what you borrowed, and it's routinely tens of thousands of dollars more than borrowers expect. This calculator shows both sides: enter the amount, APR, and term, and you get the monthly payment, the total interest cost, and an amortization schedule that reveals exactly how each payment splits between interest and principal over time.
The amortization tables are where the education happens. Because interest each month is charged on the remaining balance, largest at the start, early payments are mostly interest and barely dent the principal. Scroll through the first twelve months and then the yearly view, and you can watch the split flip as the balance shrinks. That single insight explains why extra principal payments early in a loan are so powerful: every extra dollar then cancels interest on all the payments that would have followed it.
What the estimate leaves out is worth naming: origination fees, insurance, taxes, and any prepayment penalties all sit outside principal-and-interest math, so a real payment can run higher. And this is a fixed-rate, fixed-payment model, variable-rate loans move with the market. Use it to compare offers apples-to-apples before you sign. Results are estimates for illustration only and are not financial advice.
How to use Loan Calculator
- Enter the loan amount.
- Enter the annual interest rate and the term.
- Read the monthly payment and total interest.
- Try a shorter term to see how the cost changes.
Why use this tool?
- First-12-months plus yearly amortization tables
- Total interest cost shown up front
- Estimates for illustration only, not financial advice
Tips for best results
- Compare loans by total interest, not monthly payment, a longer term's smaller payment usually hides a much bigger total cost.
- Study the first-12-months table: seeing how little early principal you pay motivates extra payments where they count most.
- Even one extra principal payment a year, applied early, can shave years off a long loan, model the baseline here first.
- Check whether your loan has a prepayment penalty before planning extra payments; some lenders charge for paying early.
- Remember APR and interest rate differ: APR folds in fees, so it's the better number for comparing lender offers.