This student loan calculator will give you a good estimate of how much you will pay in interest for your loan, and about how much your monthly payment will be under a regular repayment plan.
What information you need
- Student loan balance — How much is left to pay on your loan (or the entire loan amount, if you haven’t started repayment)
- Average interest rate — The interest rate on your loan. If you are crunching the numbers for a group of loans, you can use the average interest rate among the loans, so long as they are for more or less the same amount.
- Loan term — The number of years left on your repayment plan. You can add an extra 0.25 for every additional three months.
What might affect your final result
A few factors could skew the results slightly, so if one or more of these apply, you will want to check with your lender or loan servicer to get the exact amounts.
- Origination fee — Your total payment over the life of the loan may be slightly higher than the calculator shows if your loan includes an origination fee. These are rare for private student loans, but federal student loans do include them. You can get around this by entering the “annual percentage rate” (which factors in the fee) instead of the regular interest rate.
- Grace period — Most student loans include a “grace period,” during which payments are optional. For federal student loans and many private loans, the grace period covers your time in school and an additional six months after graduating or otherwise ending enrollment. Using a grace period could make your total interest slightly higher than shown on the calculator.
- Subsidized Direct student loans — Some federal student loans offered under the Direct loans program are “subsidized,” meaning the government will cover the interest for you while you’re in school, during your grace period, and if you need to defer your repayment. This would likely make your total interest slightly lower than what’s shown on the calculator result.
