Student Loan Payment Calculators
Need to find out what your monthly student loan payment will be? We can help. Our first loan payment calculator will show you how much you'll pay each month, so you can make sure the loan in affordable. Scroll down to learn more and access additional calculators.
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Paying for college is no easy process. Figuring out where the funds will come from can sometimes be even more challenging. These days about two-thirds of those earning bachelor’s degrees borrow some type of student loans. Before taking on any debt including student loans, it’s important to budget before you borrow. Increasing awareness of your spending helps you to exercise restraint and reduce the need to borrow. Otherwise, many students often treat loan limits as targets because they lack insights into how much student loan debt is reasonable.
To assist in the planning process, it’s a good idea to use a student loan calculator to estimate what your monthly payments might be based on the amount you might borrow, the interest rate of the loan, the length of the loan repayment period, and your estimated starting salary when you graduate. Although intended as a calculator for Federal Education loans (subsidized and unsubsidized Stafford Loans, Federal Perkins, as well as Grad and Parent PLUS Loans), and most private student loans, many loan payment calculators also work for mortgages, auto loans and other forms of consumer credit.
Listed below are five of the most popular student loan calculators currently available to help students and their families estimate repayment amounts:
Loan Payment CalculatorTotal Paid without Prepayment
This calculator is provided for informational purposes only. Calculated results are based on many factors, including the assumptions provided by the user. We cannot and do not provide any guarantees, conditions or warranties as to result accuracy or applicability to the user’s particular circumstances. It is the responsibility of the user to verify that all of the output and resulting calculations are correct. This calculator should not be used by anyone to make material financial decisions and should be used solely for informational purposes. Actual terms will be set by your lender or your school. We encourage any user to seek personalized advice from qualified professionals regarding all personal finance issues.
The results of this calculator are not based on any information provided by or an affiliation with any school.
Student Loan Refinance Calculator (powered by Edvisors®)
The calculator on this site helps you understand what your new monthly payments might look like if you refinance or consolidate your loans. You can enter multiple loans to see the effect of including select loans (such as only your private student loans) or all of your loans, including federal debt.
Navient (powered by Wealth Management Systems Inc.)
This comprehensive calculator shows not only what your monthly payment might be but also determines how much you’ll pay in cumulative interest. It also shows you what making an additional payment might do to reduce your loan balance over the term of the loan.
College Board Student® Loan Calculator
This tool reminds borrowers of the actual annual borrowing limits by academic year for federal education loans, in addition to being able to input other loan types and corresponding interest rates. It also allows users to plug in their anticipated year of college graduation and estimated starting salary as part of the calculation process.
U.S. Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid Repayment Estimator
The official government website is designed to help in calculating your monthly payment on Federal student loans. Note: there are two options for using this tool. 1) You can utilize the login option (all you need is your FSA ID to log in)or 2) you can calculate repayment estimates by manually adding your loans.
Final Thoughts
By using a student loan calculator to figure out how you will repay the student loans you borrow, it is easier to reduce debt before it is incurred than afterward.
Total student loan debt at graduation should be no more than your annual starting salary. If total student loan debt is less than annual income, then you as a borrower will be able to repay your student loans in 10 years or less. If total student loan debt is more than your annual income, you will probably struggle to repay the loans and will need an alternate repayment plan to afford the monthly loan payments. Alternate repayment plans, such as income-based repayment and extended repayment, reduce the monthly payments by stretching out the term of the loan and, hence, paying more total interest over the longer period of repayment. This means that you will potentially still be repaying your student loans when your children enroll in college.
Likewise, parents should borrow no more for all their children than they can afford to repay in 10 years or by the time they retire, whichever comes first.
To estimate debt at graduation, multiply first-year debt by the length of the educational program. This figure should be within about 15 percent of the actual total. For example, if you borrow $7,500 during the freshman year in college, the debt at graduation will be around four times as much, $30,000 plus or minus $4,500, when you graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in four years.
To estimate income after graduation, use the median income figure for the occupation in the statistics published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The U.S. Census Bureau also publishes statistics on income by undergraduate major. This data has been analyzed by the Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW) at Georgetown University. In particular, the CEW report, The Economic Value of College Majors, provides charts mapping from undergraduate majors to income after graduation and the report Hard Times (2015 update) adds data on unemployment rates by undergraduate major.