Personal Loan Calculator
Monthly payment and total interest for a personal loan — plus the effective APR once the origination fee is included, the figure that makes competing offers genuinely comparable.
Personal loan payment & true APR
Example: $15,000 at 11% for 5 years ≈ $326.14/mo; a 5% fee lifts the APR to 13.26%.
Companion guide: Fee-adjusted APR explained walks through the engine function behind this page's APR line — the payment at the note rate, the net amount received after fees, and the search for the rate that reconciles them. This page covers how the personal loan calculator applies it: a fee entered as a percentage of the loan, the schedule behind the total-interest line, and how to read the result. Every explainer on the site is listed under Guides.
What the fee really does
In the worked example — a fictional $15,000 borrowed at 11% over 5 years — the payment is $326.14 a month, and the 60 payments add up to $19,568, of which $4,568 is interest. Add an origination fee of 5% — $750 here — and nothing about the payment or the interest changes. The engine treats the fee as deducted from the amount handed over, so $14,250 is received while the full $15,000 is repaid. Measured against the money actually received, the cost of the loan comes to 13.26% APR, 2.26 percentage points above the 11% note rate. Every result on this page is an engine output, computed when the page is built by the same tested engine that powers the form above; the only arithmetic the page does itself is to echo an input in another unit (loan × fee%, loan − fee, years × 12), to take the difference, sum, product or ratio of two figures already on the page, or to restate a formula the engine applies. The amounts, rates, and fee percentages in the examples are illustrative inputs chosen for the arithmetic, not quotes or typical figures.
What the engine computes, step by step
The form hands your inputs to two engine functions — one for the payment and its schedule, one for the fee-adjusted APR. Each validates what it receives and returns a typed result or an explicit, human-readable error; the interface formats what comes back.
- Validation. The loan amount must be greater than zero, the rate cannot be negative, the term must be a positive number of years, and the fee cannot be negative or reach the loan amount. A value that fails is refused before any arithmetic runs, with the engine's own message — quoted in the FAQ below.
- The fee in dollars. The fee field is a percentage of the loan and the APR function takes dollars, so the percentage is converted on the way in: $15,000 × 5% = $750. Left blank, the fee is zero and the APR lines do not appear.
- The monthly payment uses the standard amortized-loan (PMT) formula with monthly compounding, the convention behind US mortgages and most consumer loans: the annual rate ÷ 12 is the monthly rate (0.9167% at 11%), years × 12 is the number of payments (60 here), and the result is the one fixed payment that retires the balance exactly at the last month — $326.14. It is computed on the full $15,000; the fee never touches this step.
- The schedule is computed one month at a time: each month the engine charges interest on the balance still outstanding — balance × the monthly rate — and the remainder of the fixed payment reduces the principal. Total interest is the sum of every month's charge, $4,568; the total of payments is the loan plus that interest, $19,568.
- The net amount received = loan − fee = $14,250. This is the only place the fee enters the arithmetic: it is not added to the payments or the interest, and it is not spread over the term.
- The fee-adjusted APR is the annual rate, compounded monthly, at which 60 payments of $326.14 are worth exactly $14,250 today. The present value falls steadily as the rate rises, so the engine searches for it by bisection between 0% and the engine's upper bound and cannot miss within that range. The answer here is 13.26%; the companion guide follows the search step by step.
| Line | How the engine computes it | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly payment | PMT on $15,000 at 11% over 60 months | $326.14 |
| Total interest | Sum of 60 monthly interest charges from the schedule | $4,568 |
| Origination fee | $15,000 × 5% | $750 (5%) |
| Effective APR with the fee | Rate reconciling 60 × $326.14 with $14,250 | 13.26% (note rate 11%) |
| Amount you actually receive | $15,000 − $750 | $14,250 |
Month one, and the schedule behind the total-interest line
In month one of Example A the fee is already behind you — it was taken from the amount you received, not added to the balance — so the balance is the whole $15,000. The debt engine's accrual function, the same balance × APR ÷ 12 rule the schedule applies inline, charges $15,000 × (11% ÷ 12) = $137.50 of interest, and $188.64 of the $326.14 payment reaches principal: 42.2% of the first payment is interest. In Example A the principal share is the larger one from the first month. Across year 1 the schedule records $1,532 of interest against $2,381 of principal, leaving $12,619 owing at the year's end.
| Year | Interest paid | Principal paid | Balance at year end |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $1,532.31 | $2,381.32 | $12,618.68 |
| 2 | $1,256.75 | $2,656.89 | $9,961.79 |
| 3 | $949.30 | $2,964.34 | $6,997.46 |
| 4 | $606.27 | $3,307.37 | $3,690.09 |
| 5 | $223.55 | $3,690.09 | $0.00 |
| Whole term | $4,568.18 | $15,000.00 | — |
The fee appears nowhere in this table. Interest accrues at the note rate on the balance, exactly as the rows show, and the APR restates the fee as a rate after the payment is fixed; it does not change a single row. The Amortization Calculator shows the rows for any inputs, and How Amortization Works explains them.
The same fee over a shorter or longer term
The fee is a fixed $750 whichever term is chosen, and the APR solve spreads its effect across every scheduled payment. The table holds Example A's amount, note rate, and fee fixed and changes only the term.
| Term | Payments | Monthly payment | Total interest | APR | Above note rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 years | 36 | $491.08 | $2,679 | 14.58% | 3.58 pts |
| 5 years | 60 | $326.14 | $4,568 | 13.26% | 2.26 pts |
| 7 years | 84 | $256.84 | $6,574 | 12.69% | 1.69 pts |
Over 3 years the 36 payments each carry a larger share of the same $750, and the APR is 14.58%; over 7 years it is 12.69%. Total interest moves the other way, from $2,679 to $6,574, because the balance is outstanding for longer. The note rate is 11% in every row, and the APR is never below it — equal when the fee is zero, higher otherwise. The engine reports both columns; whether a higher payment for fewer months fits a household's budget is not a question the arithmetic answers.
Two fictional offers on one scale
Suppose two fictional offers on the same $15,000 over 5 years. Offer X is Example A: 11% with a 5% fee. Offer Y carries a 13.75% note rate and no fee. Offer Y's payment is the higher one — $347.08 against $326.14 — and with no fee its APR is its note rate, 13.75%. Offer X's APR is 13.26%: on these inputs, over 5 years, the loan with the lower payment and the fee also has the lower APR.
Shorten both to 3 years and the order reverses: Offer X's $750 is spread over 36 payments and its APR rises to 14.58%, while Offer Y's stays at 13.75%. A higher APR does not mean a higher payment, and the ordering of two APRs depends on the term as well as the fee. The calculator reports the figures; it has no view on which offer to take.
When the fee is zero
With the fee field blank or at 0 the net amount received is the full loan, the present value of the payments at the note rate is exactly the principal, and the search closes on the note rate: 11% for Example A's loan. The interface then shows the payment and total interest alone. The 0% note-rate case is in the FAQ below.
How to read the result
- The large "/ month" figure is the fixed payment on the full loan at the note rate — $326.14 in Example A. The fee field does not change it.
- Total interest is summed from the schedule and shown in whole dollars: $4,568 here. It excludes the fee.
- Origination fee is the fee in dollars with the percentage you entered beside it. This line and the two below appear only when the fee is greater than zero.
- Effective APR with the fee is the solved rate to at most two decimals, with the note rate beside it. It is never below the note rate.
- Amount you actually receive is the loan less the fee — $14,250 here.
Money is shown to the cent, or to whole dollars for large totals like lifetime interest; internally every calculation keeps the full precision of IEEE-754 double-precision arithmetic, and nothing is rounded between steps. Your lender's figure may differ by a few cents depending on their rounding and day-count conventions — the difference is presentational, not an error.
Where the calculator stops
The limits are the engine's, and the methodology page states them. The calculators model fixed-rate, fully amortizing loans. They do not model adjustable-rate mortgages, interest-only periods, balloon payments, or negative amortization. The fee is one number, and the engine does not decide which charges belong in it; this figure describes only your inputs. The APR solve assumes every scheduled payment is made, so the figure describes a loan carried to the end of its term; paying off early is not modelled, and there are no inputs for any cost other than the origination fee. A fee that reaches the loan amount is refused with the engine's own message — "Fees must be less than the loan amount." The calculator models the arithmetic; it does not know your lender's terms. And a correct calculation can still be the wrong calculation for your situation — choosing the right loan for a real-world decision is judgment we cannot automate.
Frequently asked questions
How does the calculator turn the fee percentage into dollars?
The fee field is a percentage of the loan, and the engine's APR function takes the fee in dollars, so the percentage is converted on the way in: loan × fee%. In Example A that is $15,000 × 5% = $750, which the engine echoes back as the fee total in its result.
Is the origination fee included in the total interest?
No. Total interest is summed from the month-by-month schedule on the full loan at the note rate — $4,568 in Example A — and the fee does not enter the schedule at all. The total of payments is the loan plus the interest, $19,568; with the fee added, $20,318 goes out over the life of the loan.
Does a larger loan with the same fee percentage get a different APR?
No. Doubling Example A to $30,000 with the same 5% fee doubles the payment to $652.27 and the fee to $1,500, and the APR is 13.26% either way. The APR responds to the fee as a share of the loan, the note rate, and the term — not to the size of the loan on its own.
What happens at a 0% interest rate?
The engine divides the principal evenly across the term instead of running the payment formula: $15,000 over 60 months is $250.00 a month with $0 of interest. With a 5% fee the APR is still 2.04%, because 60 payments of $250.00 are being measured against $14,250 received. No interest is charged; the APR is positive because the fee is.
Which inputs does the calculator refuse?
Each input is validated before any arithmetic runs, and the engine returns its own message rather than a number. A loan amount of zero: "The loan amount must be greater than 0." A term beyond the engine's limit: "Terms are limited to 60 years." A fee that reaches the loan amount: "Fees must be less than the loan amount." The form also checks the fee percentage before calling the engine and refuses a value outside its own range with its own message.
Can I check the APR figure myself?
Yes, with the ordinary payment formula: enter the net amount received as the loan, the APR as the rate, and the same term into the Loan Calculator. At the engine's full-precision APR, $14,250 over 5 years returns $326.14 a month — the same payment as $15,000 at 11%. Typed in to two decimals as 13.26%, it returns $326.13; the difference is the rounding of the rate, not an error.
Why might my lender's payment differ from the calculator by a few cents?
Internally the engine keeps the full precision of IEEE-754 double-precision arithmetic and rounds only on screen, to the cent (or to whole dollars for large totals like lifetime interest). Your lender's figure may differ by a few cents depending on their rounding and day-count conventions — the difference is presentational, not an error.
Not financial advice: a general educational estimate. Actual rates and fees depend on your credit and the lender. Values are processed locally in your browser and never transmitted. See the methodology page.