Loan Payment Calculator

A loan payment calculator answers the question every borrower asks first: what will this actually cost me per payment, and how much interest will I pay in total? Enter three numbers — how much you are borrowing, the annual interest rate, and how long you will take to repay — choose a payment frequency, and the calculator returns your payment per period, the total you will hand over, and how much of that total is interest. The three ingredients: the principal is the amount borrowed. The interest rate is the yearly percentage the lender charges on the outstanding balance. The term is how long you take to repay — and it is the quiet lever with the biggest effect: stretching the same loan from 15 to 30 years lowers each payment but can roughly double the total interest, because you rent the money for twice as long. Payment frequency matters more than most people expect. Paying biweekly (26 times a year) or weekly (52 times) instead of monthly means the balance shrinks slightly sooner each cycle, so a little less interest accrues between payments. The effect on this calculator is modest — it divides the same annual rate into smaller, more frequent slices — but in real life many biweekly plans also sneak in the equivalent of one extra monthly payment per year, which shortens the loan noticeably. How the math works, in plain English: with an amortizing loan, every payment is the same size, but its composition shifts over time. Early on, the balance is large, so most of each payment goes to interest; as the balance falls, an ever-larger share pays down principal. The formula — payment = P × [r(1+r)ⁿ] ÷ [(1+r)ⁿ − 1] — finds the one fixed payment amount that, repeated n times at periodic rate r, lands the balance exactly at zero on the final payment. At 0% interest it simplifies to the loan amount divided by the number of payments. Interest rate vs. APR: the interest rate is only the cost of borrowing the money. APR (annual percentage rate) also folds in origination fees, points, and certain other charges, which is why the APR on a loan offer is usually a little higher than the quoted rate. This calculator uses the plain interest rate, so a payment computed from an APR will overstate the interest portion slightly. What is not included: taxes, insurance (like homeowner's or PMI on a mortgage), origination and application fees, and other lender charges. For mortgages especially, the real monthly outlay can be meaningfully higher than principal and interest alone. Actual lender figures may also differ slightly because of day-count conventions, rounding rules, the exact start date, or effective-rate compounding — this calculator uses the common convention of dividing the nominal annual rate evenly across payment periods. This tool is for information and comparison only. It is not financial advice, and it cannot know your situation — for decisions about real borrowing, talk to a qualified adviser or your lender.