Interest Rate Calculator for Loans, Car Payments, Savings and Credit Cards
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The interest rate moves your total cost far more than most people expect. Change the rate in the calculator and this note recalculates what one percentage point is worth in real dollars on your exact loan or balance.
An interest rate is only a percentage until you turn it into dollars, months and a payoff date. That is what this page does. Pick the calculator that matches your situation — a loan or car payment, a loan where you know the payment but not the real rate, money you're saving, or a credit card you want gone — and every answer below shows what the rate costs or earns you in plain numbers, next to the benchmark rates lenders and banks are working from this week.
Key Answers About Interest Rates
The short versions first. Each one is expanded further down the page, with the math shown.
Divide the annual rate by 12, then multiply by what you still owe. At 7.2% on a $20,000 balance, the monthly rate is 0.6%, so the first month's interest is $120. Next month it's a little less, because the balance is a little smaller.
It depends entirely on the product. This week the average 30-year fixed mortgage is 7.40%. Federal Reserve data puts cards that charge interest at 22.36%, and Experian's latest figures put the average new-car loan at 6.35% and used at 11.19%.
No. The interest rate prices the money; the APR also folds in certain required fees. When the APR on your disclosure sits well above the quoted rate, the gap is the fees. Our "Find my real rate" tab calculates that gap for you.
Interest is charged on the balance, and the balance is biggest at the start. On a 30-year mortgage at today's rates, most of each early payment is interest. Any extra principal you pay in those years cuts the most future interest.
Only if your rate is variable. The Fed lifted its target range to 3.75–4.00% in September, and card APRs tied to prime usually follow within a billing cycle or two. A fixed-rate car loan or mortgage you already have stays exactly where it is.
Usually not. Using the Fed's latest bank averages on $40,000, a 72-month loan cuts the payment by about $117 a month but adds roughly $1,200 in interest, and keeps you owing more than the car is worth for longer.
Not the average. The FDIC national average is 0.37% on savings and 1.73% on a 12-month CD, while a 1-year Treasury pays 4.46% today. Federally insured accounts paying close to Treasury yields exist; finding one takes about 15 minutes.
Pay a fixed amount instead of the minimum. In our testing, a $5,000 balance at 22.36% took 16 years and 6 months and $7,811 in interest on a common minimum formula. A flat $200 a month cleared it in 34 months for $1,793.
Sometimes. For tax years 2025 through 2028, interest on a loan for a new, personal-use vehicle with final assembly in the U.S. can be deducted up to $10,000 a year. The deduction phases out between $100,000 and $150,000 of income for single filers.
Today's U.S. Interest Rates by Loan and Account Type
A good rate is only "good" next to the right benchmark. The mortgage, Fed and Treasury figures refresh automatically from official releases; the others are the most recent published averages.
| Product | Typical rate | Fixed or variable | What moves your rate | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30-year fixed mortgage | 7.40% avg | Fixed | Credit score, down payment, points paid | Points and lender fees inside the APR |
| 15-year fixed mortgage | 6.71% avg | Fixed | Same as above, shorter term | Lower rate, higher payment |
| New car, all lenders | 6.35% avg | Fixed | Credit tier, term, maker promotions | Dealer markup over the lender's rate |
| New car, bank 60-month | 7.54% | Fixed | Bank pricing, term length | Compare against credit unions |
| Used car, all lenders | 11.19% avg | Fixed | Credit tier, vehicle age | Long terms on older cars |
| Personal loan, 24-month | 11.90% | Fixed | Credit score, income, debt load | Origination fees taken from the payout |
| Credit card, paying interest | 22.36% | Variable (prime + margin) | Prime rate, your card's margin | Deferred-interest promotions |
| Federal student loan, undergrad | 6.52% | Fixed for life | Set each July from the 10-year Treasury | Grad 8.07% · PLUS 9.07% |
| Savings account, national avg | 0.37% | Variable | Bank's choice | Big banks paying near zero |
| 12-month CD, national avg | 1.73% | Fixed | Term, bank, deposit size | Early withdrawal penalty |
| 1-year Treasury bill | 4.46% | Fixed to maturity | Treasury auction | No state or local income tax |
At this week’s 7.40% average, a $350,000, 30-year mortgage costs about $2,423 a month in principal and interest and $522,399 in interest over the full term. Shave one point off the rate and the payment drops to about $2,189 — roughly $84,261 less interest if you keep the loan to the end. That is why a quarter-point difference between two lenders is worth an afternoon of phone calls.
The table also explains a pattern that confuses people: rates on brand-new car loans can sit below the prime rate while personal loans run nearly twice as high. Collateral is the reason. A lender who can repossess the car, or foreclose on the house, takes less risk than one lending against your signature alone, and prices it accordingly. A credit card is the least secured debt most people carry, which is why it sits at the bottom of the chart above.
Your Amortization Schedule, Year by Year
This schedule follows the loan, savings or card numbers in the calculator above. Change any number and it rebuilds.
| Year | Paid | Interest | Principal | Balance left |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Calculating your schedule… | ||||
Calculating your schedule…
Read the interest column from top to bottom and you'll see the shape of every fixed-rate loan: the interest share starts high and falls every year, while the principal share rises. Nothing about the rate changes. The balance does. That's also why an extra payment in year one saves far more than the same payment in the final year — it removes a dollar that would otherwise have been charged interest for the whole remaining term.
We ran a $350,000, 30-year loan at 7.40% — the Freddie Mac average in mid-October — and added one-twelfth of a payment every month, which is what a biweekly plan amounts to. The loan was gone in 281 months instead of 360, and total interest dropped from about $522,400 to about $387,400. You don't need a paid biweekly service to get that result; most servicers accept extra principal for free if you mark it clearly.
How to Calculate an Interest Rate per Month
This is the question people type most after "interest rate calculator," and the answer has two halves: the monthly rate itself, and the dollar amount it produces.
Take the annual percentage rate and divide by 12. A 9% APR is 0.75% a month. A 22.36% card is 1.86% a month. That monthly figure is what lenders call the periodic rate, and it's printed on credit card statements under a heading like "periodic rate" or "daily periodic rate" in the interest-charge box.
Multiply the monthly rate by the balance you owe at the start of the month. On a car loan with $18,500 left at 0.75% a month, this month's interest is $138.75. Whatever you pay above that goes to principal. If your payment is $375, then $236.25 reduces the balance, and next month's interest is figured on $18,263.75.
For a fixed-rate loan, the level monthly payment is P × r ÷ (1 − (1 + r)−n), where P is the amount borrowed, r is the monthly rate as a decimal, and n is the number of payments. In our testing, the loan tab above matches this formula to the cent. Plug in $30,000, 0.00625 (7.5% ÷ 12) and 60 payments, and you get $601.14 — the same figure the calculator shows on its default settings.
If you know the payment but not the rate, there's no tidy algebra; the rate has to be solved by trial, which is what spreadsheets' RATE function does. Our "Find my real rate" tab runs the same search in a fraction of a second. It's the fastest way to check a dealer's "only $599 a month" pitch, or to find out what an old loan with missing paperwork is really charging you.
Monthly to annual: multiply by 12 for the APR, or use (1 + monthly rate)12 − 1 for the effective yearly rate including compounding. A 1.5% monthly rate is an 18% APR but a 19.56% effective annual rate. Daily to annual: credit card issuers divide the APR by 365 (a few use 360), so a 21.9% APR is 0.06% a day. That sounds harmless, which is precisely why it's printed that way.
Simple interest is charged only on the principal. Most U.S. car loans, federal student loans and personal loans work this way, with interest accruing daily on the outstanding balance and nothing added on top of unpaid interest as long as you pay on time. Compound interest is charged on principal plus interest already added, which is how savings accounts, CDs and credit cards behave. A card that adds this month's unpaid interest to the balance will charge interest on it next month.
The practical upshot is lopsided. Compounding works for you on savings and against you on cards. On a simple-interest car loan, paying a few days early each month quietly reduces your interest, because fewer days of interest pile up before the payment lands. Paying late does the reverse, even inside the grace period before a late fee kicks in.
Interest Rate Calculator for a Car: What the Dealer Won't Spell Out
Car financing is where a small difference in rate does the most quiet damage, because it's negotiated in a room built to keep you focused on the monthly payment.
The spread between the top and bottom tiers is more than $13,800 on the same vehicle. A borrower moving from near prime into prime would cut interest by about $4,100 — which is why paying down a card balance a month or two before shopping for a car can be worth more than any haggling over the sticker price.
When a dealership arranges your financing, it sends your application to lenders and gets back an approved "buy rate." Dealers are commonly allowed to add a markup on top and keep part of the extra interest as compensation. It's legal, it's often disclosed only in fine print, and it's negotiable. The defense is simple: walk in with a pre-approval from a credit union or bank. In our experience comparing offers, the moment a written outside approval goes on the desk, the dealer's rate tends to find its way down to meet it.
The Federal Reserve's latest bank survey shows something counterintuitive: the average 72-month new-car rate, 7.17%, is lower than the 60-month rate, 7.54%. We ran both on a $40,000 loan. The 60-month loan costs $802 a month and $8,137 in interest. The 72-month loan costs $685 a month and $9,337 in interest. The lower rate still loses by $1,200, because you pay it for an extra year. Finance companies' new-car loans now average 67 months, and the average amount financed is about $41,700, so this trade is happening at scale.
Automakers often make you choose one or the other. Run the rebate option through the loan tab: subtract the rebate from the price, enter the rate your credit union offered, and compare that total with the 0% deal's total. On a $40,000 car, a $3,000 rebate financed at 6% for 60 months costs about $42,920 in total; the 0% offer costs $40,000. A $5,000 rebate at the same 6% costs about $40,600 — still slightly more than 0%, but close enough that a lower credit-union rate would flip it. The calculator turns that into a two-minute check.
For tax years 2025 through 2028, interest on a loan used to buy a new car, minivan, SUV, pickup or motorcycle for personal use can be deducted up to $10,000 a year, without itemizing, if the vehicle's final assembly happened in the United States and the loan is secured by the vehicle. The deduction shrinks by $200 for every $1,000 of modified adjusted gross income above $100,000 for single filers or $200,000 for joint filers. Used cars and leases don't qualify. The value is smaller than the headline suggests: a $45,000 loan at 6.35% produces about $2,600 of interest in the first year, and in the 22% bracket that deduction is worth roughly $580.
Most auto loans are daily simple interest loans. Interest equals the balance times the APR divided by 365, multiplied by the days since your last payment. Pay five days late and you owe five extra days of interest, so more of that payment goes to interest and less to principal. Pay early and the reverse happens. Set autopay a few days before the due date and the loan quietly gets cheaper.
Mortgage Interest: Points, Rate Locks and the 15-Year Question
A mortgage is the one loan where a tenth of a point is worth real money, and it's also where the paperwork does the most to hide what you're paying.
Within three business days of a mortgage application, the lender has to give you a standardized Loan Estimate. Most people stop at page 1, which shows the rate and payment. Page 3 is where the comparison lives: the APR, which folds in points and many lender fees, and the Total Interest Percentage, which tells you how much interest you'd pay over the full term as a share of the loan amount. Collect Loan Estimates from at least three lenders on the same day — rates move daily — and line those two numbers up side by side. The lender with the lowest advertised rate is often not the one with the lowest APR.
A discount point costs 1% of the loan amount and buys a lower rate; how much lower varies by lender and by day. Suppose a lender offers 7.40% with no points, or 7.15% if you pay one point on a $350,000 loan. The point costs $3,500 and cuts the payment by about $59 a month, so it takes roughly 59 months to break even. Keep the loan longer than five years and the point pays off; sell or refinance sooner and you've paid $3,500 for nothing. Put both rates through the loan tab and divide the cost of the points by the payment difference. That number, in months, is the whole decision.
This week the 15-year average is 6.71% against 7.40% for the 30-year. On $350,000, the 15-year payment is about $3,089 a month — $666 more than the 30-year — but total interest falls to about $206,097, a difference of roughly $316,302.
The 30-year's appeal is flexibility: you can pay it like a shorter loan in good months and fall back to the lower required payment in bad ones. That only works if you actually send the extra. If you know you won't, the 15-year's lower rate and forced discipline usually win. If your budget would be tight at the 15-year payment, the 30-year with modest extra principal is the safer middle ground.
Once you have an accepted offer on a home, ask the lender to lock the rate in writing, with the lock expiration date. Locks commonly run 30 to 60 days, and extending one if closing slips can cost money, so pick a lock period that covers your realistic closing date. With the Fed having raised rates in September and signaling more, a float-down option — which lets you take a lower rate if the market improves before closing — is worth asking about, though it isn't free.
On a conventional loan with less than 20% down, private mortgage insurance raises your effective cost. Under federal law, you can ask the servicer to cancel it once you've paid the balance down to 80% of the home's original value, provided you're current and meet the servicer's requirements, and it must end automatically at 78%. Run your loan through the calculator and the year-by-year schedule shows roughly when you’ll cross each threshold. Extra principal gets you there sooner.
Savings, CD and Fixed Deposit Interest: Getting Paid Properly
The 1-year Treasury yield is 4.46% right now, while the FDIC’s national average for a 12-month CD is 1.73%. On $10,000 for a year, that gap is worth about $273.
The gap between what the average account pays and what the money is actually worth has rarely been wider. The FDIC's national averages are pulled down by large banks paying close to nothing on savings, while online banks and credit unions compete for deposits with yields near Treasury rates. Leaving $25,000 in a 0.37% account instead of one paying 4% costs more than $900 a year, with the same federal insurance on both.
Under the federal Truth in Savings rules, U.S. banks have to advertise the annual percentage yield, which already includes compounding. That's why our savings tab asks which kind of rate you have. If you enter an APY, compounding is already baked in and the calculator uses it as-is. If you enter a nominal rate — common on fixed deposits in India and on some older U.S. certificates — the compounding choice changes the result. A 7% nominal rate compounded quarterly works out to an effective 7.19% a year.
The math doesn't care which currency you use. Switch the currency menu to rupees and the savings tab works as an FD calculator: enter the bank's quoted rate, choose "Nominal rate," and pick quarterly compounding, which many Indian banks use on cumulative deposits. The figures will be formatted in lakhs and crores. Tax treatment and deposit insurance differ by country, so check your bank's terms for those.
A Treasury bill bought at auction is backed by the U.S. government and its interest is exempt from state and local income tax, which matters in high-tax states. A CD locks in a rate and is FDIC-insured up to $250,000 per depositor, per bank, per ownership category — but usually charges a penalty, often a few months of interest, if you withdraw early. A high-yield savings account gives up a little rate for full access. Many retirees split the difference: an emergency fund in savings and the rest in a ladder of CDs or Treasuries that come due one after another.
The September rate increase was the Fed's first since 2023, and policymakers' median projection points to one more by year-end. Savings and money market rates tend to follow upward, slowly and selectively; online banks usually move first. CDs and Treasuries you already own don't change. If you're choosing a term today, shorter terms keep you flexible if rates keep rising, while longer terms protect you if the next move is down.
Credit Card Interest: How the Minimum Payment Keeps You Paying
Credit cards are the most expensive debt most households carry, and the minimum payment is engineered so the balance shrinks very slowly.
Here's what struck us when we ran it: the minimum payment and the $200 plan start out nearly identical. The first minimum is about $143, only $57 less. But the minimum shrinks every time the balance does, so the payoff stretches past 16 years. The fixed payment never shrinks, and every dollar that the interest charge no longer needs goes straight to the balance.
Most issuers take your APR, divide by 365 to get a daily rate, and apply it to your average daily balance across the billing cycle. If you pay the statement balance in full by the due date, the grace period means no interest at all on new purchases. Carry even a small balance past the due date and you typically lose the grace period, so new purchases start accruing interest from the day you make them until you've paid in full again.
Store cards and medical financing often advertise deferred interest. It isn't the same as a 0% intro APR. If even a dollar of the promotional balance remains when the period ends, the issuer can charge all the interest that accrued from the original purchase date — on the full amount, not just what's left. Divide the promo balance by the months in the offer and pay at least that, with a cushion.
Usually, if you can clear most of the balance during the 0% period. We ran $5,000 at 22.36% with a steady $200 a month: over 15 months the card charges about $1,171 in interest and you still owe roughly $3,171. Move the same balance to a 0% offer with a 3% fee and you pay $150 up front, then nothing in interest; after 15 payments of $200 you'd owe about $2,150. To be completely done when the promotion ends, divide the balance plus the fee by the promo months — here about $343 a month. Two cautions: the transferred card's regular APR applies to whatever is left afterward, and new purchases on that card may not get the 0% rate.
Federal rules require card statements to show how long payoff will take if you make only the minimum, how much you'll pay in total, and the monthly amount that clears the balance in three years. Find that box, compare its 36-month figure with what you're paying now, and enter the larger number in the credit card tab above to see the date you'll be done.
The Fine Print Most Rate Calculators Skip
These are the questions readers send us after the calculator has already answered the obvious one.
Because fees were added. Federal Truth in Lending rules require the APR to reflect the interest rate plus certain finance charges such as origination fees and mortgage points. We tested this with the "Find my real rate" tab on its default settings: a $20,000 loan at 8% for 60 months has a payment of $405.53, but if $600 in fees is taken out of the loan, you only receive $19,400 while still making the $405.53 payment. The real APR comes out to about 9.30%. The fee costs 1.3 percentage points.
On most installment loans, no. Extra principal shortens the loan and cuts total interest, but the required payment stays the same. If lower payments are the goal, some mortgage servicers offer a recast: after a large principal payment, they recalculate the payment over the remaining term for a modest fee. Ask before you send a lump sum, and ask for written confirmation that the extra went to principal rather than to a future payment.
Some older and subprime loans calculate the total interest up front and add it to what you owe, then use a method called the Rule of 78s to decide how much interest you're refunded if you pay early. It front-loads interest even more than normal amortization, so early payoff saves less. Federal law has barred the Rule of 78s on consumer loans longer than 61 months since 1993, but it can still appear on shorter loans. If your contract mentions "precomputed" or "Rule of 78," ask the lender for a payoff quote before assuming that paying early will save you much.
Compare the after-tax rates. Paying off a 22% card is a guaranteed 22% return that no insured account can match. Paying down a 6% car loan while your savings earn 4% is a closer call. Most planners would keep an emergency fund of a few months' expenses in place first, because the alternative is putting the next emergency on the very card you just paid off.
An adjustable-rate mortgage or a variable-rate line of credit starts lower and moves with an index. That's a reasonable bet if you'll sell or refinance before the first adjustment, and a risky one if a jump in payment would strain your budget. Read three numbers in the disclosure: how high the rate can go at the first adjustment, at each later one, and over the life of the loan. Then run the highest possible rate through the loan tab. If you can live with that payment, the gamble is affordable.
Every consumer rate starts from a benchmark — Treasury yields for mortgages and car loans, the prime rate for credit cards and home equity lines — and the lender adds a margin for risk and profit. Your credit score is the biggest piece of that margin, which is why the car loan chart above spans more than 11 percentage points for the same vehicle. Next comes how much of your income already goes to debt payments, how much you're putting down or how much equity you have, the length of the loan, and whether there's collateral. Some banks and credit unions knock a quarter point off for autopay from an account with them; it's worth asking every lender whether they offer a relationship discount. Two things you can change in the next 30 days: pay card balances down below about 30% of each card's limit before the lender pulls your credit, and avoid opening new accounts while you're shopping. Multiple applications for the same type of loan within a short shopping window are generally treated as a single inquiry by credit scoring models.
What to Do in Your Situation
Don't make payments based on a verbal promise. Compare the APR in the Truth in Lending disclosure with the rate you were quoted, and run the payment and term through "Find my real rate." If the numbers don't match and the lender or dealer won't fix it, file a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which forwards it to the company and generally gets a response within 15 days. For a car bought from a dealer, your state attorney general's consumer protection office is a second avenue.
If the credit card tab shows your payment barely covers the monthly interest, a nonprofit credit counselor can review your budget for free and may offer a debt management plan, in which card issuers often agree to lower interest rates and waive some fees in exchange for steady payments. Steer clear of companies that charge large fees up front or tell you to stop paying your creditors.
Run both through the loan tab first, but don't decide on the numbers alone. A federally insured reverse mortgage requires a counseling session with a HUD-approved counselor before you apply, and those counselors will also review alternatives such as property tax relief programs or a smaller home equity loan. Ask every lender for a total cost estimate in writing, including origination fees and mortgage insurance.
Check what your savings actually earn — the rate is usually on the last statement or in the bank's app. If it's near the national average, moving cash you won't need for a year into an insured high-yield account, a CD ladder or Treasury bills can raise your income without adding market risk. Keep each bank's total within FDIC limits and confirm coverage with the FDIC directly if you hold large balances in joint or trust accounts.
A typical two-week payday loan charging $15 per $100 borrowed works out to an APR of about 390%. Before signing, ask a local credit union about a payday alternative loan; federal credit unions that offer them can charge no more than 28% APR and an application fee of no more than $20. Your utility company, landlord or a 2-1-1 helpline may also be able to arrange more time to pay.
Credit unions are member-owned and, on average, tend to price car loans and personal loans competitively. Many let you join through where you live, work or worship.
This calculator is for estimates and education, not a loan offer or financial advice. Results use standard amortization and compounding formulas and assume on-time payments; your lender's figures may differ slightly because of day-count methods, payment dates, fees or rounding. The Fed funds range and effective rate, Freddie Mac mortgage averages and Treasury yields are pulled automatically from official public releases and cached; other averages are the most recent published figures. Prime is shown as the top of the Fed's target range plus three points, the standard U.S. convention. Your inputs never leave your browser. Independent and not affiliated with any lender or government agency.
Key sources: Federal Reserve Board (G.19 Consumer Credit) · Federal Reserve Bank of New York · Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey · U.S. Department of the Treasury · FDIC · Consumer Financial Protection Bureau · Federal Student Aid · IRS · Experian