Compare minimum-only, your own payment and the 36-month plan. Get your payoff date, total interest and exactly what paying more saves you.
How much interest you are charged each month for every $1,000 of balance.
Higher APRs mean more of every payment goes to interest, not principal.
| APR | Interest per $1,000/mo |
|---|---|
| 15.00% | $12.50 |
| 18.00% | $15.00 |
| 22.15% | $18.46 |
| 25.00% | $20.83 |
| 29.99% | $24.99 |
Estimates assume a fixed APR, no new purchases and no fees. Your issuer may calculate interest daily and uses its own minimum-payment formula, so real results can vary. This is educational information, not financial advice.
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Credit card debt is the most expensive borrowing most households carry: the Federal Reserve's G.19 release puts the average rate on accounts assessed interest at 22.15% and the average across all accounts at 20.94%. This calculator does more than tell you when you will be debt-free. It puts your plan side by side with the one your card issuer defaults you into — the minimum payment — and with the 36-month plan that federal law requires to be printed on your statement. Enter a monthly payment to get your payoff date, or set a target date to get the payment you need. Either way you see the timeline, the total interest, and exactly how many months and dollars each extra $50 buys you.
Credit card interest is charged on your outstanding balance every month. Your card's APR is divided by 12 to get a monthly rate, and that rate is applied to whatever balance remains after each payment. Because interest compounds on the leftover balance, the order in which you pay matters enormously. The trap is that a minimum payment is not a fixed amount: most major issuers set it at roughly 1% of the balance plus that month's interest, subject to a floor of about $25. As your balance falls, so does the payment — which means the amount going to principal shrinks in lockstep and the payoff stretches out for decades. On a $5,000 balance at 22% APR, a declining minimum takes about 230 months and costs roughly $8,100 in interest, more than the original debt. Freeze that same first payment at a constant $141.67 and the balance clears in 58 months for $3,121. That gap — four times the duration — is why modelling a minimum as a fixed payment gives an answer that is not just imprecise but wrong. Paying more than the minimum flips the math: every extra dollar goes straight to principal, which lowers the balance next month's interest is calculated on.
Payoff Time Formula
You know what you can afford each month. Enter it to see your payoff date, the total interest, and how much sooner you finish than paying the minimum.
You want the card gone before a wedding, a move or a mortgage application. Set the month and get the exact payment required.
Your statement prints a 36-month payment by law. Reproduce it here to confirm the figure and see the total interest behind it.
The plus-$50 and plus-$100 rows quantify what a small budget change is worth, so the decision is made on numbers instead of a hunch.
If you have been paying only the minimum, the baseline row shows the decades and the interest that path costs — usually more than the original balance.
Work out your total interest at the current APR first. That number is what a transfer fee has to beat before the offer is worth taking.
A one-off balance you never planned to carry. Model a short, aggressive payoff before the interest compounds into a long one.
The minimum is simulated month by month as a declining payment, the way your issuer actually bills it — not frozen at today's amount, which understates the payoff by years.
Minimum only, your own payment, the 36-month statement plan, and your payment plus $50 or $100 — all against the same balance and APR, in one table.
Federal law requires your issuer to print the payment that clears your balance in 36 months. This calculator reproduces it so you can sanity-check the figure.
Turn a vague goal into a real number of months so you know precisely when the balance reaches zero.
Set a target payoff time and the calculator returns the exact monthly payment required to hit it, rounded so it genuinely clears.
The chart plots your balance against the minimum-only path, so the months and dollars a bigger payment buys are visible rather than abstract.
It depends on your balance, APR and payment. A $5,000 balance at 22% APR takes about 58 months if you pay a constant $141.67, but roughly 230 months — over 19 years — if you pay the declining minimum, because that payment shrinks as the balance does. Enter your own numbers above to get both figures for your card.
There is no single formula. Regulation Z Appendix M1 requires issuers to use their own, and most major cards set it at about 1% of the balance plus that month's interest and fees, with a floor near $25. Some use a flat 2% or 3% of the balance instead. This calculator assumes 1% plus interest with a $25 floor; check your cardholder agreement for yours.
Because the minimum falls as the balance falls. Early on, most of it is interest and only about 1% of the balance touches principal. As the balance drops, the payment drops with it, so the principal portion keeps shrinking and the payoff stretches out. Paying a fixed amount — even the same amount as today's minimum — is dramatically faster because the principal share grows every month instead of shrinking.
Since the Credit CARD Act of 2009, 12 CFR 1026.7(b)(12) has required every periodic statement to disclose how long the balance would take to clear at minimum payments and what it would cost, plus the monthly payment that would clear it in 36 months and the saving that produces. The 36-month row in the table above reproduces that disclosure.
Most issuers use a daily periodic rate — the APR divided by 365 — applied to your average daily balance and compounded daily. This calculator uses the monthly method, dividing the APR by 12, which is the convention Regulation Z permits for these estimates and normally lands within a few dollars of your statement.
The Federal Reserve's G.19 Consumer Credit release reports 22.15% on accounts assessed interest and 20.94% across all accounts in its most recent data. Store cards and cash advances run higher. Because APR drives how fast the balance grows, lowering it — via a balance transfer or a lower-rate loan — meaningfully speeds up payoff.
No. Paying more reduces your balance faster, which lowers your credit utilisation ratio — one of the largest inputs to your score. Utilisation is calculated from the balance reported to the bureaus, so a smaller balance generally helps.
With several cards, the avalanche method — highest APR first — saves the most interest mathematically, while the snowball method — smallest balance first — produces earlier wins that help many people keep going. This calculator handles one card at a time; use the debt payoff or debt snowball calculators to sequence several.
A 0% intro-APR transfer can pause interest for 12 to 21 months, but it only helps if you clear the balance before the promotional rate ends and if the saving beats the transfer fee, usually 3% to 5%. Work out your total interest here first — that is the number the fee has to beat.
No. It assumes you stop using the card and only pay it down, with no annual fee, late fee or cash-advance charge. New purchases add to the balance and push back your debt-free date, so pause spending on the card while you pay it off.
The balance grows instead of shrinking, a situation called negative amortisation. The calculator refuses that input rather than returning a payoff date, because there is not one. Regulation Z has specific statement language for this case, warning that the balance may never be repaid.
As the term stretches, the level payment converges on the monthly interest and almost nothing goes to principal — at 600 months on a $5,000 balance at 22%, the payment is $91.67, which is exactly the interest. Payoff time is capped at 360 months here because past that the plan stops being a payoff plan.